Artists Marina Strocchi and Wayne Eager
Artist Marina Strocchi…
Marina Strocchi completed a degree in art in Melbourne (1979-82) and then went on a two-year sojourn to Europe (mainly Paris). She returned to Melbourne and then worked as a community artist. Her first exhibition of paintings was in 1995.
Marina Strocchi completed a degree in art in Melbourne (1979-82) and then went on a two-year sojourn to Europe (mainly Paris). She returned to Melbourne and then worked as a community artist. Her first exhibition of paintings was in 1995.
In 2021 Marina returned to her home town Melbourne after a twenty-nine-year period in the Northern Territory where she was closely involved in supporting the development of a number of First Nations artists: initially through establishing the Ikuntji Art Centre in 1992 and then working with the Pintupi women at Kintore to catalyse their painting which led to a vigorous and continuing output through Papunya Tula. During these decades she developed her painting responses to the remote landscapes and narratives that are unique to the Central Desert.
Strocchi has held over forty solo exhibitions including a Northern Territory touring survey exhibition, which was accompanied by a catalogue of works. Awarded an ARTS NT Fellowship in 2019 Strocchi had a three-month residency in New York City. Strocchi has exhibited her work in the USA, Europe and all over Australia. Her work is in many major Australian institutional and private collections, and private collections in Europe and the USA. She has undertaken commissions, won awards and is a many times finalist in significant prizes including the Wynne Prize, the Omnia Prize, the Alice Prize, the Fisher’s Ghost Award, and the National Works on Paper Award. She is represented by Australian Galleries (Sydney and Melbourne) and Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane. Now settled in the Yarra Valley Strocchi is responding to memories of her life experience and her new environment.
“My work is an intuitive response to nature and the built environment. I live outside the city environment in the Wurundjeri/Yarra Valley area. I attempt to activate the feeling of being in the landscape, deconstructing and anthropomorphizing the landscape, challenging the human-centered viewpoint of nature. Through layering and linework, my aim is to create a form of ‘spacial’ harmony: a place of refuge, as nature does. My work responds to the brilliant glare of the Australian light. I use the irregularities and patterns of a world where nature is the major stakeholder”.
Artist Wayne Eager…
Wayne Eager was a founding member of the dynamic artist-run-exhibiting space Roar Studios in Fitzroy, Melbourne, the first such venture in Australia. His early works were exhibited there in 1982. Roar Studio’s contribution to the revival of Australian painting has been the subject of three texts which all recognize Eager’s role in its development.
Eager has held 30 solo exhibitions throughout Australia and his work is in 13 public collections as well as many private collections in Australia and overseas. Eager stayed at Kakadu for an extended period in 1990, where he produced a body of work responding to the Top End environment. This work was exhibited in Melbourne and Sydney, 1991-92. In 1992 he moved to the Central Desert and worked for a number of indigenous organisations supporting the painting movement. Initially at Haasts Bluff and then for Papunya Tula, he then worked for a decade throughout the APY Lands. Eager’s experience of the Northern Territory landscape is the fundamental foundation to his oeuvre over the last 30 years. In 2021 a survey exhibition of his work entitled Bitumen and Dirt toured from Darwin to Alice Springs and was accompanied by a published catalogue of his work. In April 2021 he moved back to his home in the Yarra Valley. In 2022 a collection of his work was hung in a private gallery on the peninsula and is now currently on display at The Australian Club in Melbourne.
His work has the integrity of an artist whose life has been devoted to discovering the purity of painting.
“My paintings are arrived at through a distillation process of a series of overlaid marks and shapes. In the 1990s I was more interested in a depiction of the landscape surrounds, whilst now the paintings are more non-representational (abstract) although the basic inspiration remains the central desert landscape, where I live.” – Wayne Eager, 2019
Eager’s version of abstraction is a response to his environment which incorporates motifs of nature, organic forms and hints at figurative elements. His paintings often take years to create, a process which produces an at times heavily textured surface. His layered canvases are created through addition and subtraction, driven by the act of painting rather than a concept. Elements of calligraphy mesh with gestured mark making and glazes to create a rich and evocative surface with depth and resonance. The structural elements teeter between cohesion and chaos, often held together with tentative line work.