Robyn Litchfield

Drawing from archival photographs and personal documents relating to the early exploration and colonisation of New Zealand, Robyn Litchfield reimagines and examines the experience of those early forays into a hitherto unknown space. Her paintings envisage how sublime encounters with places; pristine and untouched might encourage contemplation and self-reflexivity.

Landscape becomes a ubiquitous template for exploring personal history, notions of cultural identity, alienation and a sense of belonging. Wilderness is used as the transitional liminal space, which can be seen as a place of disorientation and dissolution of order. Processes such as scraping into the paint, layering and erasure reference the destructive and constructive nature of being in a state of liminality. This space can offer an opportunity for reconfiguring subjectivity and a reimagining of possibilities.

An alluring luminosity projects through the monochrome images of dense forest. Elements extracted from the documents of primeval landscapes intrude into the space. For Litchfield they are haunting symbols of loss and longing; for past lives left behind, the dispossessed and the primeval forest. This layer of amorphous red shapes acts like a semiotic screen casting its shadow on the gaze. Through the uncanny layering and the juxtaposition of images, the viewer is encouraged to form their own associations and interpretations of the work whilst engaging with the otherness of landscape through paint.