Intimacy and liveability revealed in the quiet, artful moments: Reflecting on Forest
Danielle Brustman reflects on the subliminal significance of Josee Vesely-Manning's colour scapes and finely crafted furniture, in our Sydney exhibition, Forest.
When Danielle Brustman encountered the work of artist Josee Vesely-Manning at her Mineral Forest exhibition (Sheffer Gallery, Darlington), she was struck by the breathtaking scale and colour of Josee's canvas colour field paintings - and soon formed the concept of an installation that responded to their extraordinary palettes.
"I find [her] artworks so emotive and intriguing," reflects Danielle. "For me each colour field is a whole world in itself, that I would like to inhabit." Dream-like in their colour scapes, Josee's works feel both otherworldly and familiar. "The colour fields evoke a sense of nature and memory that I associate with illustrated forest settings found in fairytales and storybooks."
It was brilliant timing for a collaboration, as Danielle embarked on the conceptual design of a retail window installation for KFive's, Sydney retail destination. "Erna [KFive CEO] is so expansive in her thinking and open minded to new ideas," says Danielle, who used the showroom's high ceilings and extensive glass street frontage to create a visually immersive installation.
Using Josee's paintings to create scenic backdrops, she conceptualised a series of vignettes, composed of finely crafted furniture pieces and colour. The interplay of scales, with Josee's elongated painted canvas drops juxtaposed against smaller furniture pieces, pulled the viewer in, to inspect at close range wood grain, colour, material and construction detail. "It also invited the viewer to look at the paintings in closer detail. The closer you looked, the more intricacy you discovered."
Photography by Alan Richardson
Created en plein air
Josee initially painted her artworks en plein air, before bringing them into her Sydney studio for completion. Her paintings are intuitive and abstracted responses to forest environments and ecosystems -painted in various regional locations and expressed through methods of mark making, painting using pouring, brushwork and splattering, as well as dyeing methods.
"Everyone responds to colour, hues and abstracted forms in their own personal way," says Josee. There also something in the recalling of "natural and imagined wildernesses and the vivid and dynamic elements that shape them" , she says.
The works exhibited in Forest hint at the mythic associations we hold for forest environments - fairytales, hero's journeys and places of respite and transformation. "The idea of rest and respite also has correlations to the idea of the domestic interior whilst the woods and trees also refer to some of the beautifully crafted timber pieces in the KFive collection," she says.
Finding intimacy and liveability in quiet moments
Danielle describes the "subtle colour wave" that stretched and moved across the installation, shaped by Josee's unique blend of moody, dark colours with hints of vibrant, joyful tones. "From window to window the hues of paintings and furniture shifted, starting with Nola’s Verv Rocking Chair, Broached Commissions' Large Monolith: Fidele Luce, and ending with Zanat's Kiam Cabinet."
For Danielle, Forest was an expression of a place she returns to often - where furniture, art and spatiality converge. "The KFive collection is exquisite," she says. "The pieces are elegant, the designs refined. The collection doesn't yell out for attention - the more you examine the furniture, the more beautiful and fascinating it becomes." It is this quality of slow revelation that made the pairing with Josee's works so instinctive. The texture and weight of painted canvas thrown against the softness of KFive's timbers and fabrics created a contrast that illuminated the finer elements of each.
Forest also offered Danielle the opportunity to present KFive's, collection through a softer, more domestic lens, sequencing pieces within an artistic context to reveal the liveability and intimacy of these pieces. Ultimately, it is this reimagining of context that ignites her creative drive. "It allows us the opportunity to see furniture in a different context and helps us be imaginative in the way we organise and create our spaces that we live and work in."
Visit our Sydney showroom to discover the KFive collection.
