Julie works by applying heavily contrasted layers of paint with the fine lines of ghostly heritage buildings that evoke a deep response in the viewer. Against these, the works of Hui Selwood, stand as totemic forms that imply the presence of souls among the ruins.
This is a natural alliance between 2 artists and friends who work from the heartland of the gold rush in Hill End near Bathurst NSW.
Julie Williams - Painter
My art practice primarily involves using painting as a problem solving experience to produce contemporary works with historical references. The works, which explore relationships between the landscape and the built environment, are a combination of immediate responses to specific sites and ideas developed in the studio. Where we live creates relationship both visually and metaphorically, built environments either blend, recede or dominate but in the end it is the landscape that remains. The Australian attachment to landscape is very strong and landscape painting carries a huge legacy. I think of my own work as trying to find something interesting and meaningful to say about my immediate landscape and at the same time make work, which is lively and compelling. My interpretations are dependent on plein air studies, antique maps, photographs and archival documents. My influences are the landscape and architecture of the historic gold rush town of Hill End, NSW, a place wrapped in a rich history of immigration, which has become a metaphor for my own sense of belonging.
Abstract compositions in the materials of metal and wood, predominate my work. The sculptural compositions acknowledge an architectural quality, which stems from my interest in design, architecture and construction. These works continue to investigate architectural ideas and design with the emphasis on the vertical, referencing totems and figures. The totem is a subject, which has occupied me for years. Intrigued by the totems from various cultures and civilisations, such as Aboriginal, African, Central and South American and Oceanic tribes, Ancient European and Eastern civilisations. My interest in the totem extends to the totem pole, where not only a connection has been established with my interest in architectural references but also with the figure, the quasi-representation of our selves. Questioning the need for humans to erect tall vertical structures from the times of Stonehenge to the modern high rise. A curious parallel, the evolutionary steps of man from the horizontal to the vertical. These works are responses to totems of the past, to contemporary architecture and to the sculptures of Brancusi, Giacometti, Meadmore and David Smith’s Cubi series.
