Louise Forthun, Pink, 2006, city, cityscape
Summary
Since the mid-1980s, painter Louise Forthun has been rigorous in her consideration of the city – not just Melbourne but many world cities – and she has created a prodigious body of work on the subject. Hers are not necessarily representational depictions of the metropolis and its structures, but (while clearly grounded in the real) abstractions that convey an essence rather than the detailed substance of urban space. Using painstakingly cut and placed stencils, Forthun paints her cityscapes from intersecting and layered lines, planes, areas, shards and splinters of pigment and its inverse. The sense of estrangement created by her often fragmented and impressionistic glimpses of the city is heightened by their radical and sometimes shifting point of view, frequently vertiginous in effect.
This work, which came into the Art and Heritage Collection in 2007, carries the shock of the familiar. As one contemplates the intersecting lines amid a pool of spotted pink pigment, Robert Hoddle’s 1837 grid of central Melbourne emerges, with ‘little’ streets and laneways splitting off main thoroughfares. The bird’s-eye perspective of Forthun’s painterly abstraction not only reveals the historical plan but also underscores the work’s close relationship to another form of abstracted spatial representation: the map.
‘Pink’ is one of a number of works by Louise Forthun held in the collection. You can find other works by this artist through the website’s search function.
