Rose Nolan is preoccupied with form: the graphic form her text takes, as well as painting as form. (1) For Nolan, painting transcends two-dimensional convention and becomes sculptural and structural. It occupies space and becomes architectural. An earlier work by the artist, It’s not good to worry about space (2008), (2) articulates this anxiety about space within galleries, literally spelling it out but also alluding to artists’ and curators’ concerns regarding how artworks sit in space, how context informs meaning and how the viewer navigates the space.

For The National 2017: New Australian Art Nolan has created a new work, Big Words – To keep going breathing helps (circle work) (2016–17). It takes the form of painted hessian discs, strung together to form a large curtain suspended in a spiral formation from the ceiling in the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s double-height gallery space. The work extends to a height of nearly five metres, and visitors can walk around and within it.

Nolan’s painting is performative: the performance of labour in the making of the work and performative actions for the audience. Viewers cannot take in the whole text of the work from a single viewpoint, they must move around and within it; a passive viewing won’t reveal the full script. Viewing is further enhanced by looking through the camera of a smart phone; (3) a mediated viewing experience becoming increasingly common in art galleries, with visitors navigating their path through other visitors, snapping selfies in front of their favourite works. Here, Nolan’s preoccupation with form extends beyond the work, to the space of the gallery and the positioning and movement of viewers both within and around the artwork.

This work is marked by repetition, aesthetically in the colour and patterning of the work and in the repetitive gestures employed by Nolan in its construction. The artist talks of the ‘embedded or latent energy contained within its structure’, (4) based on the number of hours that have been necessary in order to realise this work. The product of Nolan’s labour is usually reminiscent of banners, (5) such as those used in protest. The artist’s labour; the labour movement; the visual language of protest and revolution. This work is more supportive and enthusiastic, like a banner about to be unfurled by loyal fans of a sporting team, the red and white echoing the colours of a football team.

Entitled Big Words – To keep going breathing helps (circle work), the artwork’s text is simultaneously literal and metaphoric – the painted words are big words; big enough to walk through and around, big enough to stop you in your tracks. The subtitle could be read as having a greater meaning than as an instruction to navigate the work; the artist needed to keep going through hours and hours of labour in order to create the work. She has needed to keep going through years and years of her practice to get to the point of making this work. Sometimes in life we need to remember to calm down, that ‘breathing helps’. It’s a mantra to be inhaled by the audience, and to take with them, and to hold while making a work such as this, or for life. It is also somewhat absurd: breathing is an automatic bodily response innate to humans. It helps, though; we wouldn’t survive without it.

Notes

(1) Note to the author, 13 December 2016.

(2) Rose Nolan, It’s not good to worry about space, 2008, synthetic polymer paint on hessian, 2 parts: 61.5 x 800 cm, 61.5 x 600 cm, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, purchased with funds provided by the Coe and Mordant families, 2008.

(3) Note to the author, 18 December 2016.

(4) ibid.

(5) Blair French, ‘Rose Nolan’, in MCA Collection handbook, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2016, p.276.