TAKING TIME | prendendo tempo

“I’m concerned with refreshed readings of place; uncommon readings of reality through the possibilities of paint and the way that paint behaves to reflect a moment’s intuition…to achieve a deep sense of being grounded on land, to place, and the stories that arrive in those moments when the mind rests and is free from distraction.”

- M.Giblett, March 2024

Extract- application for residency placement with The Museum of Loss and Renewal (TMoLaR)

From objective to realisation, Heart Shaped Stone is a result of a two-year process focused on a month-long residency spent in the remote, beautiful and often overlooked central Italian region of Molise with the Museum of Loss and Renewal (TMoLaR) during the springtime of 2024.

Embarking upon an exploration of the conceptual and technical possibilities of my painting and drawing practice on country of a different kind has allowed me to address an enduring interest. Namely, ways of bridging the divides of location and origin through the possibilities of creative practice and primary research.

Drawing on the benefits of taking time in place, with people and their stories, a compelling history of the landscapes surrounding the tiny village of Collemacchia begins revealing itself. The seemingly simple acts of making marks, using colour and line to evoke historical linkages and embracing the transformative effects of change has allowed the manifestation of multiple meanings in the work.

Through these and other means, this body of work ultimately seeks to investigate fresh perspectives on the dialogue between contemporary Australian painting and its role in global interconnectedness.

Residency as Catalyst

What’s the point of a residency? Simplistically speaking, it may be a way to encounter a place over a specific time either alone, or alongside other artists with the intention to make new work about it or conduct work on a project that may be unrelated to the specifics of that location. Moreover, it can be a potent stepping stone to extend the scope of one’s work in a new environment, develop creative skills (Hayley, 2014) and access the network of others associated with the residency.

My reasoning to pursue an international residency programme was manifold. Its instigation was primarily driven by a desire to consider my identity as an Australian artist and the possibilities of practice in an unfamiliar yet provocative setting with all the challenges that would present. The time was opportune to stretch my making capacities and apply forces that would draw out new structural and conceptual directions for my work. Furthermore, such an opportunity offered a means to evolve my visual language in dialogue with artists from an array of varied global contexts while outside the environs of the Antipodes.

Consequently, the ensuing body of work (including drawings, monoprints and poetry made in the field) may embody a number of effects. The most obvious being the painterly articulation of a joyous encounter with a stunningly beautiful land and histories that are different from my own. The more subtle and deeply resonant effects in the work are around storytelling: about the village and people of Collemacchia where I resided for the duration of my time abroad. Connecting with those who know that place intimately, and who come from the land itself...seeing the rhythm and pulse of the landscape through the lives of those who have cared for it for many thousands of years was of immense value and a profound privilege. Their accounts possess analogous features to the stories of my childhood told by my school friends and their families. Growing up in the industrial city of Wollongong, NSW, the post-World War II migrant accounts of peril and endeavour, hope and yearning aligned closely with the plights of those left behind in Collemacchia and its eleven surrounding villages during those fraught years.

Strategy through Simplicity

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

-Hans Hofmann

(Sinclair, 2025)

So, what would I make being so far away from all that is familiar and how would the resulting work be relevant? What significance would it have contextually and how could I harness the fullness of the residency experience in a meaningful way? Would I be able to overlook the allures of beauty to see what lay at the heart of Collemacchia? The answers needed to wait. Although valid, these initial questions were as I soon realised, not only too vast to address in an immediate sense, but required archiving until the end of my time in Italy.

Instead, I prioritised a simple strategy of engaging the senses to intuit a sense of place, namely via a walking practice. These long daily hikes looking, touching, sketching, writing, laying on warm grass among juniper trees where wild foals rest with their mothers and the sound of cow bells close by (all true!) elongated my sense of time such that the enormity of the experience did not threaten my perception of more delicate details. This creation of literal and metaphorical ‘space’ proved to be crucial as the swathe of new information provided by this new place was relentless. Increasing space between actions served to mitigate the effects of a tendency to over-state or complicate my responses when artmaking.

Walking-as-practice was a means by which the unnecessary was able to be eliminated and the necessary could declare itself. By simplifying the expectations of my outcomes and trusting in my intuitive responses to the landscape, I was able to harness a clearer reading of place and hold its necessary character front of mind.

The Mark as Artefact

Further to the idea of pursuing a simpler expression of complex thought or response, author Todd Henry reminds one:

“Don’t confuse complexity with value” (Floyd, 2017)

As suggested, I have keenly felt the push and pull of representation versus abstraction, fighting the temptation to overanalyse my subjects as I have painted over the years.

Originally trained as an abstract painter under the luminous direction of teachers Alun Leach-Jones, Louise Fowler-Smith and Idris Murphy at the then College of Fine Arts-UNSW, I learned the sophistication of simplicity and about the economy and conceptual potential of the mark of the hand. Yet over the years spent in secondary school education, trying deftly to maintain an artistic practice alongside this jealous and all-consuming partner, I would flee into the waiting arms of representation where the lure of safety and pictorial worth was surely promised. Pushing representation aside, could the mark itself be the object of historical or cultural value, an artefact? Either by the way it was conceived, what it records or represents? Perhaps investigating this idea in Italy would assist me to locate the most salient features of my work.

My proposed project for TMoLaR was named: ‘The Mark as Historical Artifact’. It set an agile and meaningful agenda for my activities no matter what situation I ended up encountering in Italy. If the mark was key in this plan, then the importance of experimentation became an intrinsic aspect of processing experience and expanding the reaches of my skill set. Exploring my new environment I gathered, selected then printed botanical specimens collected on long hikes alongside plein-air drawings, shot photographs, recorded soundscapes using the voice memo function on my phone and assembled words that came to mind while walking.

The subsequent collection of experiments-artefacts, became my raw materials. Satisfyingly, did communicate something of the historical aspects of the Apennines mountains where TMoLaR was ensconced. These small works denoted real locations, represented tangible aspects of the landscape and implicitly referred to the people who inhabit and have inhabited it. They became compelling repositories for memory and yet more invaluable reference materials post residency.

Connectiveness and Meaning

If marks can refer to, or embody histories, then stories are surely the metaphoric loading on the brush.

At the core of my practice lay an ongoing aim to preserve the significance of landscapes. An outworking of this intention positions storytelling as a way of connection with, and knowing about the lands upon which we live and why they are existentially valuable.

By way of illustration, I have used colour in this body of work as a means to evoke historical links to place. The base colours of the works are sourced from the colours of Filignano (the largest village in the valley of twelve villages of which Collemacchia is part). Tracy Mackenna, co-founder and curator of TMoLaR, explained that this palette of approximately eight colours was mandated by the local authorities for returning residents after World War II to paint their damaged, battle-worn homes in Old Filignano. It served as an economic means to demonstrate a collective ‘pride of place’ and a palpable reclamation of their home village. Today, one can see the remnants of these colours not only in the older, disused part of the village but in the newer homes in refreshed tonalities of: peach (pesca), blush pink (rosa cipria), brick red ( rosso mattone) pistachio (pistacchio), Naples yellow (giallo di Napoli), Yellow ochre (giallo ocra), sky blue (cielo blu) and pale raw umber (terra d’ombra pallida e cruda).

Stories tell us about ourselves and what it means to be human. They connect us to place and each other and are therefore conduits for the transference of culture. Their inherent value lay in the provision of meaning to or lives.

The Alchemy of Change

Enacting change in a creative practice can lead to transformation and sometimes even serendipitous outcomes. While laden with a real possibility of failure by stepping outside one’s sphere of comfort, the unintended and truly ‘magical’ consequences of having embraced change and indeed chance as part of my artmaking process has been a fine reward for risk-taking.

The importance therefore, of the experimental cannot be overlooked in the pursuit of shifting my work toward an increasingly intuitive response to landscapes. I am not interested in making pictures that show actual places but rather ones that reveal something deeply felt about our humanity in relation to them; pictures that communicate the essences of place and by them, encourage us to value them more deeply through stewardship and care.

In summary, the time spent in Italy granted me the license to take more risks that I may not have readily approved for myself otherwise. I suspect that geographic and psychological distance from all that is familiar was a readymade conduit by which I was enabled to do so. By uncovering artistic vulnerabilities, I have gained understanding of how to override the persuasive pull toward representation in the ongoing project of reclaiming memory and intuition as co-partners in my practice.

Forced distance post residency has allowed this work to meander and explore itself through a renewed artmaking process, one that has been both challenged and enriched by the immersion in the life and history of Collemacchia as guided by Tracy MacKenna, Scots-Italian co-founder and curator of TMoLaR. I sincerely thank and credit her for inspiring confidence in my work and for validating my practice, not only as an Australian artist making meaningful work and forging connections in an international context but also as an artist making contributions to a collective conversation and history of Collemacchia.

And yes, there is a heart shaped stone, sleeping, embedded in an earthy path leading to a view of the mountains.

Melinda Giblett, July 2025

References

Floyd, K., 2017. The Art of Simplicity [WWW Document]. Stone Ward. URL https://www.stoneward.com/blog/2017/08/the-art-of-simplicity/ (accessed 18.07.25)

Maeda, J., 2006. The Laws of Simplicity, Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life. MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Razavi, K., 2019. Drop the doom and gloom: Climate journalism is about empowerment [WWW Document]. The Conversation. URL http://theconversation.com/drop-the-doom-and-gloom-climate-journalism-is-about-empowerment-124922 (accessed 15.07.25).

Sinclair, E., 2025. Rise of Abstract. Publifye AS

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