JOHN BUCKLEY GALLERY: Emma van Leest

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CV

Wayfaring
21 February - 10 March 2007

Press release

1. Absentee 2006	2. Ancestry 2006	3. Appanage 2007	4. Bequest 2006	5. Borne in Mind 2006	6. Contravened 2006
7. Recession 2006	8. Something that provides comfort 2006	9. They would hide in the orchard 2006	10. To remain unaltered 2006	11. Attainment 2007	12. Baptism 2006
13. Contest 2006	14. Formal objection 2006	15. A gradual passing 2006	16. Harborage 2006	17. The visitants 2006	18. To discover facts 2007
19. Vengence 2006	20. The things you do for love 2006	21. Appeasement 2006	22. December Saints 1 2005	23. December Saints 2 2005	24. December Saints 3 2005
25. The goddess as a young woman I 2006	26. The goddess as a young woman II 2006	27. The goddess as a young woman III 2006	28. The goddess as a young woman IV 2006	29. The goddess as a young woman V 2006	30. The goddess as a young woman VI 2006
31. Village murmurs 2006
32. Installation 1	33. Installation 2	34. Installation 3

The Scissor Sisters are in town! And although artist, Emma van Leest, won’t be up there on stage with Mr Shears and co., she’ll be exhibiting some pretty fancy paper cutting of her own in her first solo show at John Buckley Gallery which opens on February 21st.

Emma’s intricate and visually complex works – which, at first sight dazzle and mesmerise by virtue of their extraordinary technical skill, draw the viewer into the artist’s complex, imaginative universe: a rich amalgam of images which are borrowed from a host of disparate sources – orientalism, the lives of saints, folk art, Hindu literature and the fairytale world of the Brothers Grimm.

On completing her honours year in Fine Arts at Melbourne’s RMIT, Emma eventually travelled to Indonesia to study Balinese and Javanese folk art. In Bantul, central Java, she studied the ancient art of shadow puppetry with Sagio, a master puppeteer:

“It was amazing to work with someone who was able to enter into a realm of spirituality and folk lore. The Balinese have a unique approach to religion and daily life - a virtual world of Gods, morals and worship that is incorporated into daily life and domestic routines.”

Emma van Leest

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Later, as the recipient of an Australia Council Emerging Artist’s Travel Grant, she visited China to study traditional Chinese paper cutting techniques, but became much more engaged, both visually and conceptually, with the imagery of ancient gardens, houses, funerary objects and tombs which she encountered there. In particular, she was fascinated with miniature dioramas of people and landscapes and the spatial considerations involved with their construction.

Such encounters, together with Emma’s original childhood experience of creating dreamlike fantasy worlds, have resulted in a remarkable body of work which she has been showing in a number of artist-run spaces over the past two years and which she now brings together in her first solo show.

Emma van Leest’s work is currently included in the Price Waterhouse Coopers collection as well as various private collections in Australia, the United States, Indonesia and New Zealand.

John Buckley
2007