‘Up in smoke tour’ series (2011-16)

The works in the Up in smoke tour series are small, rectangular paintings, each measuring around 25 x 18 centimetres, in oil, watercolour and archival glue on photocopies in box lids from the Natural History Museum of London. These lids, which accompanied boxes that once contained the skulls of Aboriginal people as well as plant and animal specimens and were taken to Britain, are five centimetres deep, creating a short tunnel or frame through which the painting can be viewed. The works in this series were painted between 2011 and 2016.  

Up in smoke tour #1 features a black background almost entirely covered with lenses that reveal  shades of brown and beige, ranging from the colour of sand in the lower left to rich chestnut in the upper right corner. The clustered lenses almost show a portrait. Black outlines, cutting across adjacent lenses, hint at eyes, a nose and perhaps the line of a jaw, but the fragments do not resolve into a recognisable face. 

Up in smoke tour #2 features lenses that reveal white, cream and grey on a black background. Masses of grey lenses again suggest a silhouette of a head and shoulders, a monochromatic image of a subject that remains out of reach.  

Up in smoke tour #3 contains lenses that expose white, cream, grey and dull green on a black background. In the lower third of the image, cream and white-filled lenses dominate, interrupted by a few grey brushstrokes across adjacent lenses. A half-oval shape composed of pale lenses rises in the centre of the painting, surrounded on three sides by points of grey and very dark green. Rough lines are sketched across the cream lenses in this oval.  

Up in smoke tour #4 is composed of lenses that highlight cream, brown and green on a black background. Contours and lines, each contained within their respective circle of colour, create a puzzle-piece picture of two native flowers: one slightly larger flower in the upper right of the painting, the other in the lower left. At the centre of each flower is a cluster of carob-brown discs – seeds, perhaps, or the woody bracts of a flower such as a banksia – surrounded by a spray of olive-green leaves, overlapping and stretching towards the edges of the image.  

Up in smoke tour #5 seems to feature an image within an image. The work is composed of two rectangles, each formed by a series of coloured lenses. The smaller inner rectangle features lenses that reveal cream, white, grey and black, and through these fragments can be glimpsed the fearsome silhouette of a volcano under a shroud of dark clouds during an eruption.  

Surrounding this image on every side are a colourful array of lenses, some of them strung together with whisps of paint like strings of jewels – royal blue, burnt orange, sandy beige, pink and violet, glaring white. Some lenses contain swirls of several colours together. This bright frame around the stark inner rectangle does not reveal an obvious subject, but the contrast is striking. 

Up in smoke tour #6 contains lenses that highlight cream, blue and grey upon a black background. The lenses – some barely separated by slivers of black, others connected by threads of paint – reveal an image of a coastline. In the background, on the right side, an olive-green headland rises against a sky the colour of cream. A stretch of paler green to the left suggests the landscape beyond. In front of the headland is the sea, depicted in two bands of blue lenses: the first narrow and power-blue in colour; the second wider, the blue so pale it is almost white. In the foreground, right of centre, stands the grey silhouette of a tree, crooked, leaning first right then left, with sprigs of shadowy leaves sprouting from each bend. Its canopy reaches the top of the painting in a scattering of grey discs that trail across the left side of the work. Another tree, smaller and straighter, stands along the right border. At the bottom of the work, an uneven shoreline of dark-grey-filled lenses provides a strong frame for this landscape. 

Up in smoke tour #7 features lenses that show beige, cream, green, red and yellow on a black background. Marks in several shades of green are scattered across the work, suggesting a backdrop of varied vegetation. In the centre of the work, points of beige and light brown come together to form a figure in profile, one leg straight and the other knee bent, as if walking towards the right side of the painting. The figure’s hands are held in front, perhaps holding something that cannot be seen. The figure’s torso is bare. Fastened at their waist is a wrap indicated with a few bright lenses of red and yellow.  

Up in smoke tour #8 constructs an intricate image from lenses that highlight cream and grey on a black background. Grey marks cluster in the lower third of the work. In the upper part of the rectangle, cream lenses predominate, interspersed with surges and dashes of grey. Within this section, grey lines sketch the faces, arms, breasts and bodies of naked women. Some of these figures are almost complete. Others are fragments of the human frame – just a head, part of a profile, a curl of hair.  Most of these fragmentary figures are positioned in the centre of the work. Several of them share the same contorted pose, bent backwards at the waist, holding themselves up with their hands behind their heads. One clear face, bald and bodiless, hangs on the left side; another peers from the top-right corner. 

Up in smoke tour #9 features lenses that reveal pale yellow, grey and purple on a black background. The yellow marks create a field, and dark purple lenses have been scattered across it, on top of the yellow marks. A dark figure has been painted over this backdrop in a wash of grey that resembles watercolour. Invisible against the black background, this layer is most clearly seen as a shadow over the yellow-filled lenses. The figure stands with legs sightly apart, one arm raised. 

Up in smoke tour #10 contains lenses that show cream and grey on a black background. In the upper third of the rectangle, a curve of cream lenses could suggest the curve of a brow, and below it the line of a nose, but the subject of this piece remains obscured, even withheld.  

Up in smoke tour #11 also contains lenses of cream and grey on a black background, but the shape of a head and shoulders is clearly visible, illustrated with cream lenses, silhouetted in grey. The shoulders seem to be angled slightly to the right, and the head seems to turn towards us. However, the features which would identify this portrait are absent, obscured in grey. 

Up in smoke tour #12 features  lenses that reveal grey and cream on a black background. This work is in portrait orientation, and the swirls of dark and light discs suggest a landscape of some kind, or perhaps a seascape. A bank of dark points cluster in the upper left, hovering like a storm cloud, and strokes of grey break up the cream field which dominates two thirds of the work, suggesting an undulating form, a slope or a wave. 

Up in smoke tour #13 a+b is a diptych of rectangular images in portrait orientation. Each work sits at the bottom of its own skull box lid, but they create a congruent image. In both works, white-filled lenses at the top suggest a sky, pale-green marks create vegetation, cut across with a few hard grey lines where boughs and trunks could be. Then a band of beige, the sand of the beach. In the lower portion of both images, power-blue and white-filled lenses suggest a restless sea. These two images lay out the landscape of a coastline continuing from one image to the other.  

Up in smoke tour #1 a+b is composed of three parts. To the left, on a lower shelf, sits a box which once contained a kangaroo skull collected by Joseph Banks from Gungardie/Cooktown, Cape York. On the wall behind it, to the upper left, two works sit in skull box lids of their own. Both are composed of colour-filled lenses on a black background.  

In the left image, in portrait orientation, lenses filled of grey-blue cascade down the left side, fading to a band of white across the bottom of the work. In the upper right, beige and light-brown-filled lenses cluster, darkening to chestnut and umber in the lower right. The impression might suggest a portrait, a human profile outlined against the sky, or a coastline, a map of a landscape that refuses to be read. 

In the right image, in landscape orientation, lenses in beige and light brown cover a black background. They are reminiscent of human skin, and a few streaks of black paint could outline the curve of a skull, the arch of a brow or a nose, but the details are not clear; the angle suggests that, if this is a face, it is not in its proper place.