Daily 8.30-4
Closed Tuesdays

6962 Arthur Highway. Port Arthur. Tasmania

Exhibition Opening

The exhibition was opened by Heather Rose author and Tasmanian business woman of the year. Below is the opening speech.

Firstly let me say, on behalf of Sally, welcome to all of you. I know Sally is delighted to see so many of you – having come today from across Tasmania and from the mainland, to be here in this very historic place for Sally’s first exhibition – the very first time she has publicly shared her artistic journey. And thank you to Jacqui and Richard at the Eucalyptus Gallery for this beautiful space to show Sally’s work. I know it means a great deal to Sally to have her first show here at Port Arthur.

Today I really want to celebrate Sally – being an artist alone in a studio is one thing but bringing that work into the public eye for all to see and judge is another. Sally I acknowledge your courage and your rigour as an artist. Sally’s work is extraordinarily accomplished, rich with not only the technical skill it takes to bring these paintings into being – but with a spiritual wisdom and an ability to tune herself in to frequencies not many of us choose to listen to – let alone harness for artistic purpose.

As I thought about Sally’s work a quote from a piece Sally wrote an interlude in Tibet with a beggar sprang to mind:

“And in that charged moment of asking, I gave away near everything, ashamed to walk away owning anything but hope.”

Sally gives entirely of herself in bringing these paintings to life - her soul is at the centre of her art.

I had friends look at Sally’s invitation and think instantly that these images were computer generated. Other people have thought that Sally scales them all up, like some sort of spirograph painting by numbers, and filling in the spaces with the appropriate colour. With nothing but a humble pencil, a bit of string, and (Peter tells me) not even a very good compass, Sally sets to work first locating the potential she wishes to convey - beginning always with a circle – sometimes large, sometimes small.

And then Sally goes on a journey with the painting - discovering its story, fleshing out its voice, finding the rhythms and nuances of its mood, harnessing the energy she finds within it to encourage it to grow and take form on the canvas.

I think of how as a novelist I also go on this journey, discovering characters and their stories, trusting in this process which is a little like cryptic orienteering, trusting that all the threads will come together at the end and the story – and the true nature of the story will reveal itself.

Like many writers, Sally has no sense of the end at the beginning. It is a mystical journey. And from this process which can take many months for one painting to be completed - Sally’s steady hand and fine brush work, infinite patience and fine layer of oil paint upon fine layer of oil paint - these eight paintings have emerged over the past two years. Their themes differ but they are all mandalas in one form or other - a sacred circle traditionally associated with healing and meditation.

Sally has said: “Mandalas, for me, are energetic mappings of the silent underlying rhythms of the cosmos inherent and mirrored in all things. The circle of a mandala is a sacred space where everything meets and anything can happen.”

Not being a painter, I am always in awe of those who can put paint to canvas or paper and speak of things that live within our human world – or things just beyond it. There is something of Sally’s work that makes me think of Salvador Dali – and some of the other surrealists – Miro, Max Ernst. Not because her work is surrealist – but because there is an alternate way of seeing at work in Sally’s paintings that is exciting and unique.

It would be easy to call it new age – but I don’t believe it is. I see that it taps into what Joseph Campbell would refer to as our ancient sense of symbolism. Our ancient understanding of things beyond our ability to grasp. And of course these paintings are also the product of Sally’s deep interest in Buddhism, Taosim and Chinese medicine.

I believe these paintings offer us a powerful opportunity to see some part of ourselves. When I stand in front of any of the masters, what I glimpse is a sense of the human condition. The artist doesn’t always intend this, it somehow tumbles out. Last year when viewing Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London I learned that Van Gogh had painted it to brighten the guest room for his friend Paul Gauguin who was coming to stay. And yet how that painting has touched so many lives. Sally’s paintings are not for the faint-hearted. They are for the adventurous, the seeker, the observer. They demand a level of interaction from the viewer. They can be unsettling, inspiring, eerie, unbalancing and balancing. They have enormous energy, and like the Sunflowers, like the work of any artist whose work is bold with passion and ideas, they speak to those who are ready to hear.

I asked my son Byron what he made of Sally’s work when we visited Sally and Peter at Windgrove some weeks back and he said this: “I think they’re so weird – like they’re not any particular shape but you can think a thousand things.”

I have no doubt there will be more and more shows – and that we will look back on this first show by Sally Horne as a rather remarkable privilege. I urge you to seize the opportunity to own one of these weird and wonderful, unique and powerful paintings – so that you can continue to listen to their unfolding stories – to see a thousand things.

Thank you

Enlightened by a soft yet vivid light the radiance in this mandala is more like that of the deep winter sun or a moonlit night, burning cool and bright in a darkened sky.

Circular forms, smooth and silky, eddy and glide into the centre and back out; their swirling potential hint at something forthcoming. In the heart of the mandala an arctic fire glows so cold that it emits a hot radiance; there is a sort of transition here where the darkest hour begins to shift towards the light of daybreak.

Ghostly reflections of that which lie at the centre are mirrored at the edges. Something like a passageway lies behind each, seemingly leading back to the interior: a return journey to the source of origin.

Dream-like in its cool burning radiance, trance-like in its circulating circadian rhythm, something otherworldly haunts this image. Like the lingering reverberation of sound on water, this mandala is an echo of an alternate reality. There is a slipperiness that permeates this image, a silky intangible fluidity that whispers of something ungraspable, like the dark cool wilderness of predawn.

A sense of solitude saturates this mandala. Although dark, much like shadowy oceanic waters imbued with the florescent radiance of a coral reef, it is not dreary. The solitude here is one of rousing aloneness rather than a sinking melancholic loneliness.

We spend much of our time in the tamed conscious part of the mind -thinking, planning, analysing - whilst the untamed mind burns in the depths of the subconscious like an internal wilderness, alive, awake even in the darkest hour. What would happen if we were to dwell in the wilderness of the imagination and subconscious, unleashing them into our lives?

That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes.

-Kabir

Stars, diamonds, pentagons, triangles and rhomboids are some of the shapes that form this kaleidoscopic mandala. Together they create a pattern; a web of interconnection where each form is dependent upon and shaped by other forms. It is an interwoven whole, like a single piece of carefully folded origami paper.

Although not immediately evident, a precise tension holds this image together. If one individual component were to be carelessly shaped, the whole pattern would be altered. Perhaps, like a kaleidoscope, an entirely new design would emerge from this one shift, or perhaps the image would become a disjointed shambolic mess.

The mandala, despite its seeming stillness, appears to encapsulate a frozen moment in an unraveling sequence; a snapshot of a transitory shifting pattern where various forms are in the process of either opening or closing.

The mandala is like a prism where the original source of white light has split into a glorious spectrum of colour. A crystalline permeates the image, a self-radiating splendor where the source of light is not apparent and seems to glow from within.

Do we, the manifold forms of life in the cosmos split into our various forms, all stem from the one original source of light? Are we all one big piece of origami paper collectively shaped, shaping? Or are we part of a wonderful web of kaleidoscopic pattern shifting and ever changing? What a responsibility it is to be a part of a greater whole where our graceful, or disgraceful, actions influence the pattern of the entire cosmos.

Soaked by ocean-spray and stung by rain I stood out on The Point - a jutting chunk of land projecting into the ocean. Leaning into the blustery storm I gave myself up to the arms of the wind, to the currents of the cosmos, to the wild exhalation of the universe.

The storm passed through me, subsided into me, dissolved into my hara and was swallowed up. Silent stillness filled the atmosphere yet air and skin were tingling with the charged polar electrics of summer-heat and heaven’s rain.

I turned around to a double rainbow, its curved beams of impossible colour doubly awesome against a blackened sky. The sharp shock of stark beauty was the zen koan that cracked through bland consciousness, awakening a primal self. The earth was alive as it had never been alive before, charged with an electricity that connected the infinitesimal into a net of concentric circles.

I re-entered the softly-spoken silence of the house wide-eyed and bulging with exhilaration. It was then that I realised I was huge. Being careful not to bowl over the hushed table dialogue I slipped as inconspicuously as possible into a chair.

Nobody noticed that I was no longer contained within this body, that ‘I’ had been blown out of any preconceived sense of spatial self, that ‘I’ reached as far as I placed my attention.

I kept it to myself this new-found electric largeness. It was my secret that I had become the summer storm, that the zing of wilderness was alive within me.

All the colours of the rainbow spring from an infinite indigo black. This seed of life sprouts from the abyss abloom with the zest and beauty of new life. Bands of vibrant colour, smooth and unblemished, are alive with lustrous newness.

Although bursting with verve and vigour, the image is distinctly contained; the crisp outer limit sharply delineates it from the boundless surrounds. It is like a seed that encases and protects the secret kernel of a vibrant new life-force.

Towards the middle of the image a blue shell is seemingly prised open by the swelling expansion of the red root-like structures and the emergent growth within. The shoots of new life are lively and erratic in their impulsive sprouting.

The deep indigo expanse, in which the germinating seed is enveloped, is present also at its core. Perhaps, like the seed of life, we humans too emerge from our surrounds, the kernel of origin alive at our core.

Did I notice your deities dancing on heaven cloud, your mandalas of rippling colour? Or the prayer flags floating free on thin air?

No, it was only the beggars, anchored and earthbound, and the richness of robes against the poverty of the people, that I carried home in mind’s eye.

I tried not to see anything after a while. Golds and deep reds too reminiscent of the heart’s sacred chambers. A space too tender to enter.

Eyes barely open, the world a whirl of colour. Portals of the heart firmly shut. Just don’t look into the eyes of the people; the gateway to a collectively pained and tormented soul.

Escape into monastery darkness seeped in the ages of deepest kindness and wisdom. Here, recent history leaves little imprint on the age-old teachings of love and interconnection.

Giant shadowy figures splashed with gold from yak-butter candles, their solemn faces stare back knowingly. Did you know this was coming?

In this high land where the source of light resides so near, your channel to a softer realm was cut midstream. From the rooftop of the world, your sacrificial blood trickled down the mountains to the spirit-deprived and hungry world below.

And yet, Tibetan beggar, your dirt smudged face, shabby clothes and calloused hands speak a different truth to that which you carry in your eyes. The yak-butter candle burns also in their depths casting golden light on giant shadow. But would one more whisper of pain blow it out forever?

To be smiling still, when in just a week I had forgotten how, the strength of earnest hope must surely be enough. That smile across deepest darkness is the most precious thing I’ve known.

And in that charged moment of asking, I gave away near everything, ashamed to walk away owning anything but hope.

(original photos by Jeff Su)

The mandala: ‘Oasis’

Plant-like organisms are in various stages of growth - dormant, budding or blossoming. Organic flowering forms encased in rich foliage open, bulbous and buoyant, rich and radiant in their unfurling. Others remain clenched, awaiting, perhaps quietly yearning the time of release. This is a process of evolution, an opening and flowering not yet in full bloom.

At the heart of each budding or blooming flower, is an enigmatic blue globe. In the budding forms, the globe appears solid and sturdy, smooth and glassy. In the flowering forms the sphere appears malleable and fluid, rippling out from a softly glowing centre; the glassy shell has been penetrated.

An organic opulence permeates the imagery. Chlorophyll-rich greens speak of thriving lavish vegetation whist deep reds and golden oranges evoke the deep sacredness of a Buddhist temple or Tibetan monastery. An iridescent light imbues the plant life like sunbeams gleaming through stained-glass windows of churches.

There is a sacredness, a preciousness to this mystifying garden, as though the plants themselves are transparent vessels filled with a divine light. The growth and expansion of this holy garden is a treasured journey, radiant in it’s unfolding, yet full fruition is yet to be realized.

What nutrients or fertile soil nourish this flourishing utopian garden? What is the candescent life-force that infiltrates these organic vessels of air and light?

The mandala: ‘Cosmic Dust’

There is a smallness within an expansiveness in this mandala. The initial vision that unlocked the journey of this painting was of an atom. The atom is represented as a small white dot in the centre of the painting. The outer limits of the mandala are reminiscent of the plasma membrane of a cellular wall, dynamic and pulsating. This microscopic theme sits within a greater spaciousness, suggestive of the expansiveness of the universe.

There is powerful motion within this painting that only relents towards the centre where the atom is pinpointed and accentuated. The mid and outer limits of the painting appear to be spiralling outward creating tension; a straining and tearing away from the point of stillness. The energy is released, dissipating and exhausting itself where the miniscule meets the macroscopic.

The mandala thus embodies the microcosm within the macrocosm, and a tension and communication between the two. The atomic and cellular components of the mandala suggest a revisitation to a very microscopic level of self. There is a strain, a sort of tearing apart and peeling back within the painting.

The painting process unleashed mini-epiphanies, unlocked elapsed memories and forgotten dreams. It was seemingly a process of delving deeply into the archives of self and activating a process of opening and undoing. Reflected in the mandala of my life, something in the matrix of self felt as though it was being rewritten, a destruction and resurrection of sorts, was taking place.

The mandala: ‘An Emergent Reality’

Bubble-like forms hover over a partially transparent image creating a rather ethereal feel. There is a sense of delicateness and tenuousness to this painting, as if, perhaps, without the sturdy golden yellows and oranges, one could blow it all away. There is a grace to this painting; it is both steadfast and afloat. Perhaps one could say that it is suspended between two opposing forces.

There is a gentle inward-outward movement contained within the mandala. The bubble forms and shafts of light both lead one in towards the centre and out towards the periphery. Similarly, the two interlocking linear forms spiral in opposing directions: the one clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. The combined effect is of a subtle repulsion-attraction dynamic, where, whilst spinning, the one force holds the other in careful check, much like the protons and electrons of an atom. The tension created by this dynamic equilibrium is delicate but crucial. There is the sense that if this balance were upset perhaps the image would either collapse in on itself or expand forever outwards.

Within both the centre and periphery of the mandala there is nothing -nothing but emptiness. There is the hint of a journey within this painting: a circuit from nothingness to something back to nothingness. The only difference between the emptiness of the centre and the emptiness of the periphery is that the peripheral emptiness contains the whole memory, all the information of the ‘something-ness,’ within it. Much like the journey of life and death, life and death.

Is the image form that is spirit-infused, or spirit that has taken form? Is it coming or going? Is it moving or static? Is it anchored or afloat? Is it empty or full? The questions begin to fall away -the answer is always neither and both. It is whole. It is a composed state of balance, poised whilst gently rhythmic; a dynamic equilibrium. A precarious and delicate space to hold. I wonder what, if anything, emerges from this space of wholeness?

Faith

I want to write about faith
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last and impossible
slither of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

—David Whyte

Twenty-nine stones each painted with a phase of the moon unite to form the Moonstone Mandala. Glinting in the sunlight that falls through the trees, there is a preciousness to the stones, a sense that they hold something dear. They are softly gleaming jewels, shiny dewdrops amidst Nature’s coarse patterns and earthy tones. The moonstones are nestled amidst black volcanic rock — the night sky, the darkness that holds the light.

The Moonstone Mandala, inspired by the David Whyte poem above, is a symbol of faith. Faith for some people resides in a god. My faith is a shadow of knowingness, a faint sense or tenuous trust that all life in its naked purity is an embodiment of virtue and benevolence. Perhaps ultimate goodness is not a seed that needs cultivating, or a choice that needs to be made, but is a concealed yet innate state of being, a wholesome nature hidden within everything in existence.

The higher the climb, the greater the fall. Likewise, the stronger faith is, the deeper the doubt. Even faith seems to have its consequences. Yet somehow in its demise, perhaps faith finds new life. In that tension of tearing away as the pendulum swings into the darkness of doubt, isn’t this emptying of faith already its birth into fullness? Just as the moon is most lucid against the darkest sky, maybe it is the waning embers of faith and not it’s fullest flames that radiate the strongest.

Guardian of the night sky, the moon is an ever-present entity even as it moves between fullness and emptiness, devotion and dependability are expressed in its unfailing rhythmic ascent and retreat; as is faith.

Behold the glow of the moon
illumine the world’s four quarters
perfect light in perfect space
a radiance that purifies
people say it waxes and wanes
but I don’t see it fade
just like a magic pearl
it shines both night and day

—Red Pine