Penny Siopis: In the Air

'The lifeblood of the paintings is liquid ink and viscous glue which alter when coming into contact with air, water, gravity and my hand, with everything moving in tune with the open receptive tooth of the paper. Later creamy, crusty, sticky oil paint joins the fray, and endless possibilities emerge, each a potential image and site for imagining both within and beyond the bounds of the page.

Each seems like a scene – someone described seeing operas – but you can’t tell what’s going on. There are bodily-looking things, animal-like forms, vegetable shapes. Stains and swathes that have the feeling of water, wind, fire. Bits and pieces fly around, float; some fall or sink into substance, drown. Other surfaces erupt, break out. Presences peer from behind curtains, visors, tear barriers, touch other presences, distill into dots that read as eyes, beat their breasts, have tantrums, seem like grief, appear like love, ecstatic, tragic. But these are nothing but visual incidents. Material twists and turns on the page. Capacious colour stains. Paint skin thick enough to catch the light. Cut into, perforated, at times to draw you in. Glue, once writhing, now dry, suspended animation – gestures of formless matter. In this particular uncertainty, everything is open to being shaped; you can see things in things. The air is thick with the times.'