Jayne Waterford
27 July 2001

Audrey Rhoda
1+2 Artists Studios
483 Balmain Road
Rozelle

Audrey Rhoda Descibes herself as a "process wroker" where she doesn't know what she's going to end up with when she starts out. She generally begins her wax and oils on board with a social landscape and then life takes her from there.

This process is very much in keeping with her approach to art as life. But it is not the same as life. Her art maps life, not in a narrative sense but rather as fabricated being in itself that has layers of history and colour that juxtapose with textures that can be gliimpsed through the deepest layers of transluscent wax.

Rhoda sees all of her work as autobiographical. In this show this autobiographical nature most shows itself in the creation of a series of panels, featured above. These were created through out the making of the other works. So in itself it might be seen as not essential so much as contemporaneous to this entire body of work. It might well be a diary of, "more conversations with myself".

Rhoda does say that there is a direct correlation between the layers of wax and colour built up on the board and the layers of experience in her own life. However, rather then making literal links between between the works and her life we can all look back through the wax and see vaguely distorted events preserved and there for all time, all memory.

Rhoda loves the creatures that sometimes appear in her works, our four legged person/dog below is a good example. She sites the realtionships people have with dogs as revealing and important elements in her social landscapes. But though Rhoda sites many of her influences, she never mentions Chagall and his fantastic creatures suspended in life's ether. Her inventions are after all more securely connected to their positions and aren't necessarily motivated by loving fantasy. But to this participant there are at least aesthetic similarities if not an emotional one in her portrayal of the fulness of life.

Rhoda admires Kitaj's portrayal of figurative elements in a narrative form and the social landscapes that inform his work (, like Fischl). Then along with Kitaj, she responds to Clemente, Picaso and Francis Bacon's underlying tones. The suggestion of absence of presence, that something is about to or has just happened and their layering of past experience, the innuendo beneath the surface.

Audrey Rhoda is participating in a group show at the Galerie Say in Paris together with John McRae, Wendy Arnold and others from 1+2 Artist Studios. It will be between 15 - 30 September and will be called 2+1.

Rhoda has previously shown in Paris as well as New York and Los Angeles.

[email protected]

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