Paul Trinidad
FALVA - University of Western Australia

spectaré

|Press Release|

Specere (+ to look) spéô

In this exhibition Trinidad, brings together a number of different philosophical and visual preoccupations to depict psychological landscapes of personal memories and myths. In this work he attempts to reconcile visually his young, restless years as an inhabitant of the bush with his more reflective professional and academic life in the city.

The works metaphorically transport him back to his prospecting and mining roots. Here the main aim of the working day was to get inside the earth and through prospecting and mining processes, realize the geology, and enable the earth to relinquish its bounty from within.

With the printed works, the pick and shovel are gone as tools of the trade; Instead specialized precision tools are used to scrape and gouge at blocks of wood and linoleum. These tools are used to ‘mine’ material from the surface and reveal the images as the process of ‘prospecting,’ here as reduction, sampling and proofing of prints, continues until the final image is revealed.

The exhibition comprises three series of printed works, several dirt paintings, and objects that represent personal reconciliations of place, memory, time and sometimes uncomfortable, dreams. There are several works that touch on the almost mythical story of the murderers Treffene and Coulter.

Prospector:
One who looks out. A person who prospects for valuable ores, oil etc
(Pro- forward) (Specere - to look) (Latin)specto/spectare - to look and expecto/are - to look for Also: prospicio/prospicare - to look into the distance.

|Words|

Paul Trinidad: Prospecto

Since Tristan Tsara declared meaning defunct in Art, one of the tasks that art makers of the twentieth century seem to have taken upon themselves wittingly – as in the case of Breton and Aragon creating the context for the surrealist endeavors – or unwittingly as Duchamp in the Bachelor series – has been to rediscover or re-invent meaningful content in Art. The nature of that content in the twentieth century was extended by Freud and Jung by introducing the legitimacy of the unconscious as fundamental truth, later enhanced and extended by Wittgenstein and the modern French ‘neo philosophes’ to include the abstract as fundamental truth. In hindsight it is not difficult to see the once almost banned substance of content lurch onward through the century accruing more fluff and moss with each decade as the project of modern art swung into post-modern agenda based contusions to arrive at a state now in the 21st century where art form and content resembles nothing less than a kind of shape shifting benevolent Hydra.

Fundamentals of meaning and content have always been close to the starting point of art making and Trinidads’ ‘series of series’ in this exhibition are no exception. While for the author the content may be necessarily based in personal experience, for the viewer the content is at once more specific and more abstract, drawing meaning from the content of the image, its evident fabrication and the implied yet obscure narrative of the consecutive images. ‘Darlot’ tells a tale, but what tale and when and why? The tale is in the picture: the horizon, the fence, the strata of colour and the stuccato forms sitting on the paper but still part of the lino block from which they have been prospected. Trinidad is a master printmaker and the skill of the printmaker as craftsman is redolent in these pictures, not just as proficiency but as content, as it is in a beautiful stone wall or a Ducatti motorcycle engine. It is Hegelian in nature, Wittgenstinnian in its precision.

A borne/bourne is a mark of precision in the landscape. Coming to us from the French language without change of form or meaning, it is an ancient term referring to stones set as markers of property boundaries and distance markers; stones that have marked territory for hundreds of years. An ‘Isolate Bourne’ is the far distant marker, the last one out from somewhere known; this series of pictures maps from a distance rather than hurries along the road like ‘Darlot’. They are as calm as a third party observer of a country pic-nic and each is apparently complete in itself - more a collection than a series like the ‘Transient’ group, paintings literally and viscerally of and from the earth of this landscape; isolate indeed. Trinidad’s own ‘Exquisite Corpse’, the Lake Ballard series, admits the presence of another sentient being into this landscape that ‘you cannot own, only perhaps experience’ in the form of the poet who tells her tale. Trinidad brings each line to bear on the landscape to extract a series of pictures that are at once urban and remote, lush and harsh; there is no chance here. Meaning is sharp as a pick head. People appear again in the latest ‘Pitman and Walsh’ series as the vehicle for telling campfire tales of goldfields history while the landscape becomes more abstract, more distant, less precise and perhaps more surreal and thus more sensual. Modern imagery, modern pictures, nascent benevolent hydra.

Patrick Beale May 2007

See:

Pitman and Walsh

Gold Stealers

Transcript

|Catalogues|

to download pdf version of the catalogues click on the links below

Catalogue - Essay

Catalogue - Ballard

|Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame Gallery|

Eastern view of exhibition space with Body of Evidence series and Darlot series on Back Wall

Body of Evidence - (450 x 450 mm acrylic on baord, oregon drawers) series base upon the brutal slaying of inspectoers Pitman and Walsh by 'pebblers' (gold theifs) Treffene andCoulter in Kalgoorlie, 1926.		Southern wall with Isolate series of drypoint etchings and 'Dirt Paintings' (600 x 600 mm, on board with steel frames, home made oil paint/pigment gathered in the Menzies district).
Gallery View looking North West with Isolate, Dirt Paintings and objects on Plynth.		Looking West with video installation in SW corner
Looking SW over Dirt Object and Ballard Block installation.		NE corner of exhibition space with Darlot series on the walls..
Body of Evidence series on Northern Wall.		...................................Body of Evidence Painting (from series of 20)
Body of Evidence Painting (from series of 20)		...................................Body of Evidence Painting (from series of 20)
Video Installation (experimental film 2003) 4 Minutes		.....................................Body of Evidence Painting (from series of 20)
Dirt Objects, Ballard Blocks installation		.....................................Dirt Painting

List of works

Ballard: 20 framed lino-cut prints - $3000

Darlot: 20 framed lino-cut prints - $4000

Isolate Bourne: 20 framed dry-point engravings - $4000

Pitman and Walsh series: ‘Body of Evidence’ – acrylic on board, Oregon drawer, - $1000 each

Dirt Paintings: Oil, pigment ground earth from Menzies, on board with steel frame - $1800 each

Dirt Objects: Wood, pigment, ground earth - $300 each

Ballard Blocks: MDF, lino, stainless steel - $400 each

|Video|

click here to download 4 Minutes 2003 video shot en route to Lake Ballard (8 mins - 27 meg Windows movie file)

|Mum Tah-Bun Conditions|

Please Visit MumTah-Bun Condions - still negotiating while you are here (Previous exhibition in Cullity Gallery Sept 2006)

Video Dowlnoad: Crates Performance - Trinidad & Hunnewell ( 2006-7. 9 meg file)