The rapturous and the ephemeral
Posted: 30 Jan 2012 | By: Trent Walter
To describe David Harley as a painter is accurate, though it tells only part of a more complex story. Graduating from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in the mid-1980s, Harley spent ten years painting on canvas before he discovered the possibilities of digital technology. His work since has combined painting with installation, animation and print media.
Harley refers to the early years of his career as his “incubator”. Working at a time when new figuration and appropriation were in vogue, he developed his non–representational practice in a hermetic manner that allowed him to create a personal language in abstracted terms that drew from an equal engagement with modernism and listening to eighteenth- to twentieth-century classical music.
Harley’s digital palette evolved after an invitation to work at the Camberwell College of Art, London, in 1997. Of the potential he saw in working with computer software, he points out that the computer “actually freed up the automatic way I’d been working”. There were other benefits too. Scale was “released” from the physical constraints of picture making and he was now able to work in a space “behind the canvas”. The development of his animations was a natural extension of his digital picture making and became “about playing with the development [of the digital paintings]”.
On the importance of music to his work, Harley explains: “It’s a stimulus. Sometimes there are some forms in there that will aid the development of the work, but the work may not literally relate [to the music].” While more a result of process than outcome, the visual parallels to music in Harley’s works are palpable. Fill… (2004), is a wall work of soft–edged forms, geometry and hard lines operating across multiple picture planes in an architecturally specific installation. Engaging with the work, one is able to construct movement and duration in which improvised mark making evokes a mood unique to each viewer. In music terminology, moments of pianissimo and forte, of staccato and legato appear in Harley’s image.
However, Harley is keenly aware of the pitfalls related to the genre of ‘visual music’. While works in his oeuvre could be categorised as such, Harley is firm in pointing out what he aims to extract from music: “I want an idea not a dominant feature.” He continues: “I’m probably more looking for an equivalence of mood and a psychological relationship.” On consideration he remarks that “There’s got to be a kind of personal intimacy in some ways within the work.”
Similarly, Harley’s method of overlapping large sheets of printed paper in his wall works reveals their seams, or materiality, suggesting to the viewer the illusory nature of his imagery. And of process, he comments that “A work, when I am making it, will suggest a development.” His problems, then, are shared with painters rather than those attempting to notate, or make a record of, visual equivalents of aural experience. For Harley, “The formal aesthetics of art comes to bear.” His frequent use of the corner as a framing device, or viewpoint, further serves to immerse the viewer and Harley’s vivid colouration serves to add to the sensation. Working in the corner also invites intimacy and the reaction of the body, as well as the eyes, to his work.
In conversation, Harley flits between multiple ideas and approaches to his practice. It demonstrates a broad research that has seen him spend considerable time in Europe, where he has exhibited regularly. His research has also included rewarding collaborations with the Melbourne-based composer Andrew Blackburn and Cologne-based artist Michael Jaeger.
While reticent to name immediate influences when asked directly (“they are always changing”), many names bubble to the surface during our conversation. Among them are Wassily Kandinsky, Pierre Bonnard, Joseph Haydn, György Kurtág, Katharina Grosse, Oscar Fischinger, Len Crawford and Gilles Deleuze. With his Southbank studio overloaded with paintings stacked several deep, plans and prints pinned to the walls, one senses that Harley is not only prolific, but that he is constantly exploring. With his multifarious techniques and interests, it demonstrates an artist who is always in a sense ‘becoming’. In his practice, Harley still has many avenues to explore: “I’d love to work with opera and do projections,” he enthuses. “There are so many unrealised projects that I would like to do.”
Speaking of his exhibition at Charles Nodrum Gallery, in Melbourne, Harley exclaims, “Part of the title I chose for my recent show was June 12th, 13th and 14th Listening to Haydn, I should have left the reference to Haydn out of the title.” It echoes his repeated sentiment that the work is its own entity, and that music, while central to his practice, is a means rather than an end in itself. As he reflected early in our meeting, “Painting, for me, is the essential thing.”
David Harley is represented by Charles Nodrum Gallery Melbourne and Felicitas Reusch in Wiesbaden.
Images from top:
Michael Jäger and David Harley (collaboration), Energetic Frieda, 2009, paint on walls, Project Space RMIT University Melbourne. Courtesy of the artist and Charles Nodrum Gallery. Photograph David Harley.
David Harley, Haywire, 2001, inkjet print on paper, edition of 2, 2 x 2m. Collection National Gallery of Victoria. Courtesy the artist and Charles Nodrum Gallery.
David Harley, Corner and 9 Minutes Painting, 2008, background: spray paint and wall, foreground: moving picture animation, dimensions variable, installation at Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden. Courtesy of the artist and Charles Nodrum Gallery. Photograph Wolfgang Günzel.
David Harley, eu, 2008, inkjet on paper, dimensions variable, installation Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden. Courtesy the artist and Charles Nodrum Gallery. Photograph Wolfgang Günzel.
David Harley, Fill ..., 2004, inkjet print on paper, installation at Victorian College of Arts Gallery Melbourne. Courtesy the artist and Charles Nodrum Gallery. Photograph John Brash.
