Jo Darbyshire - Floating World

The ethereal paintings of Jo Darbyshire aim to evoke the seduction and apprehension experienced when swimming, through water, or indeed, traversing one’s dreams. Her paintings suggest fluid worlds, exquisite realms that hover on the edge of familiar and safe, threatening and the unknown. The folding and collapsing of space, the use of the ornate and obscure and the desire for illumination, beauty and mystery are perhaps most closely attuned to transgressive neo-baroque influences.

Darbyshire’s paintings have been described as “landscapes without boundaries” in which the viewer’s sense of field and orientation is blurred; are you looking down through the water from above, or submerged and looking up, surrounded by it? There is a sense of discovery of unfamiliar textures and shapes that exist in a mysterious watery world.

Artist Statement

“The Floating World paintings are inspired by ideas of sensuality, immersion and imagination. Although abstract in nature, my paintings reference bodily experience, particularly the experience of ‘floating over’ an underwater landscape.

They were initially inspired by experiences of snorkeling in the Leeuwin Current, which washes down the coast of Western Australia, all the way from Ningaloo Reef to Rottnest Island. This warm current allows tropical corals and other marine life to flourish in what would otherwise be the cold Indian Ocean.

In some ways the intensity of immersion in this world, or of moving and floating over any landscape, with feelings of both apprehension and pleasure, reminds one of ideas of ‘surrender’, of giving in to a movement that transports you, a bodily ‘letting go’.

My painting also explores the possibilities inherent in the act of painting, and paint itself. My aim is to paint images in which, through juxtaposing texture and colour, I create ‘worlds’ that encompass both illumination/surface and darkness/depth.

In this body of work I also consider and reference Japanese printmaker Hokusai and the idea of ‘the Floating World’ or Ukiyo, which described the urban and pleasure-seeking life style of the red-light district of Edo (modern Tokyo), Japan. Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was a master of Ukiyo-e – Japanese woodblock prints of ‘the floating world’ and Shunga, erotic prints. His sophisticated world of urban pleasures was also animated by a love of nature, particularly the sea.

The first paintings in the Floating World series were exhibited in 2009 at Johnston Gallery, Perth and Summit Gallery, Calgary, Canada. This exhibition incorporates some of this earlier work and new work. ”

Biography
Jo Darbyshire is a mid-career Western Australian painter whose work is represented in significant Australian art collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Murdoch University, Bank West, Royal Perth Hospital, Department of Culture and the Arts, Edith Cowan University and the Cities of Stirling and Wanneroo. Her work has also been selected for inclusion in many curated and award group exhibitions, notably the Joondalup Art Award (2004 and 2005) and the Bank West Contemporary Art Prize where she won the open prize in 2005.

Darbyshire has been the recipient of research grants awarded from the Western Australian Ministry or Culture and the Arts and the Australia Council. In 2007, she was juried into the international thematic residency Imaginary Places, at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Darbyshire received both her Bachelor of Fine Arts and her Master of Creative Arts from the Curtin University of Technology