Joya: AiR / Natalie Pullen / Ireland
"An ant tried to eat my breast"...
"... the Italian explained reasonably, after her sudden jerk had broken the tranquility between the seven artists watching the sun go down. Our installation/sculpture artist from Holland tells us that there is a specific word in Dutch to describe this easy intimacy and cosiness between us, but no direct English translation.
I value these moments, our conversation slipping and winding between our careers and experiences in our separate countries, the walking or writing or drawing or photographing or gathering or clay mixing we had done that day, and laughter and banter.
I left the weight of my practice at home, the heavy, bleeding oils and stiff linen, and instead brought wet watercolours to the dry landscape without expectation. I walked and scrambled up hills and read and wrote, made my intuitive, abstracted watercolours in my quiet studio listening and responding to all that was around me. Then I brought them back out into the landscape, into the rugged natural gallery that is the barranco.
These three weeks have allowed me to get to know my art-making self, free from the binds of my practice and process, and the systems and structures within which I make and exhibit work. The results have been unexpected and satisfying. The thrust of my productivity is padded with warm memories of delicious food and wine, the heat of the sun and expanse of the landscape, the easy companionship between the other artists and our wonderful hosts, and many, many laughs".
Natalie Pullen
Books;
Your Silence Will Not Protect You - Audre Lorde
Book of Mutter - Kate Zambreno
Bluets - Maggie Nelson
I Love Dick - Chris Kraus
Natalie Pullen is a Dublin-based visual artist, since graduating from the National College of Art and Design in 2017 with a BA in Paint and Visual Culture she has maintained an active studio practice, working towards exhibitions, open studios and workshops. Her paintings embody echoes of the unseen forces, resonances and vibrations which pass, subconsciously, between encountering bodies. Conceptually, this in-betweenness means between the seen and the unseen, this and other worlds. Materially and technically it means investigating spaces in-between drawing and painting, abstraction and figuration. The paintings are thought of as an after-image, the viewer encounters a residual map of the artists movements and decisions in making them. Informed by feminism and affect theory, and resonating with elements of the Occult, her work further challenges the binaries between theory and practice.