2°: Euan Macleod & Rodney Pople

Born of a friendship that spans several decades, the exhibition 2° at Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) is very much about a shared type of observation, and the rapport between Euan Macleod and Rodney Pople.

Having always drawn on his travels, Macleod naturally gravitated to the Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo on return from a Broken Hill road trip when considering a collaborative project with Rodney Pople: “It was lovely because you have to think about things that are moving and I thought, what a lovely thing to do together, to do a project [with Pople] where you’re bouncing off each other,” says Macleod.

Initiating discussions with WPCC Curator Kent Buchanan, there was an immediate simpatico between Macleod’s proposal and the Centre’s remit for animals as subject matter: “The work asks us to ponder our place in the world, the structures that keep us there, and how the impact of our growth has pushed species to extinction. We may well question how many degrees separate us from our own,” says Buchanan.

For Pople, the ease of working with Macleod was natural: “We’ve done work before, where we have created a suite of works for Hong Kong. We work well together: we don’t really compete,” says Pople. Indeed, both artists work in quite different ways with separate methods and outcomes, yet each took the same position of perspective. “Working in a zoo together, we both felt that we could look from the animal’s point of view and try to get that across,” says Pople. 

The residency itself facilitated a series of live sketches of the animals, including the human animals looking into the cages. Using pastel on paper, Macleod’s sketches play the natural symmetry of animal markings against the rigid formality of cages, while observing the animal’s as majestic. Conversely, Pople, using watercolour, pencil, and ink on paper, locates the figure in the landscape and the insouciance of monkeys at play. These works form the arrival part of the exhibition, and their immediacy is both apparent and appropriate to the undercurrent of urgency imbued in the work. 

That said, the real task of creating a suite of paintings began on return to the artists’ separate studios. Continuing to take their regular walks together, Macleod and Pople spent the following year bouncing ideas and pushing each other: “We kept raising the bar, which you can do if you like each other’s work. And it was fun,” says Pople, adding that “Euan did this big crowd one and I ended up thinking I’ll try and do one better.” The resulting works, shown side by side, could not be more different in terms of aesthetic delivery. Pople’s emerald-eyed tiger is surrounded by distorted pastel faces, and is countered by Macleod’s brooding palette explored as faces and the secreted skulls as they press against the cage. Yet, they each show the human as more “animally” base than the animals they are gloating over. 

The Café, 2021, by Pople is the most overt example of this observation. Here, the café patrons are using their hands to gorge on raw steak and cream cake, while lions holding cutlery look on is seeming horror, or – as the lion’s eyes are on the eaters – hunger! Monkeys swing from the ceiling fan inside the café and trees outside, both observed and observing. As is typical of Pople’s humour, it is the cream cake that is exploding cream blobs across the scene Tarantino-fashion, rather than the gore of meat. 

Macleod’s Rhino Study, 2021, has a profound sadness that makes animals as entertainment hard to reconcile. Here, the shadow lines of the cage are patterned across the animal, giving the appearance of a net capturing the original pre-zoo animal. Yet, there is no sentimentality to the observation and the rhino is otherwise calmly grazing.

This is in fact an exhibition of exceedingly high calibre, and nothing less than expected of these fine artists.

Gillian Serisier has been writing about art and architecture for the past twenty years. She is currently Editor At Large for Indesign and Habitus. She lives and works on Wiradjuri land.

EXHIBITION 
2°: Euan Macleod & Rodney Pople
1 October 2022 – 2 February 2023
Western Plains Cultural Centre, New South Wales