AGNSW acquires NSW Desert Plants drawing suite by Jennifer Keeler-Milne
The Art Gallery of New South Wales has recently expanded its Australian collection, with a striking work by Jennifer Keeler-Milne.
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A work that has been produced in direct response to the landscape, NSW desert plants drawing suite is x-ray-like in its examination of the intricate plants that construct the arid outback.
In May 2011, Jennifer Keeler-Milne alongside 12 artists travelled to far West NSW as apart of a project with Artist Profile called Not the Way Home. A two-week intensive arts laboratory, artists engaged and responded to the arid landscape. NSW desert plants drawing suite was inspired by the vast desert landscape of Fowlers Gap near Broken Hill.
Anne Ryan, AGNSW curator, Australian Prints, Drawings & Watercolours commented upon Keeler Milne’s close exploration of the landscape, stating, “Each carefully wrought charcoal drawing in the NSW desert plants suite is an intimate encounter with the landscape; turning her back on the vast spaces and magnificent vistas of the desert, the artist turned to close observation of the plants, such as scrubby salt bush, that lay around the property.”
It is Keeler-Milne’s intricate practice that is eye-catching, as Ryan commented, “Stripping her work of all colour, the mesmerising forms emerge from the darkness, white paper glowing through the velvety blackness of the charcoal. Keeler Milne’s work is meditative, considered and dreamlike; presented as a suite of 48 drawings on the wall it has all the force and authority demanded by its desert subject”.
Jennifer Keeler-Milne is a mid career Sydney artist whose prominence has grown over the last 15 years, aided by her inclusion in the Dobell Prize for Drawing Exhibition 9 times. NSW desert plants is the second acquisition by the AGNSW, who purchased Visibility/Invisibility, a charcoal drawing of clouds for the collection in 2000.
Image 1 :Jennifer Keeler-Milne NSW desert plants, 2011 48 drawings, charcoal on paper, each panel 25.6 x 33cm
Courtesy the artist
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