Julia Roche

OTOMYS, MELBOURNE

Stars Run Rampant by the Billions
25 November - 12 December 2021

Artworks glisten under the moon light. Ethereal, they capture a fleeting moment. Active drips generated by bugs that crawl through the paint, dragging the liquid with them creating subtle line motifs. While mist and raindrops settle on the surface, adding their own artistic expression and tension as the water meets the oils.

Julia Roche’s artworks collaborate with the environment, where she lives and works, on her farm near Wagga Wagga. Growing up in the country, Roche moved to Bondi before the space and openness called her back after having her three children.

Now based on Wiradjuri Country near Wagga Wagga, artistically, the last four years have unfolded as a time for experimentation and focus on process. Immersed in the seasons, working in her 1910 woolshed studio, Roche can’t help but be impacted by the gaps in the corrugated iron where drafts are felt and weather is seen. This lived experience has pushed Roche’s practice—allowing it to morph intuitively. Letting the artworks be. Her works are all her experiences, her connection to place, and emotions combined into a painting.

Of equal importance is the process to the final outcome. Leaving the intrigue. Roche describes it as a little bit of awkwardness, a little bit of ugliness, some uncomfortable palette. “Because that’s a part of what we live in, and it’s a part of nature, not everything is pretty,” she shares. “It’s finding that balance between something aesthetically pleasing, but then something intriguing and something that feels real and authentic.”

Working intuitively is a skill Roche practiced in her Bachelor of Visual Arts at the University of Sydney’s College of the Arts. Here, she challenged a conceptual framework, pushing the aesthetics and symbolism onto a deeper level than the palette or the technical composition instead focusing on the elements of intrigue.

Moving out to the country allowed for a deeper exploration into oils, but Roche has also been working with charcoal, shaving it directly onto the canvas or adding intrinsic mark-making in oil sticks. The artworks consist of 20 to 30 layers, starting with blankets of pink, violet or yellow. The final result is gritty and textured—hints of colour glimmering through as Roche scrapes, blends and pushes the paint into its final resting place.

Roche’s process of leaving the works vulnerable to the natural world, letting materials resist or unite, not only allows, but invites that tension to be seen and felt in the painting. Here, Roche challenges the viewers notion of beauty and prompts our perceptions to evolve.

Exhibition Essay, Emma-Kate Wilson