Artlink- Volume 10 No.4 Summer 1990-91
A Lyrical Containment
by Simeon Kronenberg
Nicole Page-Smith
Tony Oliver Gallery
Melbourne (Australia 1990)
Found materials are all the go at the moment. At the NGV (National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne) sculpture show for the Triennial they seemed to
dominate much of the work. Yet rarely have they been used more seductively
and sensitively than by a very young artist exhibiting for the first time at Tony
Oliver's Clifton Hill gallery.
Nicole Page-Smith is an artist who displays evidence of a genuine
responsiveness to materials and form. Her modest, poetic sculptures,
although small, assert a confident grace.
As a young artist, Page-Smith cannot afford expensive materials or
sophisticated tools. So she scavenges for bits of wood, pieces of limestone,
feathers, muslin and perspex. These are her materials- what she does with
them is evocative and allusive. At times pointing to an almost spiritual
meditative quality.
She is concerned with openings and entrances, with the hidden and the
revealed. Her mysterious pieces suggest much in their stillness- with an
economy of means.
The sculpture is very simple: a rough wooden box half filled with set plaster
and then tipped on its side, a receptacle of shadows. Or a limestone block
pierced with a vertical gap, with another smaller block resting on top.
Another piece is a wooden square knocked together surrounding (holding)
another 'frame' containing a lingam within. This last piece immediately
but subtly evokes India perhaps or the East certainly. But it does so precisely
avoiding grandiose gesture and with restraint.
There are other wall pieces with doors that open- in one onto a bare wall behind
(we are invited to contemplate nothing). In another the door opens on to another
door or window which in turn opens onto a painted backdrop. There is a sense
of theatre and a kind of muted drama.
One of the strengths of these sculptures is their strange, quiet sense of otherness.
Yet they are mundane in both materials and form.
That the conception transcends the literal so effortlessly is remarkable given the
artists deliberate paring of means. Some of the floor pieces, constructed from
pieces of planking are less successful. They are more derivative and less formally
satisfying, looking sometimes overdone and fussy.
The best of them is a three legged piece with a 'balcony' on which a cube of
wood sits awkwardly. This work is less worked, more intuitive and therefore
more allusive.
For a first solo show this is a fine achievement, being both strong and delicate.
With limited materials and simple forms Page-Smith has managed to craft a
language rich in associations and deeply personal and idiosyncratic at the
same time. This is in fact her achievement- the fashioning of an...
