77conceive... philosophy’smeansofexpressionis closedin
on itself, unable to experiment and dissolve ideas, as the
painter’s ‘making’ does.... Philosophy is deprived of the
adventurous fumbling of the hand, torment and opportunity
at once, that makes the painter always try again and take
ever greater risks.^3
This is a somewhat romantic conception of the painter
but the underlying point is helpful. What he draws
attention to is the sense of embodied expression and
experimentation, where the interaction of the painter
and her action with the media she is using effects, in
duration, opportunities for understanding that unfold
over time and in relation to human and material
presence; this against the reduction of practice to
any pre-determinative intent, final outcome or to the
psychology of the practitioner. Thus, painting is a
mutable, ongoing event rather than a sign or index of
anything preceding and independent of the making of
the painting.
The aphorism in Mandarin, bu ji bu li, which
Jullien translates as ‘not keeping myself in check,
not letting myself go’,^4 is apposite. It allows for the
clarity of intent but does not lock Millar into a practice
that either realises programmatically that which is
preconceived nor abandons itself to unmediated
unconsciousness. What it suggests is a unique human
capacity to hold these conditions of check and
release in balance with one another, a balance that
folds back into presence and absence, material and
spirit, thought and feeling as mutual and interrelated
creative and existential capacities.
Wäspe’s particular contribution to an
understanding of Millar’s practice is his focus on
its subtractive aspect. Indeed, it is a key feature that
distinguishes her work from normative abstractionist
modes. Instead of an accumulation of marks lain
down on the canvas Millar complicates matters
in what might at first seem an application then
withdrawal of the painterly gesture. The clearing
actions and the resulting marks are not so much
erasure or repudiation of the painted gestures as
they are an investigation or opening out of gesture’s
potentiality. The durational proximity of these acts
(akin to call and response and presaging response
again and again) indicates the searching nature of
her practice. The paintings are not ‘about’ gesture or
‘about’ material, location or history; rather, they tussle
with the implications of these and other concerns in
the specific and active context of making a painting.
Moreover the paintings’ vitalist energy means one can
enter wholly into this context, moving between the
seen and the unseen, the physical and the immaterial
experiences they engender. The subtractive operates
as the pointer to that complex mode of encounter;
more than wayfinding, it necessitates a continuous
renegotiation of painting by artist and audience alike.
The majority of the works shown in St Gallen
were post-millennial, which coincides, more or less,
with her concerted efforts to develop her practice
across locations antipodean to each other (Auckland
and Berlin). In chronology, this enables a tracing of
this phase of her practice from the early subtractive
gestural works of 2002 (Rose, Big Pink Shimmering
One, The Big O and Don’t Call Me Baby, Baby). It is
interesting to recognise their compositional fullness,
where the gestures mostly turn back from the edges
of the support (canvas or aluminium), reinforcing
a complex layering of gesture wet on wet. Gaps or
absences in the compositions are, perhaps, not part of
the principal focus and seem to arise from little spaces
in the rich, warm underpainting.
This apprehension is blown apart in the very
large (2400 x 6500 mm.) Untitled of 2005, first shown
at the Auckland Art Gallery that year. In work of
this period Millar’s practice began to respond to an
escalated challenge of pictorial space. The resulting
expansion in the porousness of composition renders
it more explosive, more surprising and demanding in
its relationship to the painting as object. It escalates
discomfort and demand both in how one engages
with the work but also in how it relates to painting’s
history. At each moment it radically refuses stability or
stasis and seems as much a painting concerned with(opposite) Judy Millar’s The Future and the Past Perfect at
Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland, March 2019, showing
Untitled (2005)
(right) Judy Millar’s The Future and the Past Perfect at Kunstmuseum
St Gallen, Switzerland, March 2019, showing Split Ferryman (green/
red) (2012)