‘Gut Feelings and Guardian Angels’

LORALEE JADE

If you are not already familiar with the work of Loralee Jade, you are about to learn that her work, once viewed will not be forgotten. This exhibition brings together lush visual imagery with language. This language is a quiet undertone which accompanies the works as if whispering its message. 

It is unsurprising that Jade is also a poet. Her words may be in preparation for the artwork or come into being as a result of the art. The need to understand seems unimportant, both leave room for the other and neither overrides its companion. The work looks at the notion of ‘Place’, where we reside, in a thought or an environment. This idea takes with it memories of places we experience and holds on to the awareness that each place we have been leaves a trace. Whether is be a trace of us on that moment or the fragment of the moment we take with us. A smell, a colour a memory, Jade’s thematic interests take her into both ephemeral and physical territory. 

With the belief that any experience may leave us a message or make an imprint on us, viewing this work becomes almost an exercise in energy transfer. Each work flows quickly and infuses with our current reality, moving us beyond to another space, another moment another time and back again. The works are not so personal that we cannot stretch into the space they create. 

It seems Jade has always created art. Throughout a life dominated with tragedy and peppered by events which have leaned into her body but not resulted in pushing her over. The strength she possesses is borne through persistence and the knowledge that for her, art and life must combine. What is lived becomes the work. 

This work doesn’t fidget with irritating brushstrokes and persistent noise. There is a soft but unsubtle vibrational undercurrent to the imagery which invites rather than lectures. The artist’s experience has resulted in these works and therefore there is emotion, but through the process the message is mystical and meaningful. 

There is a message in each work and the secret is to allow it to speak.

Tania Glanville (Bachelor Vis. Art, Diploma of Education, Masters in Contemporary Art.)