Fiona McMonagle

Classy

Fiona McMonagle

Classy

Family portrait No.2 2017 oil on linen

7

< Bird lady 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

> Sangeeta 2016 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

8 9

The girl next door Joanna Bosse Curator, Bayside Gallery

Fiona McMonagle’s portraits often portray solitary figures who project a fierce fragility. She works predominantly in watercolour, and deliberately exploits the fugitive and translucent qualities of the medium to reveal the hidden vulnerability of her characters. Often steeped in a gritty realism or an uncanny melancholy, her works have an archetypal quality not anchored in time or place. Their observational basis – sometimes personal and sometimes not – reflects the deep humanity present in her practice.

McMonagle’s works speak to the complexities of the self (both how we portray ourselves to others and how we understand ourselves) in a society that is increasingly disingenuous. Her subject matter ranges from disenfranchised youth and celebrity culture to her own memories of family and friends. This exhibition brings together works across the full spectrum of her practice in order to showcase the origins, explorations and developments of her distinctive watercolour paintings and animations, and more recent oil paintings.

The title Classy stems from an idea that circulates around McMonagle’s works without ever being an overt or intentional theme. Her work touches on notions of class within Australian society and the behaviours and markers of an individual within this system. The term evokes notions of projected status and the subtle and not so subtle languages of self-expression that can both shield and reveal our true selves. The title also conveys a sense of ironic humour, for none of McMonagle’s subjects are chic or cultured but instead convey a somewhat hardened,

world-weary demeanour. Female subjects feature strongly in her practice and this exhibition focuses predominately on her portraits of women. One section includes a dense display of her portraits of girls – an approach designed to wrap the viewer in her work’s odd mix of feminine softness and brutality.

McMonagle’s family migrated to Australia from Ireland just after she was born and settled in the outer western fringe of suburban Melbourne, a typically working class area. Actively drawing and painting throughout her childhood, from the age of 14 she was set on going to art school and after graduating high school attended RMIT (1996-97) then the Victorian College of the Arts. Graduating from VCA in 2000, the National Gallery of Victoria purchased six of her works two years later. She quickly become well-known for her gritty and sometimes bleak watercolours that depict people and places from her suburban ‘westie’ youth. These works record the machinations of teenagers who possess the devil-may-care attitude born from idle hours and reckless behaviour. The work I’m his because he deserves the finest (2009) shows a young woman sporting a 1970s style t-shirt with the same slogan, candidly meeting the viewers gaze in a moment of impassive confidence. Smear and Therese (both 2008) are portraits of young women who wear a veneer of self-confidence like make-up. Their boredom is palpable. But so is their vulnerability; their façade of indifference embodies the extreme self-consciousness of youth.

McMonagle depicts her peers with neither judgement nor sentimentality, and in doing so manages to capture a more universal image of youth dynamics – the doubt, the bravado, the pretence – the near impossible quest to claim an identity in a teenage world of confusion.

McMonagle’s figuration is undoubtedly rooted in observation; however, around 2012 her practice shifted into more imaginative territory, when her confidence with the watercolour medium enabled more ambitious and complex works. The tentative and fugitive quality of early works (like The girls [2008], whose facial features are a mere echo of presence), shifts and her works become more confronting and otherworldly; pigment darkens, stains and drips articulate body parts and facial features. The contrast between the ‘softness’ of the medium and the slightly off-kilter nature of her subject matter increases. She tackles full length figures, at almost life size proportions and relishes her ability to exploit watercolour’s tendency for ‘accidental’ effects.

Some of the toughness dissipates and humour slips in, as we see in the two works included here, Footy head and Balancing act (both 2013), which depict the artist’s body and her disjointed head. Her wit, however, has a dark edge to it. Sisterly love (2013) can only be described as creepy and unsettling, the normally sweet gesture of hand-holding between siblings becomes sinister as the children’s eyes are darkened and their features swollen and bruised with the blush of pigment. They have become classic horror film characters – their unassuming pigeon-toed stance designed to disarm before they make their premeditated strike.

Twisted sister (2013) carries a similarly disturbing air. At first glance the figure’s entwined gnarly legs look deformed, snakelike in their sinuousness. The extreme dynamism of the large sweeping brushstrokes is off-set by the placid composure of her torso and the sadness of her expression; it’s like she is slipping off the page. As much as is possible, given the static (dry) end product, McMonagle tries to retain the fluidity of watercolour (and it is this quality that she so successfully translates into oil paint most recently). As we see in Twisted sister, she allows the pigment to pool, blush and bleed, which endows a certain alchemical mystery that is a hallmark of her work.

I started to think about the constant movement of watercolour, but once it dries, it is still. I wanted to keep that fluidity going and I think watercolour lends itself to animation really well because of that movement in the medium. The pictures ended up bleeding into each other and I liked that.

Considering the labour involved, the idea of creating a hand-painted animation is arguably a foolhardy pursuit. McMonagle has produced three extraordinary animated films since 2014. Her first, The ring (2014), comprises close to 800 original watercolours made from footage McMonagle shot in and out of the boxing ring at her local gym. The work is a materially complex and multilayered treatise on the sport of female boxing.

Produced with the expertise of one of her brothers, Declan (a creative technical producer), these works are an ambitious undertaking that requires commitment and a highly disciplined approach to producing hundreds of stills. For the animation, One hundred days at 7pm (2015), McMonagle painted a portrait of herself each evening. Without looking at the previous day’s portrait, McMonagle created a series of unguarded self-portraits, ‘some good, some not so good’, which she combined into a 16-second video loop. The work both records the artist’s changing visage and self-consciously documents the process of making.

The process itself turned out to be an intrinsic part of the work. The ritual of painting one’s self-portrait at the same time every day was an exercise in self-discipline and a test of my painting skills.

The finished work is a moving, blinking self-portrait which has a flickering effect reminiscent of early film-making. It’s a poetic and mesmeric work which was awarded the 2015 University of Queensland’s National Self-Portrait Prize.

A special feature of Classy is the major animated film, The park at the end of my road (2016). A commission for the 2016 Adelaide Biennial, it has also been recognised on the awards circuit, achieving highly commended at the inaugural Splash: McClelland Contemporary Watercolour Award in 2018. Made from close to 1,000 unique paintings, this richly textured and dreamlike work reflects on the history and role of parks within a suburban context, and is a further departure from the more literal basis of the artist’s practice. The opening sequence depicts pigeons at close range, their bodies flicker as they pick at the ground, the soundtrack provided by their incessant cooing. As the work progresses several characters (listless cats, a horse, a prowling dog and human figures) appear and disappear like spectral apparitions. The parkland resembles a late nineteenth-century Symbolist landscape such as those by Australian artists Blamire Young and Sydney Long (a nod to the influence of Symbolism in McMonagle’s work). Banjo music – a characteristically Irish predilection – is played by an odd striped figure who emerges and disappears as do a group of folk dancers (or are they members of a cult?) whose circular dance has a ritualised air. With its driving banjo music and curious characters, it is an uncanny and hypnotic work. Its ambiguity more than hints at a mysterious afterlife or a much longed for escape from the everyday.

The everyday, in the form of old family and found photographs, was the basis for McMonagle’s 2017 series of oil paintings – her first use of the medium since early experiments in art school. She approached the task of painting in oils with her characteristic single-minded vigour, willing to work hard to achieve the fluid immediacy so evident in her watercolours.

Six works from the resulting series are included in Classy, and they range in subject matter from family groups posed in front of the mantelpiece or the front garden of a new house, to a young girl (McMonagle’s sister, Jacinta) at her first Holy Communion and another not so young but scantily clad girl posing for the camera. This latter work, Princess (2017), is based on a found image that evoked for McMonagle the caravan park holidays of her childhood.

10 11

The work contains all the bravado and misdirected confidence of McMonagle’s early portraits of suburban youth but here her subject possesses a deeper attitude of acceptance and pride. Princess’s self-assured demeanour indicates the genuine affection McMonagle has for her subjects.

Aside from Princess, this body of work is tinged with a candy-coloured nostalgia that is much less gritty and melancholic than previous works. The grit, however, has very much resurfaced in her most recent works, which return to the figure of the single female archetype. A series of large scale watercolour paintings from 2019 depict Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Yoko Ono, the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, who McMonagle describes as ‘unlikely feminist icons’. McMonagle wanted to create a series of portraits of women in popular culture whose lives had been both celebrated and derided through the media, and who had suffered due to their role in the public eye. She was interested in the messages these figures embody for those generations of young girls who idolise them. The one work from this series included here, Wannabes (2019), depicts an iconic image of the Spice Girls in their classic ‘girl power’ stance. As American feminist writer Kathy Acker noted in her now famous 1997 interview with the Spice Girls, ‘(t)hey both are, and represent, a voice that has too long been repressed. The voices of young women and, just as important, of women not from the educated classes’. The work itself is intricate and penetrating, and captures the contradictions of the Spice Girls’ fierce and sexy feminism while retaining the uncanny nostalgia so typical of her work.

The incongruity present in McMonagle’s images – they are both visceral and tender, at turns seductive and confronting – is reflective of the complexities of the self and its constant state of transition. The six new oil paintings she has made for this exhibition comprise young women of the internet generation, engaging with the various veneers of representation and transformations of self that are so typical in our image-based society. The fugitive, painterly quality of these images captures the intangible nature of the self and the often fleeting sense of our own being: How I want to be seen. How I need to be seen. How I am. How I feel.

McMonagle’s work could be interpreted as a contemporary version of social realism, following the likes of John Brack or Noel Counihan, whose work illuminated Australian suburban life and commented on the socio-political realities of the Australian working class. However, unlike them, she isn’t engaged in any proactive championing of her subjects and their lives. Rather, her work is based on her keen interest in observation and the internal and external influences that drive individuals. The storytelling present in her work alongside its veiled autobiographical and localised references, recall the work of 1970s feminist photographer Carol Jerrems, whose low-key and intimate portraits became emblematic of seventies counter culture in Australia. Jerrems’ approach was a combination of sociology and subjectivity, without sentiment or judgment, and it’s this similar embodiment we see in McMonagle’s work.

While McMonagle’s roots in western Melbourne are well documented in her work, what is little known is that she spent her first years out of home living in East Brighton, a few kilometers across the Nepean Highway from Bayside Gallery. She moved out of the family home and into the house of her great aunt, and spent the formative years of her early 20s commuting to the Victorian College of the Arts on the 64 tram. With its gracious gardens and well-heeled residents, Brighton is seemingly a world away from the lifestyles of her protagonists. But are her people so foreign here? The issues she tackles, whilst finding form in the memories and particulars of her history, do have a universal relevance, and the figures that feature in her most recent works are familiar to anyone even remotely engaged with today’s youth. The image-obsessed girls depicted in Apparently I’m an apple, Lookin’ good and Selfie (all 2020) belong to all postcodes. They are quintessentially of the now; daughters of the internet, equally exposing and exposed.

Sisterly love 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

13 12

Therese 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

<

> Balancing act 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

14 15

The girl with the flower in her hair 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

The girls 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

16 17

Princess 2017 oil on linen

Daisy Queen 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

18 19

< Smear 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

> Cat girl 2015 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

21

Biography

Fiona McMonagle was born in Letterkenny, Ireland, in 1977. The same year her family immigrated to Australia and settled in Melbourne, where she continues to live.

In 1996-97, McMonagle undertook an Associate Diploma of Visual Arts from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting, from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, in 2000.

Awards and residencies

2018 Splash McClelland Contemporary Watercolour Award (highly commended)

2015 National Self-Portrait Prize, University of Queensland

2014 Basil Sellers Art Prize 4 (People’s Choice Award)

2010 Australia Council for the Arts, London Studio Residency

Solo exhibitions

2019 Hugo Michell Gallery, Sydney Contemporary

2018 The weekend, Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

2017 A dog named Chop, Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

2017 Small town, Heiser Gallery, Brisbane

2016 Do I look like I care, LaTrobe University Museum of Art (LUMA), Melbourne

2013 Park life, Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney

2011 Undertow, Heiser Gallery, Brisbane

The ball, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney

2009 Everybody wants to rule my world, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney

2008 Days in the sun, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney

2007 The game, Crossley & Scott Contemporary, Melbourne

2005 Crew, Crossley & Scott Contemporary, Melbourne

2004 Elevated and renovated, Kaliman Gallery, Sydney

2003 Recent works, Crossley & Scott Contemporary, Melbourne

Recent works, Kaliman Gallery, Sydney

2001 Untitled, Spare Room, Project Space, RMIT, Melbourne

Selected group exhibitions

2018 Archibald Prize, Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney

So fine: contemporary women artists make Australian history, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Splash McClelland Contemporary Watercolour Award, McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Victoria

2017 Let’s play: the art of our time, Bunjil Place, Melbourne

Play on: 10 Years of the Basil Sellers Art Prize, touring nationally, NETS Victoria

2016 Basil Sellers Art Prize 5, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne

The popular pet show, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

National Works on Paper Prize, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria

Luminous: 100 years of watercolour, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Adelaide Biennial: Magic object, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

2015 National Self-Portrait Prize, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane

Hazelhurst Art on Paper Prize, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney

Basil Sellers Art Prize 4, Samstag Museum, Adelaide

2014 Basil Sellers Art Prize 4, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne

2013 The sixth, West Space, Melbourne

2012 Self-conscious: Contemporary portraiture, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne

R&M McGivern Prize, Maroondah City Council, Melbourne

National Works on Paper Prize, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria

2006 Winners are grinners, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art

2005 This and other worlds, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Public collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Artbank

Geelong Gallery, Victoria

The M Collection, Melbourne

Maitland Regional Art Gallery, NSW

Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, NSW

UQ Art Museum, Brisbane

22 23

The park at the end of my road 2016 animation

24 25

House on the hill 2017 oil on linen

Hail Mary 2017 oil on linen

26 27

List of works

1 Smear 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 114 x 98 cm Private collection, Sydney

2 The girls 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 125 x 114 cm Courtesy the artist and Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney

3 Therese 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 120 x 100 cm Private collection, Sydney

4 I’m his because he deserves the finest 2009 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 114 x 95 cm Private collection, Byron Bay

5 Balancing act 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 197 x 57 cm Courtesy the artist

6 Bird lady 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 78.5 x 114 cm Private collection, Melbourne

7 Daisy Queen 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 47 x 44 cm Courtesy the artist and Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney

8 Footy head 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 165 x 57 cm Private collection, Melbourne

9 Sisterly love 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 126 x 81 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

10 The girl with the flower in her hair 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 47 x 44 cm Courtesy the artist and Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney

11 Twisted sister 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 127.5 x 64 cm Private collection, Melbourne

12 Holly 2014 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 43 x 31.5 cm Private collection, Melbourne

13 Cat girl 2015 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 112 x 60 cm Private collection, Melbourne

14 Chicken dance 2015 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 115.5 x 95 cm Private collection, Melbourne

15 Columbiformes 2015 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 57 x 70 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

16 One hundred days at 7pm 2015 animation 1:00 min Courtesy the artist

17 Sangeeta 2016 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 178 x 114 cm Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

18 The park at the end of my road 2016 animation 2:46 min Courtesy the artist

19 Circa 1980 2017 oil on linen 97 x 66.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

20 Family portrait No. 2 2017 oil on linen 81.5 x 101.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

21 Hail Mary 2017 oil on linen 82 x 138 cm Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

22 House on the hill 2017 oil on linen 88.5 x 72 cm Private collection, Adelaide

23 Princess 2017 oil on linen 101.5 x 112 cm Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

24 Tess 2017 oil on linen 85 x 78.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

25 Wannabes 2019 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 130 x 115 cm Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

26 Apparently I’m an apple 2020 oil on canvas 122 x 76 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

27 Highlighting 2020 oil on canvas 92 x 70 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

28 Lookin’ good 2020 oil on canvas 126.5 x 76.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

29 Selfie 2020 oil on canvas 114.5 x 66.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

30 The girl in the cat t-shirt 2020 oil on canvas 93.5 x 88.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

31 The morning after 2020 oil on canvas 74.5 x 97.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

Twisted sister 2013 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

28 29

< Apparently I’m an apple 2020 oil on canvas

> The girl in the cat t-shirt 2020 oil on canvas

30 31

Selfie 2020 oil on canvas

Lookin’ good 2020 oil on canvas

32 33

Fiona McMonagle: Classy 14 March – 10 May 2020 Curator: Joanna Bosse

Published by Bayside City Council on the occasion of the exhibition Fiona McMonagle: Classy, 14 March to 10 May 2020.

Images © 2020, Fiona McMonagle Text © 2020, Bayside City Council

This catalogue is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without prior permission of the publisher.

Design by 5678 Design Printed by Bambra Press

Bayside Gallery Brighton Town Hall Corner Wilson and Carpenter Streets, Brighton, Vic, 3186 T: 03 9261 7111 E: gallery@bayside.vic.gov.au www.bayside.vic.gov.au/gallery

Acknowledgements Fiona McMonagle thanks Tobias Titz (photography) and Declan McMonagle (technical production). Bayside City Council would like to thank all the lenders to the exhibition for their generosity in making the works available, as well as the following people for their assistance: Ally Joseph, Olsen Gallery, Sydney; Claire Eggleston, Librarian, Edmund and Joanna Capon Research Library, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Declan McMonagle; Edwin Nicholls, Sophie Gannon Gallery; Hugo Michell. And a sincere thank you to Fiona McMonagle for her generosity in working so closely with us to stage this exhibition. Fiona McMonagle is represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne; Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide; and Olsen Gallery, Sydney.

Cover Smear (detail) 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

Inside cover I’m his because he deserves the finest 2009 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

Pages 2–3 Therese (detail) 2008 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

Inside back cover Wannabes 2019 watercolour, ink and gouache on paper

36