Midnight Maps
Rebecca Munce
19 March –
15 May 2022
About
The exhibition Midnight Maps offers a glimpse into Rebecca Munce's whimsical and colourful world through two recent series of works: reductive oil drawings on paper and two-dimensional and sculptural ceramics.
The ceramic pieces are from a brand new body of work created at the Rozynski Art Centre in the winter of 2022. As part of a research and creation residency, Munce brings her practice to a two-dimensional ceramic surface with an ornate frame intrinsic to the work. In this new exploration of sculpture and drawing, she considers the narrative quality of framing as well as the alchemy and lack of predictability inherent to the medium. Thus, Rebecca Munce's ongoing fascination with enclosed demarcated fantastical spaces is explored in a new way, considering the ceramic frame barriers around a drawn inner world.
In her multidisciplinary practice, Munce explores the intersection of fantasy and the everyday psyche. Through her practice Rebecca Munce brings together the hyperbole of mythological form with allegorical experiences by borrowing symbols from iconography. Her drawings and sculptures are inspired by medieval mnemonic imagery, video and board games and her creative writing practice. The artist creates fantastical characters, both supernatural and human, drawn in vivid colours, giving the viewer a glimpse of her characters fixed in an intriguing atmosphere.
Narrative is very important in her practice as it serves as a key to reading. Munce revisits the stories in her body of work over and over again until the singular meaning of the representation is almost lost. These characters, repeated for years at a time, are confronted with both Sisyphean and euphoric scenarios. Through this approach, Rebecca Munce explores what it means to construct and share an inner world using archetypes, patterns, repetitive figuration and symbology as her tools towards its evolving construction. In addition, bright colours and patterns are used to structure the space and composition of her drawings. For the artist, the abundance of colours allows the mislead the narrative and to disrupt the language of the line.
