MARIANA DEL CASTILLO

COMPRESSION
5 -21 September 2024
Beaver Galleries, Deakin

Photography: Brenton McGeachie

MARIANA DEL CASTILLO
My work seeks to translate the experience of being in the landscape. I hear and feel its rhythms and gestural energy and attempt to visually represent this robust and fragile environment. My art practice is primarily grounded in studio experimentation. I focus on surface textures through mark making, mono-printing, collage, stitching and painting. I am interested in the symbiotic relationship between location and memory. The knot is used as a visual tool to express my anxiety around my participation in humanity’s strain on our natural world.

The Facescapes were inspired by a recent visit to Yorta Yorta country (Winton Wetlands). I was deeply affected by the enormous regeneration program taking place. For the first time in many years the catchment was full of water and the dead red gums stretched out like a monochromatic field of twisted burnt and bleached figures. In contrast the regeneration of new life was evident across the surrounding landscape and the edges of the wetland.

Alex Asch and Mariana del Castillo have close connections: migrants from the Americas, artists, educators, colleagues and husband-wife. Their approach to exploring and visually representing the landscape reveals itself in different mediums. At the core of Compression is a concern for the environment and the impact of nature on materials: the slow cycle of compression, extraction and erosion.

In 2021 both artists were invited by the University of Canberra to mentor and deliver arts for recovery workshops for the Regeneration program substantially funded by donations raised by Magda Zsubanski and Will Connolly. Regeneration is a collaborative response to complex traumas experienced by Australia’s rural communities from drought, floods and bushfires. While in the Wiradjuri country (Snow Valleys high country) they saw first-hand the devastation that the bushfires had on the landscape: enormous black hills, extended vistas and darkened valleys. In between workshops they began to sketch and photograph the vast landscape between the small towns of Batlow, Tumbarumba, Adelong and Tumut.

In 2023 both artists were invited back to deliver weekend workshops to 5 Ways Studio, Tumut and reconnect with the Snow Valleys community. The stark contrast of the landscape now in near flood showed the extremes of the Australian environment. Alex and Mariana have a collective determination to represent this visual space and to choose works for the exhibition that are in dialogue with one another. This exhibition focuses on the landscape between the Wiradjuri country (Snow Valleys) and Yorta Yorta country (Northern Victoria) and Wandi Wandian country (Shoalhaven region) and explores the transformations driven by climate change.