Liang Luscombe

Studio Residency

17 January - 3 April 2011
Studio Two

Artist Statement:

Although primarily a painter, 2010 has seen Liang Luscombe's work expand into more varied disciplines such as performance and installation. Specifically using various types of materials in order to question the concept of value and value systems, she is concerned with the way that value is created and or exchanged.

Liang has addressed this through her painting practice, making three-dimensional paintings on board that interlock into one another to create installation. The paintings are pushed up against found, pre-fabricated materials such as packaging, AD DAS and Perspex; materials that are often throw away or found in Two Dollar shops. The pre-fabricated materials are used as differing surfaces (often textured, rippled, patterned) that create visual dialogue with the painted surface of the assemblage. Dialogues arise between 'high art' materials (painting, the canvas) and non-traditional art materials that have associations beyond her craft.

Painting has also become a leaping-off point for other forms that Liang's work has taken; in her most recent work Showwuff Bags, 2010 an image from one of her previous paintings was used as branding to develop a show bag stall in which key rings, wine glasses, temporary tattoos and rain coats etc were sold during the performance. Essentially Liang sold useless trinkets, not unique items but a proliferation of facsimiles, carrying the image of a unique item. In that process she wished to present value as a slippery scale. Where exactly does worth lay? In this work the viewer either accepts the idea or dismisses it as trash. In this way Liang's practice connects with Michael Landy and Sydney artists Bababa International.

Recently Liang has become interested in the Hollywood disaster film and the collision of popular spectacle with current political and environmental issues. The contemporary disaster film both passes comment upon and participates willingly in the flawed logics that it identifies. A form of high paradox, these films afford us the ironic thrill of viewing our own demise for entertainment.

Residency Description:

During Liang Luscombe's residency at PICA she plans to make larger painting assemblages that slot into one another, allowing varied and complex assemblage. The film stills will be used as source material; abstracted through collage, then painted. The installation will connect with the fragmented, short, sharp editing narrative that occurs in film. Each board painting will be similar to a film cut and it is through the group of panels that a narrative is formed. The use of imagery will further the atmosphere of nihilistic humour permeating this work. This work will be a reflection of current global concerns; however, Liang hopes to bring a dark and humorous twist to these ideas.

This project allows interaction between subject matter and materials to manifest in oblique ways; both the disaster film and Liang's choice of materials are products/ symptoms of over-consumption and high capitalism. This project will open up her work to a humorous yet critical language - a direction she has taken in the recent Showwuff Bags project. This residency will also enable Liang Luscombe to investigate spatial interactions similar to the work of Helen Johnston, Jessica Stockholder and Nathan Gray.

Image credit: Liang Luscombe, Diamond Insert, 2010 (detail). Courtesy of the artist.