Jan Nelson

Jan Nelson
Australian, born 1955; lives and works in Melbourne

Black river running #13 2019
oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

Artist statement:

In Black river running #13 the human subject remains passive, an ambiguous vessel that is mediated by the many detailed accessories that have been taken directly from our world. Emotion is rendered provisional and felt only as a fixed display. Yet paradoxically, these emotions are held within the gestures of the artificial animal that is allowed something we humans often find difficult to express.

Here these subjectivities are played out as a register of extremes, for the pictorial sentiments are not invented by me; rather, the toy, the artificial and real fur (which is from a scalped animal that once roamed the wild) have all been scavenged from the real world. I just select, arrange and, in the process, re-contextualise the material on offer, building new content that perches precariously at the intersection of introversion and extroversion. What must I do, she seems to ask, for you to recognise my vulnerability?