Mutable

With a profound sense of invention and renowned technical brilliance, Tasmanian-born Bea Maddock engaged with the processes of printmaking, painting and book production. From her earliest work of the 1960s, her exploration of diverse media was in turn a method for contemplating a wide range of human concerns, including the uncertainties of identity, place and history.

As a dedicated journal writer and occasional poet, Maddock saw text and language as fundamental to her artistic expression. In the late 1970s this interest informed three acclaimed word-based paintings, including Mutable, which was first exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney, in 1979. Mutable presents a luminous surface, rich with variations of pale colour and texture, produced through the layering of individual letters cut from newsagents’ posters and covered with encaustic wax. The artist described the process of selecting and combining words as based on the formal properties of text, including the repetition of lines and the spaces between letters. The multiple meanings of the words listed also suggest personal introspection and the contemplation of women’s experiences of oppression in Australia in the 1970s.

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture