A Room with a View Part 1— Jo Lane
She looks into me
The unknowing heart
To see if I love
She has confidence she forgets
Under the clouds of her eyelids
Her head falls asleep in my hands
Where are we
Together inseparable
Alive alive
He alive she alive
And my head rolls through her dreams.
—Paul Éluard, 'She Looks Into Me'
Today we're showcasing our final artwork in connection with A Room with a View Part 1 when it's not enough 2016 by artist Jo Lane.
Working between the UK and Australia, Lane is a 'drawer' first and foremost. Using charcoal, graphite, coloured pencils, and other water-based media and materials, she makes works that explore social and psychological subjects.
In 2016 she presented when it's not enough as part of the exhibition 'Sensor' at Junior Space Gallery in Melbourne. From here, the work found its way into our studio's collection, where it now resides.
Combining defined mark-making with what Lane described as the "random reactions and meanderings of water-based media, which seeks its own form and shapes on the paper”, the exhibition examined “the idea of self and other, the limitless space of being and the systems of separation and unity that operate throughout humanity”. (Jo Lane)
This series of works plays with depiction of the limitless space of being a ‘self’: the emotional; the feeling between conscious and unconscious; the nature of thought; experience, strength and fragility.
The works have evolved using a combination of very defined, consciously applied drawn marks and the random reactions and meanderings of water-based media, which seeks its own form and shapes on the paper to express the ‘person’.
— Jo Lane, Artist Statement, Sensor 2016
when it's not enough 2016
A personal reflection
— Emma Thomson
Below are my reflections upon this much-loved artwork. In keeping with this project's focus upon the idea of the home as a place for nurturing our creative or inner selves, this personal account explores the place of this work in my home and life.
To read my words, press on the button below to access a text. Or, ignore this and spend time with Lane's work pictured below, perhaps in tandem with Éluard's poem above or while you listen to Arvo Pärt's Spiegel Im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror).
Jo Lane, when it's not enough 2016, graphite, charcoal dust and watercolour on Aquarelle Arches paper, 57 x 45 cm © Jo Lane
In 2023 we will present our final virtual 'room with a view' by Lane in connection with Part 3 of the project. In the meantime, to find out more about the broader project and the existing rooms of artists Ali McCann and Edwina Stevens, please head to the entry of the space here.
Biography
Jo Lane (Birrarungga / Melbourne) uses her drawing practice to explore social and psychological subjects. Working between UK and Australia she is a drawer first and foremost, using charcoal, graphite, coloured pencils, and any other material that is present-to-hand, honouring the texture, immediacy and honesty of drawing. Whilst immersed in fastidious mark-making and fibre use as metaphor, decision-making is reflexive, responding intuitively to the outside world, the inside world and the differing shades and depths of line forming on surfaces. The contrast between self and other and the systems of separation and unity that operate throughout humanity, drives the work.
British Psychoanalyst, Donald W Winnicott places some artistic motivation in the tension between the desire to hide and the desire to communicate. Her work erupts from this tension, between the private refuge of thought and the nature of external engagement that is drawing.
Lane holds a Masters of Drawing (Distinction), University of the Arts London (UAL), Wimbledon College of Arts, along with a Graduate Certificate Visual Art, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and a Diploma of Visual Art, Latrobe College of Art and Design, Melbourne. For a list of her exhibition history and awards in Australia and the UK, refer here.
