Considering intimacy in a pandemic world at Holmes à Court Vasse Felix

Intimacy, currently showing at Holmes à Court Gallery at Vasse Felix, Cowaramup, illuminates what is most important to human existence. Drawn entirely from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection, the exhibition includes works by predominantly Australian artists including Rick Amor, Hans Arkeveld, Merrick Belyea, Josl Bergner, William Boissevain, Charles Conder, Robert Dickerson, William Dobell, David Downs, Russell Drysdale, Emanuel Phillips Fox, Anne Marie Graham, Guy Grey Smith, Paddy Jaminji, James Linton, Francis Lymburner, Mary McClean, Alexander Nganjmirra, John Oldham, Margaret Priest, Thea Proctor and Peter Skipper.

Curated by Laetitia Wilson, Intimacy responds to how the COVID-19 lockdown has affected proximity and closeness with others. “In the last year, we were all told to stay apart to be together again,” she writes in the exhibition publication. “This not only had a profound physical but also an emotional and psychological impact on humanity,” Wilson affirms. She says in light of COVID, it is timely to stop and think about those we are closest to, and to ask what intimacy and the absence of intimacy means.

Wilson encourages the artwork of the past century to be viewed with the eyes of the present, to gain new insights into each painting. Anne Marie Graham’s The Outing, for instance, a painting of older ladies in a café seated metres apart, are isolated from any interaction. Pre-COVID, the painting’s significance centred on the predicament of female ageing and loneliness. Graham created The Outing in 1968, long before social distancing was an issue, yet the painting is now timely and relevant.

Intimacy represents the multifaceted panorama of close human interaction and emotions, and has been separated into sub-themes. The exhibition begins with a series of paintings related to the intimacies of rest and respite. Whether in sickness or sleep, these paintings portray a physical connection to more nonsexual intimacies transpiring in private. In this group is Convalescent (1890) by Emanuel Phillips Fox – a painting of an unwell girl who glows in candlelight. The painting is dramatic due to her luminance – as if her life hangs upon the light.

The intimacies of relaxing feature works by Proctor paired with Conder. Both share the colourful and intimate moments of their subjects partaking of informal interactions in public, and both depict people relaxing in small groups at the beach, entertained on a swing, or even at a party. They generate a sense of celebration, departing from the more sombre works in the exhibition. 

A third group considers closer relationships in a more private setting, concentrating on unguarded moments. All the paintings depict ease and comfort with those around them. Belyea’s Midland 111 is moody and intense. The near abstract image holds enough information to portray two figures moving together and interacting. Lymburner’s Two Dancers captures an intimate aside gesture of one dancer to another. Sketchy pen marks and ink enhance the fleeting nature of the scene. On an adjacent wall, Downs’s work depicts two people talking and sharing important information. Nganjmirra, Jaminiji and McClean, in their own ways, express informal private gatherings signifying closeness.