In There, there Shannon Williamson uses a synesthetic approach to painting to propose form for the otherwise invisible energies which exist between bodies as they interrelate. Through a series of small hyper-coloured gouaches, she examines the emotional intimacies and anxieties of caregiving, both for oneself and for the other. Ahead of the exhibition, Williamson discussed her works with Gallery Assistant Paige Elder. There, there opens 5.30pm Tuesday 16th July at City Art Depot and runs through to 5 August 2024.
Family Portrait (ugly Cry) i, Shannon Williamson, gouache and pencil on paper, 210x150mm, 2024
Paige Elder: Your works often have a clear interconnecting theme or strands of research that you draw from when making, such as anatomical cartography and mapping. Is that true of these works?
Shannon Williamson: When I start a body of work, I usually have a very strong idea of what I am pursuing thematically. And yes, that idea of ‘anatomical cartography’, the mapping out of bodily experience, is often foundational. In these paintings it plays less of a role because they are more about the bodies of others than my own. For me, language is super important, and most of the time when I start a body of work, I have a phrase or a word in mind that I continuously refer to, drawing up the feeling it gives me. I then produce drawings or sketches in response to that feeling. I investigate that feeling from multiple perspectives, so every drawing and sketch is like another vantage point of that idea. This process of returning to a phrase or word transforms it into a kind of mantra and provides a bit of rhythm to my work. This is especially true of how I create drawings. Strangely these paintings were void of any sound or word or phrase until the very end. There were concepts, like the QRS complex, that related but I think their energy came through as colour, not sound this time – this is probably the first time I have had this approach to making works.
The visual language of these works has shifted compared to recent shows you have had with us – they appear to be becoming less abstracted, with more overtly bodily forms.
I consider these to be more illustrative than my recent work. The use of visual language, elliptical, circular, and almost orifice-like forms in my work are connected to the embodied experience of being a female and a woman. They speak to the corporeality of the body alongside the power and complications of reproductive systems. I’m always fascinated and disturbed by the dichotomy of our embodied human experience as these cerebral beings that are also completely animal and meaty; that biological and conscious aspect is always coming through in my work.
While my previous work often used this visual language to map out internal embodied experience these paintings speak more to the body of the other. This shift from an internal focus to a focus on the other makes sense in the context of my surroundings. As the stay-at-home caregiver for my two small children, I find myself often thinking about how fragile they are, not just physical fragility but their fragility of self and my role as their mother, and the power and responsibility of that. Being a caregiver is such a powerful role, I think. I always imagined being able to do it well, but I bring all my own human flaws into our relationship. There’s so much strengthening that we all need to do emotionally as individuals, and as a parent you have to do this while simultaneously guiding these other fragile people. There are days I doubt myself. There are days I think I will screw them up. The representation of the body in these works is partly to express that vulnerability of the person relying on the care of another. There is an ugliness to these works. They’re not settled or necessarily happy; I don’t mean for them to be unhappy works but there is an anxiety in them. There are elements of mortality and entropy in there.
There, there i, Shannon Williamson, gouache and pencil on paper, 210x150mm, 2024
The visual language in these works is definitely more figurative than my previous work, there are more recognisably bodily shapes; heads and skulls and faces and teeth. When making the works I was imagining a kind of clinging – little fingers and hands grasping for other bodies. There’s a clinging, and a prying and a prodding in the works, but there’s an ambiguity as to who is the owner of what body part. Who is caring for who? Is one asking too much of another? Is there a coldness there? A rejection or sense of one being ‘touched out’? As a parent of small children there is a lot of having to manage my own anxiety in order to manage the anxiety of my children, who I’m supposed to be placating. And that can be very overwhelming. The work really speaks to a sense of striving for that balance in a relationship of need and of give and take and how that looks when there’s a power imbalance. There are so many precarious boundaries when you interrelate with someone else’s body and ego, there’s always so much non-verbal dialogue that needs to go on. The works are ambiguous because they speak to all those experiences as a whole, not individual emotions. A few of the works have hands that are being held or two little hands holding each other, and that’s thinking more about the three-person relationship I have with my children and their relationship with each other which is beautiful and tender but also tumultuous. I’m not just a viewer to that relationship, I’m also a mediator so it’s complicated.
QRS Complex iv, Shannon Williamson, gouache and pencil on paper, 210x150mm, 2024
Your last couple of shows with us have been rather subdued in terms of colour, working a lot with pencil on paper. As you said these works are “hyper-coloured”, is this an extension of that shift in your visual language for this series?
As I mentioned before, my surroundings definitely inform the work I make. What goes in comes out and there’s a lot of clutter and business in my periphery. My own creative thoughts and practices are punctuated by my children’s art and the hyperbolic and quirky tales and illustrations of children’s books – which is one of the many highlights of being a parent.
The time constraints of working on these, and of not having a studio at the moment, mean that I’m working at the kitchen table, which in turn means a lot of packing works away and returning to them in a different headspace. The works became a bit like a game of ‘exquisite corpses’ or a Frankenstein’s monster of emotions. The act of making was often like an exercise in recentring, and the works became a collection of disjointed fragments, snapshots of where I’m at in a given moment, constantly in flux and acting as a collective.
A lot of these works are also transcriptions of synesthetic experience. When I’m processing various anxieties these colours and shapes flash into my mind. At any given time in my life that could come out as a very delicate, lyrical pencil sketch, a mapping, like my previous show, or in this case it’s going to be something very hyperbolic and hyper-coloured, with an undercurrent of chaos. I feel like my role is that of a conduit and I have to get the work out on the paper – I don’t really get to choose how it presents itself.
Twilight Sleep ii, Shannon Williamson, gouache and pencil on paper, 210x150mm, 2024
So, you could say making these works are also a meditative practice of processing those feelings and experiences?
Yeah, that’s right, there is a definite meditative quality in what I do. All the tiny dots in there, that’s pretty meditative. My practice is like a form of self-therapy, which ties into the final title for the show.
You’ve mentioned that the show title has changed over the course of making the works – how did you arrive at There, there?
As I said, a lot of the way I usually work is by having a word or phrasing that I return to, which is not what I’ve done here. All of that language only started to come forward after the artwork neared completion. The original working title was QRS complex, which really speaks to how bodies in a space together might interrelate. There’s always an energy between people in shared space, regardless of their personal relationship, and it is constantly in flux.
Can you tell me more about the QRS complex?
The QRS complex is the graphical representation of the heartbeat as the electricity flows around the heart. If you asked someone to draw a heartbeat, they’re likely to draw you a QRS complex with the big spike in the middle and two smaller bumps on either side. I used to work in sleep labs applying EEGs and ECGs on people’s bodies and monitoring them all night, and I just loved the ability to use medical tools to create a visual language for energy as it moves around a person’s body in order to get this diagnostic image. While working on these paintings I realised that’s kind of what I’m doing here. Medical terminology has always appealed to me in its potential to act as a metaphor for the human condition more emotionally – but also in my own creative process – finding form for something that is otherwise invisible; that concept of anatomical cartography.
While the concept of the ‘QRS complex’ mirrored the works’ process, it wasn’t what the works were really about. In essence, the works themselves are about investigating slightly anxious, uncomfortable, or uncertain experiences of relationships, all the while searching for a kind of soothing of these anxieties. That’s when the title changed to There, there. I find the luxury of being an artist, to process the things I experience and the anxieties I have through painting and drawing, to be a very soothing practice. The works are both an exercise in self-soothing and a commentary on the role of the soother, trying to pass on the skills of de-escalation. While the phrase ‘there, there’ is synonymous with a comforting it’s also slightly dismissive or patronising. I enjoy the double-edged sword of that.
Family Portrait (ugly Cry) ii, Shannon Williamson, gouache and pencil on paper, 210x150mm, 2024
Is it important for you that the viewer understands the themes of your works?
I do make works with a viewer in mind. While the process of making work is personally quite therapeutic, I get a lot of joy from putting it out in the world for an audience. If someone looks at my work and feels that it speaks to something they are feeling, that might otherwise not be described by words, then that’s very rewarding. That human connection is very rewarding even if it’s not direct. I love listening to storytelling and looking at other people’s art for this reason, because it connects me to humanity and can remind me I’m not alone or too weird. And while yes, I do have very specific things that I’m working with, it doesn’t bother me if people don’t see that in the works. I like to talk about and share why I’ve made the work, but if someone finds something they resonate with in the work, if they see some representation or validation, that’s a success. They don’t need to understand the concepts.