Courtesy: the artist and Tacit Art, Melbourne.

The word ‘strato’, meaning layer or coating in Italian, reflects Anna Caione‘s personal approach to abstraction.

Expanding upon the themes explored in an earlier 2021 solo exhibition, Caoine’s latest body of work presents her attempt to recreate and interpret historical and vintage fabrics collected during journeys to Italy. These have been sourced from traditional Italian upholsterers which have been kept for the pleasure that comes from recollection. With such keepsakes in hand, recollections are easily prompted to recall the emotions associated with a particular experience or visited place which reflect a nostalgic sensibility for the artist’s Italian heritage.

Caoine’s work is essentially a reworking of this intimate, ephemeral body of work as they carry a sense of history, the trace of a person’s touch and a sense of obsolescence.

In these tactile and soft works, the artist practices a personal collage technique that combines surface manipulation with various mediums. The vibrant colours and textures fixed within the surface patina of these artworks connect with the flow of energy inherent in materials. Her nostalgic sensibility is a way to hold or touch something in which distinctive memory is infinitely richer than its origins and is often experienced as physical sensations, such as touch that turns into texture.

Caione looks to engage with the poetics of remembrance, reworking traditional textiles and raw pigments sourced from Italy. The fabrics and mediums become an extension of her hands and body in which the shapes, forms and colours collaborate, resulting in an abstract piece based on the concept of the monochrome blended with various tones of pigments and accent hues that subtly unite.

The artwork may be a metaphor for the subconscious and how it associates and collaborates with the physical making of the artwork. The subconscious is not verbal nor obvious; it may be a pathway to understand how she express her creative process which resonates as a bridge to cross and reach for growth and change of the human spirit, or even a metaphor for transformation as an outward expression of the inner.

Opening Event: Wednesday 31 May, 6.30 – 8pm.

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