Melissa Coote: Heart in Hand

Both the creation and erasure of memory are present in the works of Melissa Coote. Her rendering of hands, fossils, vulvas and most recently hearts, on an impressive scale, speak as much to art historical traditions of memento mori and vanitas as they do to talismanic representations of these symbols in non-Western cultures. Coote painstakingly builds layers onto the surfaces of her works using an intuitive, rhythmic practice, only to subsequently erase these marks until they release their subject. She describes the process as “building up surfaces and [then] breaking away to find an essence through time”.

Coote develops her works with graphite and charcoal, as well as paint made in her studio from pigment and binders. “Sometimes I like it to be really thick,” she explains. She then polishes the surface with a lambswool buffer, sands it with sandpaper and even uses a drill to create the impression of cracks, a technique she formulated when trying to emulate fissures in the bones she was depicting. “My works have pretty crusty surfaces,” she assures, “so they can take it.”

It is a year of firsts for Coote. Her forthcoming exhibitions at Jensen Gallery in Sydney includes, for the first time, photogravure and cast bronze works. She has also moved away from working on paper in favour of Belgian linen. In making this change, Coote has found that many layers are still needed to build up the surface, however she feels the canvas allows for more depth than paper (as well as being more durable). “It’s nice that [linen] doesn’t have to be framed. You get an immediacy which framing takes away from.” This speaks to her interest in the light conditions under which her work is viewed. When I visit her expansive studio in Sydney’s inner west on a Tuesday morning, she quietly laments that the light is most beautiful in the afternoon. Coote hopes those living with her pieces have the opportunity to enjoy them in a variety of light conditions as details recede or are revealed.

The alchemy of light is at the core of Coote’s practice. She studied photography in the early stages of her practice and it still underpins her art making. She uses an old Canon camera and black and white slide film and, as that has become unavailable, she has used a service in the United States which transforms negatives into slides, preserving all the peculiarities of the medium. The resulting photographs are used to create paintings from projections and, in the case of the forthcoming show, photogravures as well. “Photography is very important to the final work.”

The new works all depict hearts, specifically a large bull’s heart which the artist cast in bronze within hours of the animal’s death. She was attracted to the weightiness of the heart, the languid way the blood ran down it, and insists that “it had to be hung at the right angle, sort of like choreographing a dance”. (This reference to choreography is no accident. The artist’s partner, Sue-ellen Kohler, is an acclaimed dancer, as well as running a yoga school, a practice which informs Coote’s work in terms of its discipline and physicality.) Casting the heart is about “bringing the interior outwards. A lot of my work is about interiors and exteriors.”

Apart from a brief foray into wax impressions for an early exhibition at Mori Gallery, Coote has never worked in sculpture before, but has been encouraged towards incorporating it into her practice by other artists who have observed the sculptural way in which she works. This sculptural influence can be traced to Coote’s time living in Paris for 10 years from the late 1980s, when she was first drawn to the city’s many gothic sculptures which she recalls “had the essence of being scraped back by time”.