Matilda

Matilda

Luise Fong’s paintings from the mid-1990s are evocative and multi-layered artworks containing organic forms, nuanced patterning and a subtle yet rich range of connections and associations. Matilda was completed during the artist’s residency at the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne. The work is informed by her lived experience in the Australian bushland. During the residency, Fong joined the artistic community at Dunmoochin, the previous home of Australian modernist artist Clifton Pugh, in the bush on the outskirts of the city. The work evolved from an intuitive response to her natural and cultural surroundings.

Fong began working on doors during this period of her practice, embracing their symbolism as portals or thresholds. In Matilda, a wooden door is split into three panels, the first panel bearing ethereal shadows, stains and drips, which contrast with the exploding pink chrysanthemum in the central panel, and moon-like spheres on the right-hand side.

Circular petals not only reflect her interest in nature and allude to a micro world, but also symbolically track a ‘walkabout’ route, a rite of passage in Australian Aboriginal society whereby a youth reaches adulthood through living for a period alone in the wilderness. The walkabout tracks dance in circles on the canvas as perhaps dancing to the bush ballad ‘Waltzing Matilda’ that inspired the title. The circular forms multiply into moons in the third panel, a cosmos referencing the Australian night sky.

— Amy Lewis, 2022