The land’s disquiet: Julia Roche’s ‘Under a Winter Moon’ at MAMA
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Julia Roche’s paintings in ‘Under a Winter Moon’ capture the sublime qualities of the environment. There is an emotional tethering that is immediately felt when encountering her work, elicited from her sustained connection to the land. Roche created this series on Wiradjuri country, working plein-air under the cover of night at her family property ‘Wooroola’ near Mangoplah and the regenerative farm ‘Bibbaringa’ at Bowna, both situated in the Riverina district of New South Wales.
The crisp winter climate experienced by Roche is captured in the serene beauty of her paintings, depicting hazy waves of rain, glistening frost and coverings of evening mist. The dark ink-blue sky is an omnipresent element throughout the series, shrouding the undulating valleys and hills, as shadowed delineations of trees, shrubs and dams punctuate the landscape. Barely discernible in the dark, they have been manifested by the artist through the recollection of memories and the evocation of feeling. In Night Lit (2021), it is as though the trees have developed buoyancy, floating above a cloak of rain that envelops the valley, illuminated by a radiant wash of silvery moonlight.
Underlying the beauty is a sense of uneasiness in the landscape’s disquiet. With her immediate family working in farming, Roche is no stranger to the perilous nature of the environment. Experiencing devastating droughts and bushfires, she intimately understands nature’s power for destruction which is becoming amplified with the world’s changing climate. ‘Under a Winter Moon’ is an ode to the fertile nurturing brought by vital winter rains and a celebration of the life that water sustains.
The dense overlaying of pigment in the mixed-media paintings Under a Winter Moon I, II and III (all 2021) mirror the abundance of texture and layers of vegetation. Created over multiple sittings, Roche uses a variety of mark-making techniques and materials, including oil paint, pastels and charcoal sourced locally following the recent bushfires. The dense microscopic elements of the bush are magnified and elevated, capturing the gestural feelings of the landscape. By exposing her canvases to the ecosystem, there is a weathering that completes each painting, solidifying its physical connection to the land and, in the words of the artist, ‘serving as a time- and site-specific record of the natural world’.
Roche’s paintings move beyond simply depicting her surrounds and reflect the atmospheric changes and emotive qualities of the land at night. Her surety of touch reveals her empathetic relationship with the environment and deep understanding of the power of nature.
Rebecca Blake, Albury
‘Julia Roche: Under a Winter Moon’ is currently on display at the Murray Art Museum Albury until 28 November.
