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LANGUAGE AND TEXT: ARTISTS

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Savanhdary Vongpoothorn

Background
Savandary Vongpoothorn was born 1971 in Laos and emigrated to Australia as a refugee child of 8. She is a practicing Buddhist. Her early installations comprised of seed pods and fragile flower stamens suggested and interest in pattern and design.

She now mostly uses paint and print methods Her paintings are abstractions and based on the repetition of particular shapes.

Practice
Inspiration
Some of these shapes are natural, geometric and often using perforations of the surface, Vongpoothorn works from a number of disparate cultural sources, Hinduism,( Bindi Dot series, 2001, mixed media on paper) Buddhism, Aboriginal art, minimalism, the Australian bush (e.g. Filaments and Shadows , 2003, acrylic on perforated canvas 114.5x97cm.) She actively traverses discrete styles and sources in an interleaving of ideas., including Laos textile design and Buddhist symbols. The use of Laotian symbols of text and pattern was reinforced by a visit to Laos as an adult.

In Laos, textiles mark the cycles of a woman’s life: woven baby carriers, wedding skirts, funeral cloths, and banners, clothing, curtains, bedding. Vongpoothorn is reinventing this female tradition through a transposition of the modernism to the contemporary. She keeps a notebook filled with observations quotations, ideas, experiments, small leaf embroideries.

Also of influence, are the artists whose work transverse nature and geometry such as include Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin, Andy Goldsworthy, Montien Boonma, Gloria Petyarre and Roy Jackson.

Techniques
Vongpoothorn works with perforated canvas and paper, working both the back and front of the surface. She pierces the surfaces of unstretched canvases with a soldering iron. These grid like (or organic) patterns are then covered with washes of paint and dry pigment. In most cases, colour often precedes form, so that many of the works initially appear to be geometric, but also contain stylised mythical birds, lions, serpents, and shapes from Laotian textiles,

The audience is drawn to the perforations whilst simultaneously realising they have been covered, rather as a scar hides a wound. Ironically, Vongpoothorn builds up a surface of transparency, revealing the process of the procedure within.

Vongpoothorn draws together a diverse range of cultural symbols with perforated paper and canvas and interweaving of Laotian text layers. Sutra, the word for sacred Buddhist texts is etymologically derived from the Sanskrit word for thread. The English word text is derived from the Latin texere to weave. The perforations have been metaphorically linked with sewing and breathing, but also contain a sense of ritual. The works are dense with pattern, meaningful layers interleaved together.

Artworks
Incantation (2005)
These works are linked to the motifs of breathing, chanting, and music, (the latter coming from a diverse range of sources including Indian, Schubert, Philip Glass and a Laotian pan pipe). The text pattern used in these works is based on written pieces used in incantations, a mixture of the secular and the spiritual. The language used is an ancient Thai, used by monks and reputedly used by the Buddha. The repeated khaatha (incantation) is laid across bands, rather as music is written, sounds ascending and descending.

Mokaanla- nanca II (2005)
acrylic on perforated canvas
101x75cm
This work, in layers of yellow, ochres and red, contains text of the mantra that confers supernatural powers and protects against danger. A mantra is a phrase or syllable that is repeated many times, involving the body, mind and spirit and becomes a process of meditation.

Bpao (2005)
colour etching, edition of 15
34cmx28cm,
Printed by Viridian Press, Melbourne and Canberra.

References

anu.edu.au

artnews.com.au

artlink.com.au

Chui ,M. Asian -Australian Artists: Cultural Shifts in Australia

Carruthers,A. The art of Savanhdary Vongpoothorn as Metissage, Niagara Publishing Victoria, 2002.

Fink, H. Rhythmic Air , Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, Art Asia Pacific, Issue 24, 1999, p.74

Petersen,T. Liquid Light, Helga Groves and Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, Art and Australia Vol 40, No. 3 2003, p.426

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, Incantation June 2005, Martin Browne at the Yellow House, Goanna Print, Canberra, 2005.