JESSICA HERRINGTON

Jessica Herrington has an eye for the awkward and the overlooked. Her practice spans video, objects, photography, prints and painting. Her work paradoxically plays up to and attracts the viewer through its seductive and voluptuous qualities yet simultaneously repulses with this complete excess.

Herrington’s painted works are a collision upon the canvas; the painted peaks fall over, or paint falls off the canvas altogether. There is humour within this failure. The paint works in the same way as slapstick by becoming a parody of itself, the humour lying in the completely over the top way in which Herrington uses the paint. Herrington asserts that abstraction, no matter how serious De Kooning and Rothko were, can be funny.

Her sculptures, photography and video monumentalize the banal. She finds subject matter in the awkward experience of putting on a jumper or eating lunch from a paper bag. Through using moments of the everyday Herrington draws silliness and humour from her audience in the sometimes absurd experience of existence.

A favourite work is her Stroking Painting film; which shows the artist trying literally to get closer to the ‘genius’ of the painting. In this work she plays with the expectations of a viewer when entering a gallery space. She describes it as:

“In this work I recount my experience of art galleries when I have come across a painting whose surface seems so thick and rich that you want to touch it. But of course this is impossible as there are a number of barriers to stop you from experiencing a painting in this ‘close and personal’ way. The security guard standing watching your every move, surveillance cameras and sensors, all there to keep the viewer at a distance. It is this collaboration of elements in the creation of aura around an artwork.” 

Jessica Herrington currently lives and works in Canberra. In March 2008 she was the winner of the $10,000 National Youth Portrait Prize. She has exhibited in group and solo shows throughout NSW, QLD, VIC and the ACT.