The pool, a receptacle of memory and emotion 2021 | Trent Gallery

Artist’s annotation: Receptacle: a solo exhibition of pool and pond paintings at Trent Gallery

The sub-urban pool motif has intrigued me for almost a decade now. I am drawn to it as a receptacle of emotional content, as a site of solitary introspection and as a potent metaphor for the complex feelings of nostalgia for a not-so golden past.

A receptacle is defined as a hollow object or vessel used to contain something. A receptacle is capable of receiving and holding. In botany the receptacle of a flower is the cup-shape at the top of the stem that holds all the organs and the petals in place. A pool is a receptacle of leaves, light, shadow, dust particles and most importantly, water. The pools that I paint are receptacles of these physical elements, which in turn, have received, or are imbued with layers of meaning and varying emotional states through the act of painting.

The pools that attract me are often derelict or neglected, which elicit a sense of loss and longing, a sense of the end of an era. In this exhibition I have painted a circular pond that belongs to a colonial past titled “Colonial relic”. The image is inflected with a tone of wistful and conflicted longing. It is a large circular pond with two tiers. The top tier has become an island of dry, wild grass and weeds. It was most probably the focal point of the entrance to the homestead many generations ago. It is imbued with bittersweetness and nostalgia for a conflicted, colonial history.

In another painting titled “Suburban arcadia”, I explore the image of the suburban pool so indicative of the landscape of my childhood in the late seventies and early eighties. The reflections of subtropical vegetation on the surface of a turquoise pool suggest a carefully constructed, suburban paradise. This painting has a flat, slickness, a salute to David Hockney’s paintings of manicured Los Angeles gardens and pools. Although the painting is of a perfectly undisturbed reflection of a lush garden—on the water’s surface, there are a few trembling contours that unnerve one. Modern Arcadia or Paradise lost, is by definition, troubled by doubt and threat.

In an alternate interpretation the contemplation of dormant, heavy, contained water can be seen as a meditation on mortality. There are two narrow, horizontal paintings of rectangular containers of water, one a pond and the other the overflow-gulley of an eternity pool. Both explore the idea of the pool as a watery tomb or lidless coffin, where leaves and other organic debris go to die and dissolve. The colourful leaves in “Water burial” remind one of the petals thrown over a coffin at a graveside.

Lastly, there are three smaller works of a sleek, contemporary pool at night. The luminous, cerulean blue pool is lit from within, but is surrounded by inky darkness. The serpentine Creepy-Crawly creates an unsettling sense of lurking threat. It becomes an apt metaphor for the disquiet and insidious anxiety that defines contemporary life. The rectangular pool is a receptacle of that neurosis.

The above concerns, which I explored through the pool motif, have been intensified in my work, by our current environment where the threat of a pandemic and the sense of loss, is real, not imagined.

Danielle Malherbe