Emma Langridge - Unfinished Journey
June 08 - June 26
"It
took some time for me to formulate this work, even to make the first
mark, as there is so little friction between the carefully planned precision
of Germany and my method of painting which has always relied on the
straight line, the right angle and the square.
After much distillation of ideas, I reduced everything down to the square,
inspired by the uniformity of scale within Berlin in particular creating
each piece with both facade and plan in mind: each being both a frontal
and aerial view.
I was struck most by the tesselation and slight variation of architectural facades in different areas. In Berlin: graceful Chalottenburg, the architecture of the Hansa Viertel, the stark metal and glass buildings of Potzdammerplatz. A further contrast exists between these and the unique aesthetics of the other cities: Dresden, Nurenberg, Munich, Cologne and Hamburg.
In addition to this distinctly aesthetic response I was influenced by
the juxtaposition of historical and present day Germany, particularly
the town of Weimar: home of Bach, Goethe, Cranach the Elder and the
Bauhaus, yet only six miles from Buchenwald, the deathcamp where 57,000
people were killed during and after World War II".
Emma Langridge, Melbourne, 2005
