LIMITLESS AND IMPLAUSIBLE - MARK MAKING BY DRAGICA MILUNOVIC RIC SPENCER

Dragica Milunovic has a studio that sits atop a hill looking out over the sweeping, flat plains of Perth's sandy coastal belt. Dotted across the landscape is a myriad of suburbs, industrial areas, business and retail districts and of course, the skyscrapers that nestle in cosily next to Swan River. Milunovic's studio feels to me like a pin-hole camera, sucking in the image of the plain and dispersing the light across the high walls of its interior.

Within the history of the visual arts painters in particular have a history of being understood through their studio'. It's as if the two are inseparable, as if the two key divisions of their practice, studio and intent, are a physical combustion caught in an ever-present moment of pre-eruption. Whether in general terms this historical and slightly romantic theory is still valid is up for grabs but in my mind the relationship between studio and painter is still key and I think particularly so for Dragica Milunovic's work.

It seems to me that in her large canvases and built cubes the particles of light that are refracted off the Perth plains and through her studio doors are caught in a swirl of channelled energy, being reconstituted in their new material formation as paint. Of course this is just the initial, somewhat poetic reactions of someone entering Milunovic's work space for the first time but equally it's a fair introduction to the shift between material forms that occur in her practice...optics and the bouncing of light are cornerstones to her work. However after spending some time in the studio it is easy to see that Milunovic's process is no immediate transference of light into paint, this is a slow and deliberate methodology, a process built up over months, achingly and painstakinglyevolving2.

The rigorous ritual of paint application that occurs in Milunovic's work is actually some distance from the artist being an immediate conduit of their physical surroundings - rather small defined sections of the paintings are worked and re-worked on a daily basis, starting at this point and finishing at that one, coming back here and finishing there. It is obsessive and it manifests an equally psychological reaction in the viewer. Unable to focus on a particular point, the eye travels but does not see, sees but does not focus, focuses but does not comprehend. It's a series of stages, each one progressively manifesting an understanding of the vastness of each canvas' universe but, like looking at the night sky, failing to relate to each stroke and finally crumbling under the simple implausibility of the number of marks.

Refusing to be limited to two dimensions, Milunovic has begun to construct cubes, further questioning the mechanics of sight. In these boxes the marks seem to multiply and reduce, depthless and weightless, as the eye moves in and through, rather then across and around as with the canvases. Although conjuring up images of physics experiments these boxes rather then pitching quantum physics against classical optics are more queries into the relationship between cognition and aesthetics.

Cognitive understanding, that is; comprehending what we are looking at, gives us a certain form of pleasure, that of security and a benign comfort. Milunovic's boxes and canvases both break down cognitive reception, allowing a different sort of aesthetic pleasure to be derived. Perhaps this is not a sublime experience but more so a relaxation of the brain/cognition link which then allows the brain to simply enjoy what it is receiving, passing it on to the aesthetic neurons. Good art can do this and Milunovic's work allows us the chance to enjoy the plastics of sensual immersion.

Despite the aesthetic intoxication of implausibility it is pivotal to note that for this series of works, as with all good psychological expressionism, primary ownership is not with the viewer. This is first and foremost artist led painting, work induced under the sweaty brow of a painter physically deconstructing, under some duress, the limits of painting. There is a history of painting which is romantic, which is studio based, which is about the painter pushing the reality of paint. Post-modern cynicism and the supposed, and continuous, death of painting, has done little to dent the passion of studio based painting. Dragica Milunovic is unashamedly part of this romantic history and with her work comes a new language to add to it and a serious reminder that painting is limitless in its desire and ruthless in its tenacity when it comes to using artists to push the scope and boundaries of its existence.

(Endnotes)

1 See for instance the publication STUDIO: Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity, published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, published by R. Ian Lloyd Productions, 2007

2 Literally in the case of Dragica who has regular physio treatment to ease the muscle soreness which comes from hours in front of the canvas.

Dr Ric Spencer is a writer, lecturer and artist based in Fremantle. He currently writes art criticism for The West Australian newspaper.