Sensing gesture

The sense of the body approaching the metaphysical through its very corporeality is also evident in Andrea McCuaig’s work. McCuaig’s whirling forms relate directly to the gestures of the body. Constructing great, sweeping brushes by joining several conventional brushes into one, McCuaig amplifies the movement of the human hand, extending it beyond the typical borders of the body. Her paintings have an overwhelming sense of speed and velocity, but it’s a velocity released from the limits of human time, entering something like the speed of light or sound, something extra-terrestrial, bending and bouncing beyond, as well as within us. McCuaig’s work evokes the body itself as a force for the greater apprehension of reality, movement made weightless and elemental. It is little wonder her paintings seek unboundedness and light. As Susan Sontag wrote, all interpretations of dance reflect “some larger rhetoric about human possibility”. For me, dance is also a visceral reaction against the mundane measurement of time, challenging it, and changing it.

Claire Capel-Stanley
Snapshot Collective
August 23, 2014
Canberra Times, Panorama

View works from this exhibition: Gestureality

M16’s home in Griffith supports an industrious hive of creativity, writes Claire Capel-Stanley. Page 16 – PANORAMA – The Canberra Times, Saturday, August 23, 2014