The Samstag Alumni

The 2001 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships

Christine Collins | Shaun Gladwell | Glenys Hodgeman | Anne Kay | Fassih Keiso | Linda Marrinon | Archie Moore | Rea | John Spiteri | Paul White

The contemporary feel of the work of Linda Marrinon comes through its inventive engagement with the past: through the principle of selective affinity she constructs an alternative history of art, something that could have been, but wasn't until now. Her paintings of the early 1990s re-wrote the answers to the formal issues exercising the early Modernism of the School of Paris, through marrying the neo-classical tradition with the comic strip. Her most recent sculptural works suggest the nineteenth century atelier: in materials (terracotta biscuit) and subject (small-scale versions of architectural edifices). The facture of the work plays the idea of the academic sketch off against something more contemporary like 'claymation'; their impressionist spontaneity is barbed with sly humour.

In Interior of National Gallery the sculpted scene includes part of a painting. The literal imitation of painting in sculpture, coupled with the 'impressionist' technique of rendering - supposedly an approach to sculpture learned from painting - constructs an elaborate joke around the idea of 'painterly' sculpture as 'sculptured' painting. Whatever game of references might be at play however, it is clear that Marrinon is just as sincerely absorbed in the logic of making the work, the necessities of technique, and the delight of physical touch: most apparent in her recent figure sculptures.

Robyn McKenzie
From her Samstag catalogue essay
Art and Research

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• The Samstag Alumni

Interior of National Gallery 2000
terra-cotta
ht 31cm
© the artist

The Victorian College of the Arts 1999
terra-cotta
ht 34 cm
© the artist

Victorian Woman 1999-2000
terra-cotta
ht 27 cm
© the artist