Louise Tuckwell is a Sydney-based abstract artist who works in both painting and textiles. Her works explore relationships of geometric forms and sophisticated colour combinations to create spaces of contemplation and reflection: ‘I am always aware of the ‘Golden mean’, the association in geometry between beauty and truth – the three “ingredients” to beauty being symmetry, proportion and harmony.’ [i]

While Tuckwell began painting in a realist tradition, her studies at the National Art School, Sydney and employment at the Garry Anderson Gallery, set her on a new trajectory. She was introduced to the work of artists such as Agnes Martin, Peter Atkins and Nigel Hall which opened for her the possibilities of non-objective art. Since this time, she has remained committed to pursuing a hard-edge, geometric art based upon her deep knowledge of colour principles:

In the late 1980s, as a counterbalance to her painting practice, Tuckwell taught herself to stitch and began creating small embroideries of simple geometric designs. She finessed her skills over the next decade and began to exhibit her textiles alongside her paintings. Tuckwell’s interest in textiles reflects an expanded feminist methodology that moves beyond gendered notions of art and craft. While techniques such as weaving and embroidery were historically relegated as a minor genre of art practised by female amateurs, in the early twentieth century women artists such as the Russian Constructivists Liubov Popanova and Varvana Stepanova, and weavers such as Anni Albers at the Bauhaus School challenged these hierarchical and gendered distinctions, and brought textiles to the fore of avant-garde art.

Tuckwell’s embroideries maintain formal and organisational consistency in their small scale, precise colour, economy of form and mathematical precision. Her work Orange L 2004 demarcates space using planes of block colours, juxtaposed against one another, to construct a series of overlapping ‘L’ shapes. Her more recent Untitled 2010, builds directional movement with angled forms. Another work Red Square 1997 points to the historical origins of Tuckwell’s abstraction. The title references Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich and his work of the same name of 1915. A pioneer of abstract art, Malevich developed a style he named Suprematism which emphasised the purity of shapes, especially the square. While Tuckwell has worked towards using a single colour in her works, she is compelled to include different colours:

Tuckwell studied painting at Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney 1981—83, and the National Art School, Sydney 1984—86. Tuckwell has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in survey exhibitions including Group Exchange: 2nd Tamworth Textile Triennial, Tamworth Regional Gallery, New South Wales, and national tour (2015–16) and was a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney (2011) and Waverley Art Prize, Waverley Woollahra Art School (2010). Her work is held in several public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Artbank, and regional galleries in New South Wales. The UNSW Art Collection holds a group of eight embroidered tapestries by Tuckwell dating from the early 1990s to the 2010s that were originally collected by Stephen Hesketh.

FEATURED WORKS FROM THE UNSW ART COLLECTION

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Louise Tuckwell | interview