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Like a perfume that evokes an unknown culture of another time and place, these small experiences – phrases, fragments, sensory notes and memories – can become the meaning to which we give life and which we find in it.— Kate Daw1

Kate Daw narrates memories through a suite of small paintings, a floral wallpaper and typed ink canvases. Her motifs summon domestic interiors, various design cultures and textile patterns as part of an ongoing artistic investigation into feminine experience, desire and language. A friend’s garden is the subject of her wallpaper, derived from a nocturnal photograph of an abundantly flowering cherry blossom. Like a backdrop, this hand-made silkscreen on Indian calico is tinged with hues of blue, black and violet pigments. Daw titles her ensemble Love, Work as she deftly intertwines these realms by recalling Freud’s adage that ‘love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness’. In her own work, Daw gleans the subjective experience of painting, reading and remembering.

In 1992, Daw commenced ‘an idle experiment on a long, slow afternoon’ 2 by transcribing an excerpt from New Zealand short story writer, Katherine Mansfield. While thinking about the evocations and sensations of reading and its relationship to painting, Daw wound canvas through a typewriter. The resultant voice-text panels appear as if the ink has been embossed onto the canvas. Daw enunciates extracts from romantic novels, heightening the interrelation of visual and textual discourses; seeing and reading; image and word. These interludes conjugate the vocal with the visual in a giddy rush of seductive memories. Here are inflamed hearts, the scent of gardenia and the frivolity of playing piquet. For Daw, the relationship between text and image is enigmatic. Moreover, this ongoing series pays homage to authorship, ranging from Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene and Zelda Fitzgerald to simple recipes and advice columns. Clustered together, these small panels meld high literacy with mainstream sources, all fused with insouciance.

Newer paintings comprise pairings of patterned image and text with subject matter drawn from fragments of textile designs from various cultures. These patterns are augmented by paintings of book covers such as Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, depicting a pair of reading glasses near a glazed cherry dipped into a martini goblet. Novels, tales, books and stories are the touchstone of

Daw’s capacious practice. The Blue Hour (Guerlaine) (2016) is a text painting derived from the French expression for twilight: the suspended moment between daylight and darkness, a period of heightened emotion and interior turmoil. At the close of the workday, leisure is possible, allowing for the potential of intimacy and a space and time for dreaming and play.

Another new painting in this suite references felt Lenci dolls that were manufactured in Turin from 1919 until 1944. Inspired by Elena Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant Friend (2011) and a seminal scene where two dolls are dropped through a grille into a dark basement, this scene deftly tests and illustrates the boundaries and complexities of female friendship between two young girls. Daw is like a storyteller, carefully layering her practice with text and image, fables and phrases. For her, the personal is political as she fuses authorship, narrative, personal memories and shared cultural recollections as part of a feminised experience.

Natalie King is Chief Curator of Melbourne Biennial Lab; Senior Research Fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and Curator of Tracey Moffatt at the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017.

1—Kate Daw, ‘Meadow’, Ghar Ghar Ki Baat / Tales from Two Homes, curated by Heidi Fichtner and Vikki McInnes, exhibition catalogue, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2013, p. 122—Email correspondence between author and artist, February 2016

Kate Daw

Love, Work— Natalie King

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Kate Daw

Previous page Doctor’s waiting room 2016oil paint on gesso sottile40 x 30 cm

Opposite Voice (Z. Fitzgerald, 1932) 1993typed ink on canvasTriptych: 3 parts 25 x 20 cm eachCollection of Juliana Engberg and Kay Campbell, Melbourne

This pageVoice (G. Greene, 1969) (detail) 2012typed ink on canvas, Triptych: 3 parts 20 x 15 cm each

Photographs: Tobias Titz

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Kate Daw

Clockwise from top left POL (mother’s bedroom) 2016oil paint on gesso sottile30 x 30 cm

The Blue Hour (Guerlaine) 2016oil paint on gesso sottile30 x 30 cm

POL 1 (Germaine) 2016oil paint on gesso sottile30 x 30 cm

Acapulco (#2) 2016oil paint on gesso sottile30 x 30 cm

Purple Flower (Clontarf Street) 2015oil on linen/board30 x 30 cm

1975 (Daisy) 2016oil paint on gesso sottile30 x 30 cm

Silver (palace) 2016oil paint on gesso sottile30 x 30 cm

The Blue Hour 2016oil paint on gesso sottile30 x 30 cm

Photographs: Tobias Titz

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Kate Daw

Opposite Arietta’s House 201640 x 30 cm oil paint on gesso sottile

This page Lenci doll (back to the before) 201640 x 30 cm oil paint on gesso sottile Tweed 201630 x 30 cmoil paint on gesso sottile

Photographs: Tobias Titz

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Kate Daw

Left to right Travels with my Aunt 2016 oil paint on gesso sottile 40 x 30 cm

Lenci doll (Lenu and Lila) 2016oil paint on gesso sottile40 x 30 cm

Breakfast at Tiffany’s 2016oil paint on gesso sottile40 x 30 cm

Photographs: Tobias Titz