Jacki Fleet – Sea Country: Top End

BATCHELOR INSPIRED ART IN GOVERNMENT HOUSE COLLECTION

Batchelor Institute Senior Lecturer, Faculty Education, Arts and Social Science, Jacki Fleet has recently sold one of her own pieces of work purchased for display in Government House, Darwin.

Sea Country: Top End was developed as part of Jacki’s Master of Visual Arts project Ocean: Abstraction and Spirituality in the Top End. It responds to both inherited Western concepts of abstraction and spirituality and to the layered and combined cultural landscape of the Top End.

This painting was developed primarily in response to the many trips Jacki made to deliver the VET in Schools program for Batchelor Institute to the community of Numbulwar in the Gulf of Carpentaria (2004, ­2006) and the morning flights over the waters of the Gulf in small planes.

The painting has been on loan to Government House during the term of Tom and Tessa Pauling for four years or so. It was offered to the Government House Foundation for sale during this term but had been knocked back. This year the Foundation decided they would be interested in purchasing it for the collection and so now it has a home.

The composition combines explorations of:

• the ribbed sands of Numbulwar
• an aerial view of the water and horizon as experienced in the many flights over the Gulf where the horizon, sea and sky haze and definition is lost between the division of these realms
• and the surface patterns, texture and movement of the waters of Darwin Harbour from Jacki’s studio at Bullocky Point.

Jacki has tried to capture a light in nature that evokes an emotional response in the viewer such as she had felt in her journeys. The sense of boundlessness that occurs is not that of the tragic sublime of past Romanticisms but rather evokes feelings of joy and awe in Jacki at the beauty of the world.

We are proud of Jacki’s achievement and encourage viewing of Jacki’s piece in the surroundings of its new home at Government House.