Field Notes: India Kenning

India Kenning works with painting and mark-making using hand-made pigments. Her work references the ever-changing natural environment of lutruwita and its complex natural systems.

India considers her paintings as assemblages of materials. Using mostly raw pigments with water and oil. Through processes of layering and weathering the medium, the physicality and material presence of the work comes to the fore-front of each piece. India constructs abstract narratives using recycled materials and personal disused paintings; stitched and assembled together. She interprets the landscape through gestural mark-making and colour, revealing elements of place and her relationship to the environment. The work demonstrates a particular interest in the decay, regeneration and micro-ecologies that exist in the ever-changing landscape of lutruwita.

Through this exhibition India has experimented and formed her own personal processes with ancient techniques; making tempera medium with oils and egg yolk and incorporating mono-printing into the paintings while incorporating elements of her sculptural background in the surfaces and forms she has chosen to paint on.

Image: India Kenning, Sweet Stain (detail), 2023, raw pigment and oil on cotton, 30 X 70cm