SONG STONE

SONG: the music that takes existence way beyond practical human mundanity

STONE: the solid unmovable, benign cement of time

Working deliberately, and with open curiosity, in the holding space between freedom and constraint, artist Jo Lane creates work that incorporates found materials, drawing and a guiding sense of universal poetry.            

Her sculptures contrast solid, selected materiality with an air of softness and intelligence, while her drawings reflect a dedicated practice, where mind and matter are intertwined. Tactile by nature - marked, arranged, and negotiated by hand from raw materials, Jo’s work embraces notions of tension and release, engaging our awareness of the physical/spatial and emotional in equal measure.

The viewer is invited to consider and reflect on the nature of the work itself, allowing questions to emerge and grow over time, an empathetic and cathartic response to their deeply human qualities.

Gallery CATALOGUE >

Gallery of photos of SONG STONE by Annika Kafcaloudis

gallery of photos of SONG STONE by Julian Meehan

works included:

and . . . . .

Since our meeting in late January 2023, when Jo Lane invited me to review her forthcoming Song Stone exhibition, I have struggled between two coexisting mindsets. At first sight, I felt immediate fascination with the variety of her abstract and life-like images. At the same time I become aware of a rising fear and resistance to delving deeper.

Puzzled by my contradictory feelings I asked myself how was it possible for line drawings of strands of hair, hands tenderly embracing faceless heads, or coloured sculptured spheres and triangles to stir such silent, violent, visceral, wordless reactions?

After each of my repeated viewings I sensed I reached a tipping point, the moment when my perceptions merged into a dream-like drifting experience.

Adrift not into meaninglessness, rather I found myself merge with the images, then emerge with a deeper recognition of new meanings. Here I sort of recognised what Jo referenced as her ‘battleground’, those creative spaces where her titular ‘Song Stone’ wage eternal battles between, on the one hand, Song’s personal forces of silence, endless opportunity, freedom of thought, breaths that lead to song’s sensual composition, while on the other hand, her metaphoric Stone, ’the solid unmovable benign cement of time.’

No longer adrift, now I felt safe-enough, anchored in Song Stone’s narratives which coexist as a mixture of unfamiliar moods and Song Stone’s images which pushed and pulled me into troubling, exciting spaces, and which I initially resisted. Now I came to realise just how much I needed to drift, to allow myself to drift from there to be here.

It has been a journey.

Song Stone’s mysterious gravitational forces have the power to unsettle my perception enough to elicit both exhilaration and discomfort. In my case I came to reflect on my senses of privation.

Had I resisted my drifting experiences I would’ve missed this crucial inner self-recognition - the art would’ve missed me, I would have missed it, we would’ve missed each other. How sad that would have been.

So, my first suggestion: give yourself permission to surrender, give yourself a chance to drift into your own awesome encounters with Song Stone.

My second suggestion: do not resist your drifting mind as you encounter Song Stone’s images. Do not dilute this ecstatic, terrible moment. If you do, you just may miss the very essence of what unites us all in Jo Lane’s battleground, a fleeting experience of Life.

Dr George Halasz
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Monash University  
http://www.halasz.com.au