A softly focused, familiar feeling kitchen scene sits earnestly beside a pair of gestural monochrome portraits both depicting an archer with her bow drawn, poised to shoot. On the kitchen counter, two pearly pink jugs gleam in the clear morning light, arranged purposefully against the white tiles of the splashback. The violent potential of the archer’s taut bow heightens the jugs' fragility, generating a tension between two scenes. The pronounced curve of their delicate handles is echoed in the contour of the archer’s bow, their generous spouts and cinched necks in dialogue with the archer’s trim body and the precision of her stance.

'Jean’s Jugs' — whose were they, are they? Jean’s, presumably — the archer, Jean. But who is that? Did she make them or collect them? Where are these precious objects now — proudly on display or buried in a storage box? Small, fragile treasures imbued with history and meaning, their place within the wider hierarchy of objects known to few. And what of Jean, sportswoman, pottery enthusiast? Each rendered tenderly by Miranda Hine, their (indeterminate) stories live on, elevated through the act of being painted and entangled through the act of display.

Viewing Hine’s exhibition 'A Great Pair' feels akin to the pre-digital experience of collecting your packet of developed photos from the shop, only to discover that a mix-up has occurred, and you now hold 24 seemingly random images of someone else’s life. A kind of incidental intimacy, looking through someone else’s eyes without context, can leave one with a peculiar sensation of disconnected voyeurism. You can’t fight the natural curiosity that compels you to attempt to infer the relationships that presumably exist between the author and their subjects. There is an innate preoccupation with who the people in these images might be, why they were gathered, where that place is, and who does it matter to enough that they recorded it? Speculate all you might — frustratingly, you’ll never know.

I could tell you that Jean was the artist’s grandmother and that the jugs were part of her personal collection of antique ceramics inherited by Hine on her passing, along with the photographs of her as a young woman practising archery on her honeymoon. However, I could also tell you the artist stumbled on the images online and was struck by their formal qualities but has absolutely no personal connection to either Jean (or should I refer to her as fig. 7 and 8 from 'Archery techniques for women', 1937) or her alleged jugs (formerly available on eBay, sold for $38.42 USD in 2017.)

How would you know which story, if either, is right? Hine is asking you — does it really matter? Do you need to know? She is challenging you to interpret her work, to piece together the narratives that you know must be there from these disparate fragments. Hine is inviting you to bring your subjectivity to these works, to find your own connections within and beyond them. Above all else, she is empowering you to be correct, no matter what you think, and in doing so, she destabilises the established hierarchies of authorised interpretation that are central to our dominant, institutional models of exhibition-making and attending.

It is no coincidence that the questions Hine grapples with in her artistic practice are also the problems and open-ended conversations that underpin contemporary curatorial practice. What deserves to be looked at, thought about, organised, cared for, and why? What makes something meaningful? Who chooses?

Hine’s playful exhibition is littered with puns and ambiguity, almost satirising the seriousness with which the act of display is typically regarded. Installing her paintings as pairs and groupings (a nod to the role the Kuleshov effect1 plays in the construction of a curatorial narrative) deliberately establishes a series of initial relationships that the audience intuitively accepts and expands upon. Hine’s subject matter varies widely, from landscape to still life, portraiture to interior. Painting from photographs, either her own or found ones, her technical approach shifts responsively to the quality of the source image. Her range of imagery and styles lends itself to her aim, providing a wide scope for interrelation and interpretation.

At its core, 'A Great Pair' is a reflection on our instinctive, deeply human compulsion to seek meaning, and the acts that inform meaning-making: recording, selection, contextualisation, placement. Through her fundamental rejection of a singular didactic approach, Hine disrupts the prescriptive power dynamic between author and viewer, redistributing that power amongst you, the individuals of the audience. Unfortunately, that means this essay can’t help you any further — you’ll have to think about it for yourself.

Liam Bryan-Brown, October 2022

Footnotes

1. The Kuleshov effect was a montage, or film editing, experiment demonstrating the way audiences derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than a single shot.