Jon Cattapan, Dissolve
“all that is certain falls into itself and evaporates”
In Conversation: Jon Cattapan & Natalie King (02.11.2020, Melbourne)
As Melbourne emerged from harsh lockdown, artist Jon Cattapan commenced a conversation with curator Natalie King discussing turbulence and uncertainty, friendship and loss and the reflective capabilities of painting. Their longstanding association and friendship dates back to Cattapan’s early series The City Submerged (1991), escapades when Cattapan had a studio in Greene Street Soho and Williasmsburg in New York (1989 – 91) and more recent scholarly forays at the Victorian College of the Arts. Here, they discuss literature and the complexities of our current condition of precarity, political volatility and dissolution.
Can you discuss the origins of the exhibition title Dissolve, associated with All That Is Solid Melts into Air and the transition or changing metaphysical states? I am also thinking about your 1991 exhibition The City Submerged where I wrote about haze and dissolution in your work.
image credit: Jon Cattapan, The Group Reacts, 2019-20, oil and acrylic on linen 140cm x180cm