‘Strange days have found us
And through their strange hours
We linger alone
Bodies confused
Memories misused
As we run from the day
To a strange night of stone’
The Doors, Strange Days (Jeffrey B. Atkins, Marcus Vest, Richard Keller; Universal Music Publishing Group), 1967
Against a synesthetic field of loud, vibrating colour, painted for this exhibition by Jan Nelson, stand the quiet, introspective, private figures of Walking in tall grass paused between childhood and adulthood. We fix adolescence as the time of inner turmoil, private worlds and secret refuges, doubt and imagination, protest and liberation. The human mind and body never really leaves this state of transition. Layered within Jan Nelson’s work is personal experience of her own formative years during the social, political and cultural tumult of 1960s. Building Walking in tall grass since 2001, Nelson’s figures are composites of individuals timelessly placed. Strange Days is from Nelson’s new series of work. It is also a composite: ‘The sculpture is part self-portrait, my memory of myself, and a girl I saw at Occupy Melbourne.’
