Clinton Naina

Stolen Unknown

Clinton Naina has a knack for storytelling. He draws you in with humour and charisma, and while you’re enthralled and seduced he imparts devastating truths hiding in plain sight. He rejects the dissonant belief that history remains in the past and burns the story of himself and his ancestors into permanence through his art. While Naina’s creative endeavours take many forms, what resonates is his unique relationship to materials. Experimenting and pushing, he flirts with both risk and tradition. His selection of medium is highly dependent on the message of the individual work, a negotiation of form and function which Naina has been mastering since his introduction of bleach and bitumen in White King, Blak Queen. Bleach, paint, performance, soap, bitumen, wax, velvet, they are all equal tools in Naina’s artistic arsenal. He utilises medium in a way few artists do, he invites a material to collaborate with him, knowing that their connotations and idiosyncrasies bolster his concepts. Bleach has become an iconic medium for Naina, which he uses to sear photogram-esque silhouettes onto surfaces, most notably black velvet. Bleach has served Naina as an obtuse metaphor for colonisation, a tongue in cheek contradiction to blak queerness, and, in his most recent return to the medium, as a depiction of climate destruction. White King lists its features synonymously to colonial propaganda; whitens and protects, removes difficult stains, provides a superior clean. The toxic chemical whose purpose is to eliminate and remove is reappropriated by Naina as a narrative tool. Symbols have always had a place within Naina’s practice. In his paintings, gestural stokes partially conceal symbols and glyphs. At times the tension of oil and water-based media muddy imagery as the surface repels against the strong mark making of Naina’s hand. He is diligent and deliberate with all elements of communication. In contrast to Naina’s newest Stolen Unknown works are bold and graphic in nature. They are evocative of pictograms, transcendental of language and culture. They communicate an urgency through their simplicity of form. Their presence even more impactful with the 1:1 scale, ghostly shadows of tangible objects. Tortoise shell, dilly bags, shell necklaces are subversively played against crucifixes, chains, and textiles. Objects from two cultures at odds with one another - detritus and the sacred sitting side by side. One ponders the carnage that must accompany the creation of Naina’s bleach works. Physical objects, those dear and insidious, face the corrosive and unforgiving chemicals, holding strong on the surface of an artwork but irreparably altered in real time. Does indigenous flora and fauna, as seen in Stolen Climate flags in the National Gallery of Victoria’s collection, survive as more skeletal husk after exposure to White King? And in comparison, to what extent is an iron chain tarnished by Sodium Hypochlorite? Clinton Naina is a Merium Mir/Ku Ku man, living and working in Narrm (Melbourne). He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts, 1994, and a Master of Fine Art (Research) from the College of Fine Arts (UNSW), 2003. His work is held in numerous national collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, The Australian Museum, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Source: GallerySmith