Janenne Eaton’s practice incorporates painting, drawing, photography, installation, and video. Through solo and group exhibitions her works have been exhibited extensively in museums, contemporary art centres, independent artist run initiatives and commercial galleries, nationally and internationally since 1978.

Studies and fieldwork in archaeology have been a significant influence in the direction Janenne Eaton’s artwork has taken since the mid 1980’s. Researching archaeological, historical and contemporary records, the artist explores how we identify in the present with imprints from the past, to understand something of the movement of peoples across time and space, and the traces of human agency which record social, cultural and technological change.

A discernable and significant thread that links Eaton’s works through time and ‘times’, arises from the value the artist places on bringing voice to address social and political concerns, and to express something of the intangible complexities of the human condition. ‘Her paintings are shimmering meditations on the complex and deeply embedded structures of power and control that have shaped our histories and corral our present’ (Gellatly 2012). Through her works the artist explores the effects of local and geopolitical influences that impact on people and the environment. Critically, her work also seeks to focus a lens on the visual static that permeates contemporary life. Through the use of historical markers, textual symbols and digitalized elements embedded in cyber screen-based imaging, Janenne Eaton’s works highlight how a virtual language of sign systems mediates our day-to-day experience of the tangible world. Gathering together some of the key signifiers of our consumer-led, info-centric society, her works explore how we live within an ever evolving, digital ‘ecology’; and the challenges inherent in our changing relationship to time, space and place.

Press:
MEMO Review

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