Anna Kristensen, Yurt, 2020, oil and acrylic on linen, 58.50 x 87.60 x 2.00 cm, TCG22221
(photo: Yanni Kronenberg) private collection, Sydney

These two paintings, Yurt (shift) and Yurt, are doubles derived from the same source photo of a yurt at Yellowstone National Park, but they hold an invisible secret: they were painted from start to finish in entirely different ways. The smaller painting, Yurt, was painted using transparent painting techniques, the final colour effect being made up of many layers of colours. The larger painting, Yurt (Shift), is painted using more opaque techniques of mixing colour on the palette before applying to the canvas. The varied approaches to both paintings are ultimately obscured by their tightly resolved surfaces. Although the difference in scale between the two is subtle, when viewed as a set they gently warp the viewer’s sense of depth and distance in relation to the walls they hang upon. Together these paintings trigger an uncanny compulsion to scan back and forth for differences like one might with twins. Inverting both the outward-facing Set and the encircling Indian Chamber work, these two paintings now find us on the outside looking in: peering “through” the surface of the yurts’ shiny, wrinkled plastic windows into the dark interior like an x-ray, one glimpses their curving wooden rib cages. The yurts’ lattice infrastructure stretches the tent’s coated canvas much like the hidden stretcher bars holding these two paintings taut from within.

- notes on artwork by Rob Smith in conversation with the artist