Australia-born, New York-based artist Jessica Rankin recently opened her first Hong Kong solo exhibition, Sky Sound at White Cube, which was two years in the making. It comprises 26 works of acrylic and embroidery on linen, and of acrylic, graphite, watercolour and thread on paper; coils of floating colour and shapes swirl and shift across the surface of her intimate and monumental works, intersecting with rigid lines of embroidered thread, a signature element of her work.

Rankin builds on the creative innovations of 1970s feminists like Judy Chicago and Margaret Harrison, who upended the traditional hierarchy and distinction between art and craft, bringing “women’s craft” and needlework into the contemporary art space, while at the same time developing her own distinct visual vocabulary. Embracing a fluid approach to media, Rankin uses brushstrokes and embroidery interchangeably, fusing the two with “masculine” fields like cartography, and incorporating geometric forms, astronomical signs and the written word to create an abstracted language. 

The written word, in fact, has come to be as much a defining element in Rankin’s work as her use of embroidery. Throughout her career, she has incorporated words into her work: quotes from books, snatches of overheard conversation, thoughts, poetry and memories take shape and materialise, floating in thread across gossamer, canvas or paper. Although they are not as visually prominent in this exhibition, words are once again foundational to the thematic framework of the show. 

Born in Sydney in 1971 to poet and playwright mother Jennifer Rankin and renowned painter David Rankin, the artist cites her mother’s poetic influence in this exhibition, fusing words with painting, and presenting a dialogue between paint and textile, as well as mother and daughter. Painting and embroidering on raw linen, instead of the diaphanous panels of sheer organdie for which she is best known, she embroiders in thread down the sides of the linen stretchers of many of the paintings. “After years of working on thin fabric, the very body of the stretcher feels like a sculpture to me and so the sides of the painting became as much a part of the painting as the surface. I found that language could sit there far more comfortably – like the spine of a book,” she says. 

Building on her earlier map-inspired mindscapes, canvases and paper are awash with colour as pigmented waves, splatters, lines and shapes dance across the surface. Pigments bleed from geometric shapes into abstract, amorphous forms, from coolness into warmth, motion into stillness. On the ground floor of White Cube hangs the titular Sky Sound, JR (2024), a large, abstract painting composed of six intertwined circles against a background of unprimed linen.

This work, like many of the other canvases and works on paper featured in this exhibition, combines paint and embroidered passages drawn from poems, including by the artist’s mother – in this case, one titled Earth Web. A large, pale-yellow sphere is speckled with strokes of white at its left edge, radiating embroidered lines of pale blues mirroring the dazzling diamond-ring effect that occurs during solar eclipses. In this cornerstone of the exhibition, the artist delivers a celestial vision, merging the heavenly and earthly, the tangible and intangible. Dusky splashes of violet, indigo and white acrylic pigment unfold like ribbons across the surface, juxtaposed with delicate, rigid lines of blue thread radiating from a densely embroidered, black, cross-hatched orb. On the left side of the stretcher, the words of the title, “sky” and “sound”, are spelled out vertically in thread, the letters stacked on atop one another, and the words spaced out at either end of the frame. The outlines of a large, red circle, painted across the right side of the linen canvas, continue beyond the confines of the canvas and onto the other side of the stretcher. The flat stroke of paint is transformed, as if alchemically, and given dimension with embroidered red thread.

Rankin’s paintings are strongest when she allows for gestures and movement to float in space and breathe, and this is demonstrated best in her larger works. A playful dialogue between lightness and weight, paint and thread can be found across many of the works in this exhibition, as landscapes of constellations and mark-making emerge from spare expanses of raw linen. In With Words, JR (2024), a joyous firecracker of small feathery strokes of pink and watery washes of blue and smoky black pigment explode across the centre of the canvas, intersecting with the rigid, geometric, cross-hatched lines of embroidery, as Rankin tries to capture the language of brushstrokes through thread. 

Hanging nearby, vertical composition Winging at the Edges, JR (2024) elegantly explores the relationship and tension between absence and presence, movement and stillness. Taking its title from the poem Earth-speak, the work visually invokes the poem’s opening line, “One rook winging at the edges of this sky”, bringing her mother’s poetry to life. We can make out what looks like a black bird frozen mid-flight, wings extended and skimming the edges of an embroidered radiating golden sun, like Icarus flying too close to it. Beneath it, a cascade of confetti in fuchsia, gold and black reflects a rush of wind or perhaps the flutter of a flock of birds. Again, the words of the title, “winging at the” and “edges”, are delicately embroidered in thread on either side of the vertical stretcher. 

Rankin has a preoccupation with capturing the unseen or immaterial, and has cited modernist Swedish artist Hilma af Klint and German-American painter Agnes Pelton as inspirations. Both artists were also spiritual seekers, whose works were intended to convey transcendental messages to humanity. Rankin taps into a theosophical artistic visual lineage that strives to reach beyond the visible world. Standing among the paintings in the gallery, it is as if the artist is striving to pin down the fleetingness, intangibility and fragility of memory and emotion, of giving form to the mutability of water and wind, the essence of light, sound, breath, spirit and the disembodied. 

A smaller square format work on linen, Fall Out of the Sun, JR (2024) features a fringe of looped, coloured threads spilling out of the canvas like ectoplasm, spiritual energy exteriorised by physical media, and arcing across the canvas in red, pink and turquoise. The surface is alive with movement and energy. In the painting And the Sky Rushed Down, JR (2024), a rush of wind, suggested by the title, is conveyed in the serpentine blue and white lines that descend from the upper edge of the canvas, crashing into a wave of water, giving rise to a dazzling sea spray, a jet of threaded lines and pointillist daubs of colour. A mediumistic quality is revealed as the artist enters into dialogue with her mother through her poetry, reaching beyond time and space, the earthly and the spirit, the poet’s words guiding skittish shapes and forms over canvas and paper. Merging internal and external worlds, the past and the present, the personal and historical, Sky Sound is an unfolding cartography of consciousness, emotion and the unseen.

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澳洲出生、現居美國紐約的藝術家傑西卡．蘭金最近於白立方舉行首個香港個展「天音」。展覽籌備耗時兩年，26 件作品親切而瑰麗，分別有亞麻布上的丙烯酸和刺繡，還有紙上的丙烯酸、石墨、水彩和繡線。蘭金的作品以繡花線為特色元素，這些剛強的繡花線線條與畫作上一圈圈玲瓏浮凸、轉動翻騰的色彩與形狀相互交錯。

1970 年代的女權主義者，包括茱迪．芝加哥 （Judy Chicago） 和瑪嘉麗．夏理遜 （Margaret Harrison） 等都是蘭金的靈感來源，蘭金以她們的創意與創新為基礎，顛覆了藝術與手工藝之間傳統上的高低之分，她將「女性手工藝」和針黹引進當代藝術空間，同時發展出獨當一面的視覺詞彙。蘭金以流暢的手法處理媒體，配合交替採用的筆觸和刺繡，與製圖學等所謂「男性」領域融為一體，再結合幾何形狀、星座符號和文字來創造抽象的語言。

事實上，文字已經和刺繡一樣成為蘭金作品中的要素。在她整個藝術生涯中，蘭金不斷在作品中融入各種文字，包括名著金句、無意中聽到的對話、思想、詩歌和記憶，令這些文字具像成形，化身為薄紗、畫布或紙張上的繡線。儘管在視覺而言，文字在是次展覽不算格外突出，但已再次成為展覽主題框架的基礎。

蘭金1971年出生於悉尼，其母珍妮花．蘭金（Jennifer Rankin）是詩人兼劇作家，父親則是名畫家大衛．蘭金（David Rankin）。本展覽可以看到藝術家引用其母的詩作，不僅融會文字與繪畫，也在顏料與紡織品之間呈現母女二人的對話。亞麻布上採用了繪畫和刺繡，而不是她最有名的輕薄歐根紗；刺繡的踪影可以在不少畫作的亞麻布拉底架框邊看到。她表示：「在薄織物上作畫多年後，讓我覺得拉底架本身就是雕塑，所以框邊和布面都是畫作的一部分。我發現語言放在框邊感覺上更自然，就如書脊一樣。」

藝術家以早期由地圖啟發的思維景觀為基礎，畫布和紙張上色彩紛陳，不同色調的波浪、水花、線條和形狀翩翩起舞。顏料從幾何形狀溢出，形成抽象和無固定形狀的形態，由冷酷變得溫暖，從動態變成靜止。白立方的地面層展出了與展覽同名的作品《天音，JR》（2024年），這幅大型抽象畫由六個交織的圓圈組成，畫布是沒有塗上底漆的亞麻布。

這件作品與本展覽中的很多其他畫布和紙張作品一樣取材自詩歌，再以色彩和刺繡呈現。本作品取材自蘭金母親的詩作《地球網》（Earth Web）。畫中淡黃色的大球體，左邊緣以白色筆觸點綴，淡藍色的刺繡線條由球體散開，有如日蝕時耀眼的鑽石環效果。藝術家在展覽的基調中傳達天空的想像，將天與地、有形與無形融為一體。紫色、靛藍色和白色丙烯酸顏料淡暗地四濺，就像絲帶在畫面展開，與黑色交叉線密集刺繡球體散射出來，剛柔並重的藍色繡線互相映照。在拉底架左側，標題中的單詞「天空」（Sky）和「聲音」（Sound）以繡線垂直拼寫，字母相互堆疊，兩個單字分佈在拉底架兩端。一個大紅圈的輪廓畫在亞麻畫布右側，一直延伸至畫布以外到拉底架的另一側。平筆顏料像煉金術一樣由紅色繡花線呈現，為作品增添了立體感。

蘭金令人感受最深的畫作，往往出現於她能夠無拘無束地揮筆、自由放任地呼吸的時候， 而她的大型作品就是最好的體現。是次展覽的作品中，不少都表達出輕盈與重量、顏料與繡線之間的嬉笑對話，亞麻布畫布上既有星座的風景，也有在空曠中現身的標記。在《言語， JR》（With Words，2024年）中，蘭金試圖以繡線捕捉筆觸的語言：羽毛般輕巧粉紅色筆觸與藍色和煙熏黑色顏料的水洗效果在畫布中心綻放，與實在、幾何、交叉刺繡的線條交織。

另一邊廂是垂直構圖的《天際展翅， JR》（Winging at the Edges，2024 年），這幅作品優雅地探索存在與不存在、運動與靜止之間的關係和張力。畫作標題來自詩作《地球之語》（Earth-speak），在視覺上引用了詩作的首句：「烏鴉在天際翺翔」，活現了藝術家母親的詩歌。我們可以看到黑色的鳥在飛行期間凝住的一刻，牠展開翅膀，掠過刺繡而成、閃耀金光的太陽邊緣，就像希臘神話人物伊卡洛斯飛得太接近太陽一樣。烏鴉身下是連串紫紅色、金色和黑色的五彩碎屑，反照著突如其來的風，又或可能一群鳥兒拍翼飛過。同樣，標題中的「winging at the」和「edges」，在垂直底拉架的兩側以精緻的繡線表達。

蘭金著意捕捉看不見或非物質的事物，曾引用現代主義瑞典藝術家希爾瑪．阿夫．克里姆特 （Hilma af Klint） 和德裔美國畫家艾格尼絲．佩爾頓 （Agnes Pelton）為靈感來源。兩位藝術家同樣追求靈性，作品旨在向人類傳達超然的含義。蘭金運用了神智藝術視覺，致力超越可見的世界。身處畫廊被展出畫作包圍，可以感愛到藝術家在努力確定記憶和情感的轉瞬即逝、無形無相和脆弱，為了讓看不見的變成有其形狀，她為水與風加入可變性，為光、聲音、呼吸、精神和沒有形態的事物賦予精粹。

《從太陽掉下， JR》（Fall Out of the Sun，2024 年）是較小的方形亞麻布作品，環形彩色線圈像靈外質般從畫布流瀉，靈性的能量被物理媒體外化，並以紅色、粉紅色和綠松石色在畫布上拼出弧線，令畫面洋溢動感與活力。《天空湧下來，JR》（And the Sky Rushed Down，2024年）畫如其題，暗示一陣風從畫布上緣蜿蜒的藍白線條中吹下來，擊起一波以繡線線條和點彩畫色彩塗抹畫面，又令人炫目的海浪。藝術家以親撰的詩歌與母親展開對話，跨過時空、塵世和心靈，媒體特質悠然躍現，將詩人一字一句在畫布和紙張上化為靈動的形狀。內與外、今與昔、個人和歷史渾然糅合，「天音」是一幅連結意識、情感和看不見但一步步展開的地圖。