Mèo/Mèo - Mary Cherry Contemporary
Mèo/Mèo is Melissa Nguyen’s solo show at Mary Cherry Contemporary. Unassuming and tucked away in Collingwood, Mary Cherry hides near several other galleries. I really do mean hide because I had legit never heard of the space before going to see this show, but that probably says far more about me tbh. Obviously, I’d never been to the gallery before, but I was very pleasantly surprised by what I found. It’s big, light, bright, and airy, despite the fact it was pissing down with rain outside when I visited.
I’ve written about it before (read it here), but I am obsessed with the currently popular style of painting that views things softly, holding them in a blurry state of flux. But this isn’t to say that Melissa is doing what everyone else is doing!! Nguyen has a distinct style and voice in her paintings. From the neon Con Chó (Không Mèo) that greets you at the door, to the body of work around the corner in the main gallery space. Utilising a limited palette that blends into itself, each work becomes even more definite through colour. Hung together, Makamp and Vải Lanh, create a nostalgic and fragmented dialogue with each other. It reminds me of seeing my dad standing in his garden - the light filtering through the leaves, the ground soft beneath our collective feet, a memory hazy through time. And Pokémon will always remind me of my childhood; playing on the Gameboy with my brother until it was too dark to see the screen anymore - I always picked Charmander as my starter. Reliving memories of the past can fragment them - replaying something and copying it in turn then creates something new.
There are two canvases in the room that at first look totally blank, but they’re actually painted with rabbit skin glue, and they are truly incredible. The glue has caused the canvas to tighten, shrinking and pinching the material to leave the images as impressions. Where the canvas isn’t lit directly, the glue picks up the light, reflecting back a highlight. But where the canvas is catching the light, the dip then catches the shadows, leaving the glued parts in the dark. Both of these things are true at the same time on the canvas – the top half is light on dark, and the bottom half dark on light. The two sides are working together, both pushing and pulling to sit in a constant state of tension. Reminiscent of a face card in a deck of playing cards, playing (pardon the pun) into the idea of copies, repetition, and the authenticity of the original that Nguyen explores through the show. These two paintings are the centre of the show for me, instantly drawing me when I walked into the gallery, and drawing me back after spending some time with everything else. As you walk around, the light interacts with the work, revealing new things to you but then hiding what you’ve already come to know. You cannot stay in one place to see these paintings, and there is nowhere in the room that you can stand to reveal the whole thing at once.
I don’t always believe in reading the exhibition text to understand work that isn’t made clear on the surface, but the text that accompanies this show aides the understanding of the artist’s diasporic experience and how it’s reflected in the work. Melissa Nguyen writes about “the tension of existing between two cultural spheres, revealing how identity can be shaped by both proximity and distance” and it reflects in a great show full of that tension.
Mèo/Mèo is on at Mary Cherry Contemporary until June 7th.