Tanya Chaitow
A cup of sea to sail in
1 November - 26 November
View exhibition catalogue
"We set off in boats. The stars were the lights on top of the masts. We didn't know that stars are like fossils, imprints of the past, sending light like a message, like a dying wish. We set off in boats, thought we'd sail to the rim of the world and slip over the edge like a raft on a waterfall, spinning to the place we knew existed, if we dared to find it."
A gap in time. Jeanette Winterson
Early explorers set off into the unknown. They circled the world like satellites aiming to reinvent themselves and rewrite history. Guided only by the moon and stars they searched the Unknown for freedom and a piece of land. The traveller and eternity under the vast cloudless sky.
The moon circles the earth once every 28 days. She must find the reflection of its fullness in the sea, and then slowly turn her face away as if searching for something new or looking for something lost a long time ago. And so we continue as the explorers of our hopes. History repeats itself. Our brief excursions through time leave barely a trace.
We travel through life heavily bound by our expectations and disappointments. We are like turtles flying through the sky. Guided by starlight we set sail on our paper boats. We are inconsequential against the elements. All our hopes and dreams are like a pocket of air in an upturned boat as we struggle to find our way in the dark. We find our reflections, full, in the sea, and we slowly turn our faces away
In the image and likeness of the moon, we rewrite ourselves.
Tanya Chaitow.
A Cup of Sea to sail in invites the viewer on an emotive journey. Speaking to the inner child within the adult, TANYA CHAITOW's fanciful paintings and drawings blur past and present, fact and fiction, internal and external reality, to engage the viewer's imagination. Adopting a naive style, CHAITOW is able to work intuitively to capture fleeting mental states and her poetic works are charged with a powerful psychological resonance.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, TANYA CHAITOW immigrated to Australia in 1978. She completed her Masters of Fine Art at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales at the end of 2007. CHAITOW has had seven solo exhibitions since 2007 and exhibited in over fifty-five group shows since 1988. Her work is represented in both public and private collections in Australia, South Africa and the USA.