Rachel Milne

6 ‘It is because of the still life’s relatively stable subject matter, and the presumed banality… that the genre has been able to lend itself so freely to diversity and digression.’ 1 Painting from life is embedded in tradition, but often misconceived as irrelevant or passé. As a means to subvert this, contemporary artists frequently use the genre to make social, political or art-historical commentaries, with Newcastle based painter Rachel Milne one of these practitioners. Milne’s art practice stems from painterly tradition but is wrapped in the daily minutiae of modern life. Her works of art range from kitchen still lifes to vignettes of suburbia, ranging from the messy laundry room to the public and backyard pool. But without becoming nostalgic or parochial, Milne’s outsider’s eye captures the mise en scène playing before the viewer. Her paintings comment on matters beyond the domestic, extending to career forces, life passages and broader issues in gender politics. With a breadth of subjects in this exhibition, views draw upon traditions of 17 th century Dutch still life paintings. These small windows of the everyday belie the uncanny within; de-headed prawns are a metaphor for latent anger, eggs shelled and compiled neatly in a bowl, a reflection on loss and the fragility of life. These domestic scaled paintings not only reference Vanitas and Memento mori but also comment on being a woman in the 21 st century. This undercurrent is no better realised than in the deceptive and deliciously titled Knifed bun , its pink confection icing with protruding knife an allegory on global gender politics. Milne comments; ‘The stabbed bun is a response to what is happening in America (with Trump and the #metoo movement) and it makes me cringe having to say that, you can’t help but keep looking at it, that mundane frustration that you encounter as a woman…’ 2 Milne’s other domestic still lives are punctuated by the lack of people in the picture plane. Suburban lounge rooms are lived in with comfy chairs, floor rugs and piles of un-touched washing but devoid of human presence. Milne describes ‘that in these paintings there are never any people in them. I like the solitariness and the celebration of an object. I had quite a solitary upbringing as I was on my own a lot and to me there is something quite precious about that…’ 3 This vacancy is amplified by the fact that Milne paints home settings not always her own, bringing with it the voyeurism of inhabiting someone else’s personal and intimate space. FROM LIFE: The art of Rachel Milne