Hayley and Carla leave on their journey this morning back to Sydney town. We will be sorry to see them go as the ‘Festival of Carla and Hayley comes to a close. They have agreed to contribute to this online Laboratory and we are so excited that we can share an insight to their practices and thinking, enriching our platform.

Here’s their first post….

Carla and I have been really enjoying the PAINTING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD catalogue from the Walker Art Center. The catalogue has thirty great artists and 16 texts exploring the conceptual and technical issues imbedded in contemporary painting. We have had a lot of great conversations around these essays during the making of this work—and it has continued with Ali and Tarn up here at RAYGUN, giving us some good ideas for where to go next. Douglas Fogle’s essay The Trouble with Painting frames the questions of the exhibition.

But is the question of painting’s vitality really the one we should be asking? Perhaps it’s rather a question of the ontology of painting, the very nature of its being. If we move the discussion of painting out of the realm of its death and rebirth, maybe the questions we should be asking are these: Is painting a mode of thought? Is there a philosophy of painting that extends beyond the confines of the medium? Where does the edge of the canvas end and the edge of the world begin? [15]