Last year I had the privilege of working closely with artist Janina Green and curator Naomi Cass as part of a curatorial internship at Castlemaine Art Museum through my Bachelor of Creative Arts degree at La Trobe University, Bendigo. I was given the opportunity to help create the exhibition Janina Green in Conversation with the Collection.

The process of working on the exhibition began with meeting Janina in her Kensington studio, situated in an old industrial warehouse that has been retrofitted to house artists’ workrooms. As we sipped on coffee from matching china cups and saucers and ate almond biscuits, I became acquainted with both Janina as a person—a kind, funny and generous woman—and her art practice. Her photographs surrounded us, leaning against walls and stacked high on tables, providing glimpses of an artist’s life work that has focused on capturing evocative images of interiors, landscapes and portraits.

While Naomi and Janina sorted through photographs, we discussed how to marry the work with the unique collection of ceramics and paintings held at Castlemaine Art Museum, thinking through resonances with artists such as Klytie Pate, AME Bale, Clarice Beckett, William B Gould and Percy Leason. Over the next four months, the final selection of photographs was made and moved up to Castlemaine. For a while Janina would visit the museum weekly to discuss and hand-pick work from the collection.

During this time, I made lots of lists, entered information into spreadsheets, filled in condition reports, and learnt how to clean gold frames in a workshop conducted by Deb Peart, CAM’s honorary conservator. Gallery spaces were painted, permanent collections moved and floor layouts organised, until finally the exciting moment of install arrived. Installation of Janina’s photographic prints alongside the permanent collection was a tactile and intuitive process overseen by Naomi Cass, whose sixth sense for spatial sensibility was wonderful to learn from.

Once the exhibition was hung in the gallery space, I could immediately feel Janina’s work acutely in relation to my own life experience as a woman, mother and artist. Whether it is the bittersweet passing of time expressed in the portrait series of her daughter’s teenage friends, the enduring beauty of the unfurling roses, or the haunting loneliness of a country road at night, Janina Green’s photographs express an underlying emotional drama in the everyday moments of life. Her work sits well in the Castlemaine Art Museum, bridging the gap between an old world seen in the collection and a contemporary art conversation that seeks to give new interpretations to art genres such as the nude and landscape, and making an important contribution to our evolving cultural landscape of inclusion and gender diversity.

The delicately hand-coloured silver gelatin prints have had a gradual effect on my psyche, affecting how I see the world—a rose in full bloom is now a Janina Green rose, and the dark gloom of looming cypress trees is a Janina Green landscape—the artist’s subject matter imbuing my everyday.

Emily Donehue
October 2020

Once the exhibition was hung in the gallery space, I could immediately feel Janina’s work acutely in relation to my own life experience as a woman, mother and artist. Whether it is the bittersweet passing of time expressed in the portrait series of her daughter’s teenage friends, the enduring beauty of the unfurling roses, or the haunting loneliness of a country road at night, Janina Green’s photographs express an underlying emotional drama in the everyday moments of life. Her work sits well in the Castlemaine Art Museum, bridging the gap between an old world seen in the collection and a contemporary art conversation that seeks to give new interpretations to art genres such as the nude and landscape, and making an important contribution to our evolving cultural landscape of inclusion and gender diversity. The delicately hand-coloured silver gelatin prints have had a gradual effect on my psyche, affecting how I see the world—a rose in full bloom is now a Janina Green rose, and the dark gloom of looming cypress trees is a Janina Green landscape—the artist’s subject matter imbuing my everyday. Emily Donehue
October 2020