JAKE WALKER
Pipes
27 February – 27 March 2021

STATION | MELBOURNE

Combining elements of sculpture, painting and ceramics, Walker’s multi-dimensional practice creates something familiar in an unfamiliar manner.

For Pipes, Walker returns to his ceramic stoneware frames, used to encase the predominantly monochrome paintings. Acting as a conceptual and visual device for exploration, the artist draws upon the many lineages of pipes as electrical conduits, plumbing fixtures, biological ‘plumbing’ (veins, intestines, valves). Walker also pays homage to his father – New Zealand architect Roger Walker – whose architectural practice often incorporates pipe formations as buildings, windows, peep holes and water tanks.

Pipes simultaneously points with tongue-in-cheek to Marcel Duchamp’s porcelain urinal, Fountain (1917). Duchamp’s pioneering of the readymade enabled Walker to question unconventional languages and methods from which to understand the process, nature and status of art and the privilege afforded to particular mediums.

Jake Walker’s practice displays vestiges of the artist’s hand in its many incarnations via inscriptions of the date, his initials and gestural etchings into the paint’s surface with the end of his brush upon found canvases and salvaged boards. The handmade ceramic frames expose the artist’s rough handling of materials, rejecting clean, hard edges in favour of rugged and organic forms. In deliberate opposition to systems of mass- production, Walker’s multi-dimensional works reflect the tactility and resourcefulness of the handmade. Scaled at an intimate size and acting as a gestural record of time, Pipes invites a slow inspection of subtly to heighten one’s awareness of material, texture and composition.

JAKE WALKER Pipes5low

Jake Walker
Pipes 2021
Installation view

JAKE WALKER Pipes4low

Jake Walker
Pipes 2021
Installation view

JAKE WALKER Pipes1low

Jake Walker
Pipes 2021
Installation view

JAKE WALKERPipes16low

Jake Walker
Pipes 2021
Installation view

JAKE WALKERPipes7low

Jake Walker
Pipes 2021
Installation view

JAKEWALKERPipes19low

Jake Walker
Pipes 2021
Installation view

151version2oilonlinenglazeerarthenware

Jake Walker
151 2021
acrylic, linen, glazed earthenware
36.0 x 44.0 cm

152202021Acryliclinen glazeearthenware copy

Jake Walker
152 2021
acrylic, linen, glazed earthenware
43.0 x 33.0 cm

150202021acryliclinen glazedearthenware copy

Jake Walker
150 2021
acrylic, linen, glazed earthenware
43.0 x 37.0 cm

1572021acryliconjutelinenplywoodearthenware copy

Jake Walker
157 2021
acrylic on jute and linen, plywood and earthenware
36.0 x 47.0 cm

156201120oilonlinenglazeeathenwarecopy

Jake Walker
156 2011
oil on linen and glazed earthenware
34.0 x 46.0 cm

IMG9101

Jake Walker
Untitled 2021
acrylic on jute
58.0 x 38.0 cm

1552021gessoonjuteplywoodglazeearthenware copy

Jake Walker
155 2021
gesso on jute, plywood, glazed earthenware
46.0 x 36.0 cm

1532021acryliconlinengessoearthenware copy

Jake Walker
153 2021
acrylic on linen, gesso and earthenware
58.0 x 36.0 cm

IMG9096low

Jake Walker
Play palette 2021
oil and acrylic on terracotta
23.0 x 28.0 cm