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Welcome to season seven of the Prima Donna Podcast, Sonic

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Portraits of Australian Artists. This audio was recorded and produced on Wurundjeri Country.

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I pay respects to elders past and present.

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The third episode in this series features visual artist Wilma Tabacco.

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To find out more about this project and to hear more episodes like this

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one, visit prima donna podcast.com.

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I've titled this piece, the Interweaving of Images and Words.

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Prelude. . Primadonna is Italian, meaning First Lady, and refers to

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the lead soprano in an opera. Their roles written by men usually portray Temptresses courtesans.

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Power seekers, romantics, duped by lascivious men.

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These women mostly died dramatically on stage, stabbed, shot, poisoned,

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brokenhearted, or by their own hand.

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Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto contains an aria, sung by a

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tenor who plays the character of the Duke of Mantova . It

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is titled La Donna e Mobile.

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The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave and is

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based on a play by Victor Hugo. The tune is very upbeat and catchy.

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La Donna e Mobile translates as, Woman is Fickle.

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. It continues: Qual piuma al vento – like a feather in the wind

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Muta d’accento – e di pensier She changes her voice and mind.

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All translations inevitably lack the essence of the original language

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in this case, a more accurate translation is yes, woman is

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fickle like a feather in the wind. She has no voice and no mind, meaning she is dumb and silly.

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It gets worse. Sisters of the Revolution, add the Duke of Mantova, Signor Verdi, Signor Piave

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and Messieur Hugo to your burning list!

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Introducing myself, should I say I am Wilma Tabacco, or

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my name is Wilma Tabacco..

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I am first person. Singular of the present tense.

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Indicative of the verb to be conjugates as follows.

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I am. You are she. He is.

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We are. You are. They are. This is the first verb One learns when studying a foreign language.

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The next thing one learns to say is. What is your name, in Italian, ‘come ti chiami’?

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Answer: my name is Wilma Tabacco, in Italian, mi ciamo Wilma Tabacco.

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hear the difference in the voice modulation, tonality, and pronunciation

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When I use Italian to say my name. I remember a boy from my childhood who lived across the road from my family.

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His name was Prospero.

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In the Abruzzese dialect, my parents spoke.

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Prospero means a match.

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You know that thing once used for lighting fires?

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The Italian word for match is fiammifero.

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Prosper actually means prosperous, affluent of good fortune.

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I didn't know that at the time, so I thought, what a

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strange name to give someone. I did not then realize that my name was even stranger than his.

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Last week, a telephone recorded female robot-like voice instructed

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me to repeat a phrase three times so that my voice could be recorded for

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identification purposes in a government authorities voice recognition program.

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I could have refused, but then my problem would never

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be resolved, so I complied.

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Yes, I confess I did put on a very posh accent and disguised my voice,

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not deliberately, I just don't respond well to being told what to do, but

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the robotic voice did not complain.

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So now my disembodied voice officially identifies me and I don't like it.

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I felt affronted by the process. I wanted to inform that robot that I'm an artist and that some artists

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are identified by their artworks, Edvard Munch’s painting the scream.

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A picture of a woman's screaming popped into my head as I

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recorded my voice identity. That screaming woman is mute, but I felt her scream and

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wanted to add mine to her.

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Then I remembered Cy Twombly’s painted words echoing as moans, groans,

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and whales scribbled, scrawled, smudged, erased, and repeated.

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Yes, some artists are identified by their artworks.

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What impetus propels someone to become an artist, a

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musician, a dancer, a writer. Professions where potential failure stares you in the

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face at every step you take. There is no satisfactory answer.

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Perhaps clues can be found, captured within one's memory,

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fragmented and disconnected that might provide some insights.

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I remember an episode in primary school, grade one, I think the teacher gave

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each pupil a sheet of unlined paper and asked us to draw a tree in pencil.

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She then gave it a little demonstration of how we might go about this.

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For me, this experience was magical, mesmerizing.

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My tree didn't really look like a tree compared to some that the others

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had drawn, but I was happy, so happy.

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When I first attended primary school, I could not speak English.

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I was born in Italy and arrived here at the age of four.

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I have no memory of learning English.

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But I do remember that in the first week of prep grade, the teacher

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asked each pupil in turn to come onto her platform and, in chalk, copy a

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letter of the alphabet that she had listed previously sequentially, A to

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Z horizontally across the blackboard in her beautiful handwritten script.

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Our letter was to be written beneath hers.

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I got the letter B.. I made a downward vertical line turned right.

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I made an upward loop that joined the vertical in the correct position.

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Wrong Wilma. You make the downward vertical shaft, go back our pathway, make

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a right hand turn, create the loop downwards, and join it.

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Mine was missing that little sticking out bit of vertical line

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that allows the B to sit neatly on the horizontal line of a page.

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As soon as I was able to read and speak English, I became my

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parents' interpreter and translator.

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It was harder for them to learn a strange language as quickly as I had.

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This was such a big responsibility for a young child, one that caused

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me considerable embarrassment.

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Did these seemingly disconnected experiences from long ago plant some

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slow germinating seed in my psyche.

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One that fused the making of images with the formation of words, English,

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Italian and Abruzzese dialect?

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Abstract images, words in the alphabet, chopped up and reconfigured

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to look like maps of actual places are often the subject or sometimes

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the content of my paintings. I like to think of my abstractions as studied signs of illegibility.

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I write random words in unlined books, scrawled haphazardly over pages.

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They appear to have drifted down from the air and landed on a page

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in a sort of topography of thoughts.

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I've done this since the late eighties. I have books and books of interesting words that I

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sometimes refer to when I struggle

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to title works or exhibitions, words and images together.

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Lately, I've been collecting Latin words with the neuter suffix ‘ium’:

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premium Consortium, palladium Symposium, compendium, podium, and

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proscenium, just to name a few.

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There are hundreds of them used in the English language.

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In grade four, I was told that I would never be an artist.

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It was just before Christmas. I was asked to find a cardboard box that would be used to house the

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nativity scene we would later make.

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I did, and it was therefore my task to paint the outside of the

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box in a most glorious, dark blue.

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I now know it was ultramarine blue.

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It was meant to represent the night sky, I suppose.

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I commenced. No, that is not the way you paint.

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You don't paint smudgy marks with a loaded brush any old which way.

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You start at the top left corner of the box and paint in a straight

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horizontal line to the other corner.

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Then you repeat the same process under the first stroke and continue

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until you reach the bottom of the box.

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Wilma will never be an artist.

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Well, Mrs. So-and-So whose name and face I've forgotten, but whose words I've always

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remembered, I have now been a successful professional artist for nearly 40 years.

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What you didn't understand was that your formula lacked the

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personal, any residue, emotion, and it lacked my hand, hence, me.

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My first solo exhibition was in 1988 at Niagara Galleries in Richmond.

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Hard work, great ideas and superior technical painting skills can go

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unnoticed without an unexpected event that changes the course of one's life.

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The director of Niagara Galleries came to visit an artist colleague

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whose studio was located in the same complex as mine.

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To enter her studio. He had to pass through mine.

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He saw my paintings, liked them, and ask my colleague

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to tell me to telephone him. After having shown folios of my works to various gallery directors,

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that's what one did before digital images, the internet and social

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media, and being told, oh, we're booked up for the next three years.

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Come back some other time, meaning don't come back at all.

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I wasted no time. The rest is history.

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Thank you, Mr. William Nuttall. I exhibited with Niagara Galleries for 21 years, from 1988 until

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2010, with works sold to major national and state museums and

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galleries, and to private collectors.

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I can't go through my CV here.

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It runs to 13 pages of dense text.

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Suffice it to say that I've mounted 45 solo exhibitions in a variety

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of commercial and public spaces.

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Participated in 250 or more group exhibitions, co-directed an art

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gallery, Langford120 for eight years.

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Curated exhibitions, written essays, and more.

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My work has been reviewed in newspapers magazine.

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Books, catalogs have been published.

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Should I be so inclined I could add the following to my name: bachelor

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of Commerce, diploma in Education, diploma in Fine Arts, master in Arts

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and Doctorate in Philosophy, I've taught painting, drawing, and printmaking

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at university level for 32 years.

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Part-time, of course, and my teaching style is nothing like

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that of my fourth grade teacher. At the end of 2010, I resigned from my permanent part-time position at R M I T.

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I needed some fresh air.

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Earlier that same year. I parted ways with Niagara galleries.

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I needed new experiences.

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Folly, yes, risky , yes, but sometimes one needs a sea change

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irrespective of one's age. Independence called .In mid 2011, my R M I T and artist colleague

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Irene Barberis and I, neither of us lacking in initiative, opened our own

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independent commercial gallery space, langford120 in a beautiful, refurbished

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industrial warehouse in North Melbourne.

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This at a time when many commercial galleries were closing more folly.

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We had already initiated several collaborative projects

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in the past, so we're familiar with our particular skills.

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Over nearly 8 years running Langford 120

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we curated and mounted countless individual and group exhibitions

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with works by hundreds of emerging and established artists, local

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and international, that as it happened, were mostly women artists.

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We also exhibited our own works, including experimental installations.

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Ones that no commercial gallery would've wanted to show.

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Running a gallery was a wonderful experience for both

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of us, but being artists.

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We had little appetite for commerce. At the end of 2018 we relinquished the gallery space, which by the way

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is now a gymnasium deciding that we needed to focus instead on our

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own studio practices and careers.

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Then the next year, COVID arrived.

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During our time at Langford120, Marita smith from Gallerysmith

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visited us many times.

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She was encouraging and supportive, provided advice, even though

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technically we could have been considered working in competition.

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She liked my work and offered me a solo exhibition for 2019.

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I was delighted to accept. I've been fortunate to have the support of several reputable gallery

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directors over the years, including Helen Maxwell and Nancy Sever, both

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in Canberra, and now Marita smith.

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Verbal or written descriptions of visual images can be tedious, but I'll

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try and do a short summary for you. My paintings, especially those made in the last 20 years, appear simple,

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paired back to a few finely tuned colors and a bunch of crisscrossed

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or broken or continuous lines that act to enclose spaces or not.

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But there is more to my abstraction than meets the eye.

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Think poetry. Few words very carefully distilled to evoke ideas and emotions that

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are not described or explained.

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. After completing my doctoral thesis titled Reading Between the Lines that

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contextualized my striped works within modernist and contemporary abstract

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practices, I decided to focus less on optical perception and cultural

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color usage and more on ideas of change, destruction, and renewal.

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Aspects of my Italian cultural heritage with all its idiosyncrasies

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are in my formation, and this inevitably directs my work.

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But it's difficult to define the echoes and sentiments of

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foreignness or historical events.

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Certainly my work's content is not personal.

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It's not about my identity.

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Rather artifices of language displacement.

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Misplacement replacement plays out in what I make.

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Languages retain their own visual resonance as recorded

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in memories in histories.

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Cultural taste preferences, particular sensibilities, dreams,

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ruined monuments and architecture. Civilizations that speak to us through their buried, broken, and

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sometimes retrieved artifacts, shards of past endeavors,

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buried beneath layers of time.

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All of this lies under my seemingly cheery colors and razor sharp forms.

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For Walter Benjamin, digging becomes a synonym for self-discovery.

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A means for making art where the detritus of the past underlies

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the construction of sight of both modernity and memory.

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The images of the past "reside as treasures in the sober

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rooms of our later insights".

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I often wonder whether having been born in the high peaks of the

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central Apennine mountains in Italy, where to look down into troughs and

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valleys, and in winter even clouds has influenced my paintings in subtle

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ways that even I can't comprehend.

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Many of my paintings look like aerial views something to fly over

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rather than view from solid ground.

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This has the effect of drawing a viewer closer to the artwork

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and then propelling them backwards to safer ground.

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To move from place to place to be displaced for whatever reason is

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the history of human civilization.

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Through my paintings over the years, I have reconstructed Roman

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ruins, referenced seismic events, reimagined historical stories, and

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rebuilt, so to speak, in pure gold.

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The structures of L’Aquila where I was born, destroyed by that

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catastrophic earthquake in 2009.

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I have shattered glass, mapped the Campus Martius, depicted formations

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of Roman soldiers, divided the ancient Palatine hill into real estate plots,

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pieced together parts of Pompeii and Herculaneum and much more.

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All in the ambiguous visual language of hard-edge abstraction.

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If you wish to see some of my recent paintings, they are on

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display at Gallerysmith in.

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Abbotsford Street in North Melbourne in April, may of this year.

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I've titled this exhibition Proscenium.

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Proscenium: Latinised from Greek and meaning ‘a stage’.

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More specifically, the front part of the stage: the curtains and its framework.

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It is the metaphorical, vertical, frontal plane of space in a theater

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that can also be considered a social construct, separating the actors and

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their stage world from the audience.

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But because both are in the same auditorium, reciprocal

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responses are encouraged.

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This Proscenium suite of paintings has been carefully staged within

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a designated gallery space.

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The gallery becomes a staged setting for artworks that

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represent me in my absence. The sequential placement of individual works on the walls and

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the intervals between them provide an overarching narrative constructed

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through rhythm while each work retains its unique character.

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Unlike that body of work exhibited in 2019 under the title of Fosse,

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a Latin, French and Italian word.

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This time I've made linear configurations dominant.

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However, like most of my work over many years, in some way or another,

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the oscillation between form, shape and line creates a perpetual fluttering

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that tends to confound most viewers.

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Empty space can become shape, and then with the blinking of an

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eye slip back into nothingness.

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The frontality of these new works, the linearity that confounds spatial

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readings, the painted strokes that identify the hand, the finely tuned

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color, all aimed to express ideas, emotions and other influences

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embedded in their long gestation.

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While references to culture, language, ground, space and fragmented

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archeological artifacts are present in all my works, I think it's safe to

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say that unlike their predecessors, that dug into the archeology of the

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past, I prefer to consider these works as ‘inverted archaeology’,

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imagined remnants mapped for future archeologists to tunnel into and to

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speculate on the dystrophic ‘now’.

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Words are not substitutes for images, nor can they adequately elucidate

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their scope or describe their full range of potential meaning.

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This is the domain of the viewer.

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If you look into and between the lines of my works, through the colors

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inside and outside of bordering edges.

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You'll find what I have placed there.

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Artists in whatever field are restless creatures, never satisfied.

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There's always more to do. More to say, I could have done this, I should have done

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that are common refrains. I have some exciting new projects planned for the future.

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Also, I have not entirely given up on teaching art.

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For the last few years. I've conducted workshops at the art room in Footscray.

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A community arts hub run by two courageous and wonderful women where

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I'm able to share my specialized knowledge in challenging ways.

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I know that many young and now not so young artists have been

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grateful for my support and advice over the years, even long after

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they've graduated from university. It makes me proud to have had the opportunities to

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share my insights with them. If you've managed to listen to me up to this point.

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I, sincerely, thank you. You can see most of my works along with various essays, some written by

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me and others by more distinguished writers reproduced on my website.

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They are not the actual works. They are reproductions.

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Works or reproductions of works can be seen at Gallerysmith website

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also, you've been listening to the Prima Donna Podcast.

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To find out more about this project and to hear more episodes like this

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one, visit prima donna podcast.com.