Crossing the calm road

Anita Groener's travels over the past three years have left an indelible mark on her artistic palate. She celebrates the road in her new bipartite show.
By Billy Leahy Anita Groener has been racking up the miles: 7,500 over the last three years to be precise. It is a small irony, therefore, that her current and hugely impressive exhibition, Crossing, is spread over two galleries – the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Rubicon gallery – separated by a mere minute's jaunt around the hub of St Stephen's Green.
Groener's frequent trips from Ireland back to her native Netherlands and across the continent have left their mark on her artistic practise. The road is now her landscape and as a result it has become the ubiquitous and central motif in her new series of work. The metaphorical significances of the road and the actual demarcation involved in the recording of our paths are employed by the artist as tools to explore the nature of the self and the various nebulous facets of personal identity.
Throughout the series, Groener's roads emerge on the canvas without any clear points of departure or hints at destination. This is an important aspect in the works as it allows the artist to free the image of the road from any physical constraints and to use it as a purely metaphorical device firmly involved in the notion of process and movement. This is also reflected in the title of the exhibition. Groener explained: “The verb ‘crossing' signifies movement, a movement which is not uniform, but is drawn back and forth. Crossing implies impermanence. It is the motion of nature and being.”
The exploration of identity and theories on how the self is comprised by the sum of constituent parts has fascinated Groener for some time and gains special personal precedence because of the cultural displacement she felt on leaving Holland for Ireland two decades ago. This move, she has admitted, forced her to reflect on her roots, history and cultural heritage and to become more philosophical about notions of identity and loss.
The large body of work that forms Crossing wanders through artistic media and consists of tempera drawings on paper and three video pieces, both to be found in the RHA, and canvas works located in both gallery spaces. Aesthetically, for the paintings and drawings, Groener has adopted a muted palette consisting of blacks, greys and dull whites, which completes her progression from the vivid colours of her early work to an increasingly more subdued selection. Groener has explained the absence of bright paint is in fact an attempt to reconsider the very nature and effect of colour. The greys, whites and blacks do have large tonal variation, which rids the need for colour while also creating an air of solemnity and silence in the works.
This calmness is underpinned by the minimal motifs and patterns on the canvas. With a carefully considered approach, Groener has set about paring down what appears in the painting, removing everything unnecessary, until only the fundamental and critical forms exist. Even the video pieces are stripped down and barem, with very uncomplicated and repetitive actions backing up the paintings and drawings, while the extra dimensions of time, sound and motion extend the dialogue further.