Effie Pryer, a Tasmania-based artist, crafts paintings that mix various mythologies from across the world with what she considers to be a distinctly Tasmanian perspective. She describes this viewpoint as “an eccentric combination of narratives reflecting our uniquely jumbled cultural perspective.” In a recent show titled “Something Borrowed” at Colville Gallery, she relates these stories through the faces of younger, modern models.
In a small series of portraits, the artist took influence feom a birthday party she attended, which had a theme of “The Old Gods.” The hurriedly created and hodgepodge nature of the costumes once again highlighted this notion of Tasmania’s diversity and ability to extra traditional notions into something new. This is also seen in how the artist takes traditional nude figure studies into the wild, with backdrops that greatly differ from classical approaches.
“It seems that contemporary Tasmania has a unique world view patchworked together from indigenous and migrant stories, beliefs, customs and languages, as well as the ongoing impact of globalisation,” she writes, in a statement. “As well as external influences, we have also developed our own words and phrases, both Indigenous and European in origin, and have our own tales from a wild landscape imbued with a long, difficult history.”
"A Student's Dream," the central oil painting in