CREW

In 'CREW', which was first created for her 2021 project 'FRAMILY TIES' at the Art Gallery of NSW, American artist Nina Chanel Abney celebrates her ‘framily’, presenting a collection of tender portraits of friends and fellow creatives as well as a central self-portrait. The subjects are treated with reverent intimacy, sometimes against background patterns that evoke domestic or idyllic outdoor settings. The seven collages confidently take up the art of ‘cutting into colour’ (as Henri Matisse put it), using decisive shapes and radiant hues to make the human subjects seem iconic, beloved. Here images recalling family photos in an album or on a domestic wall are granted the scale and consequence of formal painted portraits. By placing her own portrait among others, Abney asserts that the success of one is contingent upon the support of many – a rebuke to the romantic image of the artist alone and a vibrant salute to her ‘crew’.