Drawing its title from a quote by famous footballer Zinédine Zidane, magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all responds to the Matildas recent Olympic campaign in Paris. Their swift rise to become possibly the highest profiled female sports team in Australia arguably also changed the nations sporting identity. My intention is to record this phenomenon and equally propose an alternative approach to conventional sports images through a series of oil paintings.

I am interested in pictures that have undergone various layers of technological mediation before being painted. The source images I am working from are colour printouts of digitally adjusted photos I took of video replays watched on my desktop screen.

Without a clear narrative, the paintings appear as fragments, situated somewhere between figuration and abstraction. Although they suggest movement, they also seem to be captured in slow motion that mirrors the slow oil painting process. Connecting this to Henri Bergson’s idea of the durée or slow time, a painting, unlike a snapshot or film still, encapsules time into its surface. Likewise, the elasticity of the medium itself which has adapted and persisted throughout artistic movements, echoes the non-linear ‘elastic’ experience of time. This non-linear experience of time is described by Zidane as “[t]he game, the event, is not necessarily experienced or remembered in ‘real time’. My memory of games, and events, are fragmented[.]”.

The Matildas played a crucial role in increasing the visibility of women’s sport in Australian sports coverage. In this context, magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all aims to create a dynamic and affective portrait of the Matildas. Situated as a document of social change, it explores the relation between the transformative power of sport and feminism.