The canvases in the exhibition explore my daydreams of home and garden. Exotic wildlife visitors are set amidst both tranquil garden vistas and the incongruity of soft furnishings, lavish wallpapers and parquetry floors that furbish domestic spaces. For a long time, our Gold Coast house was just a place to inhabit and produce work but […]
“Turn with your back to the beauty of the water and the lure of the verdant, undulating landscape lies ahead. There’s a mystery as to what is hidden beyond the curving corners of the tracks and roads,” imparts Melbourne-based Cathy Quinn. The title of her current body of work, Hinterland, not only references actual places […]
FORGING
FA M I L I A R I T Y
Preserving the innocence of youth has captivated
Sophie Gralton for twenty seven years, and she’s only
just getting started. Charli Rose Gerry writes.
Northern Rivers-based Melitta Perry’s new body of work evokes a sense of poignancy and hope. Typical of her visual language, sunburnt landscapes stretch to distant ranges under cloudless skies. Abandoned houses and old buildings stand mute in dry grassy fields but native creatures are active, “seemingly exempt from the constraints of time and borders.” Perry […]
Sydney-based Sophie Gralton’s artwork animates a shift in consciousness to a more intuitive, natural realm that is characterisesd by childhood. Fleeting memories and thoughts are revisited and given tangible form on canvases alive with tactile surfaces. Transcending specific locations or personalities, the paintings aim to evoke a sense of integration between days long past, the […]
Recognised as a narrative painter, Sydney-based Tanya Chaitow’s current exhibition is informed by an exploration of the work of the Old Masters, particularly the European paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries where the upper classes are portrayed in bucolic landscapes. Her interest in this era stemmed from a time when she was working directly […]
On the remote North West coast of Tasmania, a small but spectacular peninsula juts out into the expanse of Bass Strait. Here lies the historic township of Stanley that Elaine Green now calls home. Visiting the area a few years ago she’d had an epiphany. ‘While on a holiday exploring Tassie, we’d stopped in Stanley for a couple of days. Strolling along the beach there one morning I suddenly wanted to stay forever!’ Elaine’s current body of work depicts that immersive experience of place. Akin to 19th century Romanticism, her concern is with the intangible qualities; conditions of sky, light and atmosphere – the ever-changing drama of wind, water and clouds, the sweeping forces of nature.
Many of us would acknowledge that we have an old box of memorabilia stored away that we promise ourselves to sort through one of these days. Di West’s current body of works has been inspired by doing just that. Five years ago, she packed up and relocated from Brisbane to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Her family had moved from that country to Queensland when she was three years old and became the publicans of the heritage-listed Plough Inn Hotel in Southbank. Her grandfather was licensee of the now demolished Currumbin Hotel, all her school holidays were spent in that locale.
Once upon a time the world seemed younger and magic glimmered in shady bowers or radiated from windswept skies and seas ablaze with vivid hues. The art of Melissa Egan reopens a portal into storylands where all gravity has been cancelled and anything is possible. The titles of the exhibition and many of the works therein, indicate a ‘Sound of Music’ inspiration. Delightful, humour-tinged scenarios dance from the tip of Egan’s brush and we, like the von Trapp children accompanying Maria, follow her into the boundless realms of imagination to discover ‘a few of her favourite things’.
A sense of quietude pervades Robyn Sweaney’s new body of work. The mood is one of introspection and stasis. She explains that her current paintings were created amidst ‘a year of uncertainty and the complexities of a world where our collective experience of multiple lockdowns, orders to ‘stay at home’ and be ‘alone together’ have become the new normal’. The exhibition’s title, Long Road Home, references memories of pre-2020 excursions from Mullumbimby to visit family and the Victorian landscapes of childhood, as well as a 2012 residency in Broken Hill. ‘The vistas and dwellings I had encountered along the way were quite literally, a long way from home!’ remarks Sweaney. ‘More than just reflections on my travels, the imagery embodies the larger issues we’ve all faced. It is about distance, but also love, longing and hope.’
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