There is a liminal space between the forms of painting and sculpture that eludes representation. A space where the third and second dimensions collide. Where line and colour, texture and form intersect, interweave and interact. Visual artists Lousie Blyton and Melinda Harper relish this space, creating striking yet unpretentious works with strong geometric motifs reminiscent of ‘The Greats’ of abstractionism and modernism – Mondrian; Rothko; Malevich.
Harpers’ interrupted tessellations and repetitions of shapes and lines create spectacular visual illusions transforming canvases into apparently living and moving three-dimensional scapes of colour. On the other hand, Blyton adopts a more reductivist approach, choosing to hero a single square or circle – stripping it of its context, encouraging it to project its own meaning into and onto a physical space.
In conversation, the works of both artists dialogue precisely, humbly and masterfully.
DATES
Exhibition dates: Mar 24 – Apr 25, 2022
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Upcoming Exhibitions
David Frazer
Exhibition dates: Apr 28 – May 23, 2022
Official opening: Sun May 1, 2022 from 2pm – 4pm
David Frazer’s linocuts, etchings and wood engravings are dominated by a sense of place. Frazer captures the frailty and complexity of life with works rich in human emotion, where loneliness and yearning are central. He often places a lone figure, or a couple, in his compositions to evoke nostalgia – capturing a moment of profoundly human interaction that is universally recognised; in a way that is precise, intentional and imbued with care.
No matter the scale of Frazer’s work – whether a wall-sized linocuts or palm-sized wood engraving – the stories Frazer invites us to share consistently feel intimate and familiar, making him a visual poet, a master storyteller.
Carolyn Graham & Lucinda Tanner
Exhibition dates: May 26 – Jun 20, 2022
Meet Carolyn Graham: Sun May 29, 2022 from 2pm – 4pm
Synchronicity – perhaps of place, perhaps of time – connects Lucinda Tanner’s and Carolyn Graham’s latest bodies of work. Tanner’s most recent prints emerged from walks through her local forest, where she spent time reflecting on ideas of caring – who cares? What is cared for? What is the value of care? Marbled ink flows around woodcut leaves, intertwining and connecting in multi-process, multicolour works that signify the combinations and collaborations in which we require each other.
Graham’s predominantly hand printed animals and birds sit quietly, but not passively, alongside these connective webs. Bears, hares and cassowaries stand proudly in Graham’s lino and woodcuts, inviting us to marvel at their natural beauty. In her portrait-like depictions of animals and birds, Graham captures a rare moment of stillness. Shortly, we expect to see her creatures rummaging through or flying above environments not dissimilar to those created by Tanner.
Deborah Klein solo – Rückenfigur
Exhibition dates: Jun 23 – Jul 17, 2022
Official opening: Jun 26, 2022 from 2pm – 4pm
‘I like a view, but I like to sit with my back turned to it.’ Gertrude Stein 1874-1946
The representation of the feminine personae has long been a subject of art history. The female visage has featured in various depictions in this history – obscured, averted, deformed, glorified, domesticised, dehumanised. In her latest exhibition, artist Deborah Klein builds on this artistic canon of the feminine, offering us the idea of Rückenfigur – “the figure seen from behind”.
Weaving together sewing iconography derived primarily from handmade doilies inherited from her late Aunt Eileen, and motifs of knots and braids, Klein stitches together a story that is as complex as the knots that she depicts; a story of the perpetual outsider where our current state of disconnection – from ourselves, each other and the natural world – is rendered palpable.
Susan Wald – QG Pop-Up in Melbourne
Exhibition dates: Jul 19th – 31
Official opening: Jul 19, 2022 from 6pm – 8pm
Location: fortyfivedownstairs
Those familiar with Mungo will know that it is a place of discovery. Home to the oldest skeleton ever found in Australia, it is also a place of history and transformation, a national park infused with the beauty and pain of Australia’s first people and their stories. It is both a burial site and museum, a natural wonder and record of a moment in time that we look to to make sense of our time.
Named after this sacred piece of land, Susan Wald’s latest body of work records her personal feelings and responses to Mungo. Her monochromatic monotypes, sometimes coloured with ochres, browns and mauves, along with her paintings, are monumental in presence – the low vantage point from which Wald paints and prints making Mungo’s Mars-like terrain of rocks and boulders seem larger than life itself. Somehow, with just a plate and some ink, with just a palette of paint, Wald both captures the historical gravitas of a place that marks the beginning of the Australian landscape and its people whilst also foreshadowing its dry, desolate and barren end.
As Christopher Heathcote notes, “there is no way to discuss [Susan Wald’s paintings and drawings] without confronting a genuine psychological weight.”
