in this group exhibition, Catherine Asquith Gallery is delighted to present a selection of works by gallery represented artists whose work, in some form or another, elicits a sense of 'surface'.
Kate Briscoe’s ‘geological’ explorations of the Australian landscape, ‘map’ the formations of the Kimberley region, and are manifested in abstract compositions with the objective of presenting the ‘essence’ of a particular place. Texture has been a constant concern in Kate’s expression as an artist and is articulated in the indentations and striations of the canvas’s surface, the latter comprising acrylic, sand and pigment. The surface quality of Kate’s paintings has been a major descriptive tool within her practice allowing for the referencing of the substance and sensuality of the Earth closely observed.
Lluís Cera’s precise but sensitive stone sculptures are inordinately presented as smooth and pliable; the surface image undermines the weight and materials. Marble, granite, iron, bronze, wood or resins, hard and dense mediums, are nevertheless given a lightness of form. Depending on the material selected, literary texts or fragments partly from different languages are hewn or integrated into the work. This has been a constant feature in Cera’s art practice: a harmonious combination of literature with his sculptures.
Anthony Curtis offers the viewer the opportunity to ‘use’ his or her imagination and project upon the surface of the works, his or her own narrative. In his “Liminal” series, the subject is the images themselves – uninterrupted by a didactic representational narrative. The works in this series continues Anthony’s exploration of reductionism and objectivity in Photomedia art. The images are very much experimental in nature and rely on the powers of serendipity in their production. Anthony creates a set of technical and physical parameters, within which the process of creation can occur. Out of this system arise non-representational images that have no concrete referent, narrative or subject.
Sara Maher’s art is such a distinctly visual phenomenon that it in many ways resists explication since it exists most intensely and most completely as pure phenomena…It is vital to experience Maher’s work itself, no words or other forms of description or recording can come close to conveying the nature of this work adequately. Much of Maher’s work appears to have come into existence through some other agency than the human hand; it has the appearance of simply having formed through some natural organic process. The maniera in this case is not present - there is none. The characteristic mark of the artist is absent, it is as if somehow the artist’s ego has been sidestepped or subverted, as if the act of the artist is merely to create a means and an opportunity for materials to operate in ways which are unique and characteristic of them alone - the way ink coalesces, the way paper accepts staining, the way material eloquence can be coaxed out if led with a gentle and sensitive hand. (Extract from the catalogue essay by Seán Kelly for the exhibition, Inland- Rendering supernatural anxiety, LARQ (Landscape Art Research Queenstown),Queenstown, Tasmania.
For Rowen Matthews the Romantic era of Western art history provides the backdrop and a philosophical base from which he has ventured on his own highly individual path as an artist. The landscape as pictorialised in the 19th century may provide historical precedent but it is the land as encountered in an Australian context, in particular, the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, which has spurred his creative impulses to make something individual and independent from its ostensible sources. Large gestural mark-making and laden palette work cover the canvas to suggest the abstracted vision of the artist: the painted surface is as alive, moving and pulsating.
Maintaining and respecting the qualities within the surface of the painting support has been an integral part of Wendy Stokes’s painting practice. Wendy’s work is characteristic for maintaining broad areas of primed or un-primed canvas allowing the surface to hold the integrity of the gesture and mark whether it be a stain, wash ,painted or drawn mark. Her subject matter deals with interface, the space between seen and unseen, that ambiguous zone between recognition and abstraction, yet it is informed through immersive experience of the landscape. It is this daily experience of immersion in place that surface becomes not only a support but a metaphor for her experience. Wendy’s coastal landscape offers a flat plane on which nature and water acts; the washing, soaking, staining upon the shore; the act of walking and moving upon the surface of landscape and moving through the space offers multiple viewpoints of experience. These are re-enacted through the receptive qualities of the canvas’s surface.
A wealth of geometric and ornamental elements informs the superbly abstracted paintings of Karina Wisniewska. From a monochromatic basis, Karina develops deceptively simple yet complex patterns. The works are luminous with their intense colours, creating space, engendering depth and communicating with the architecture around them. At the same time, there is an inferred rhythm to the design which refers associatively to music and graphic notation. Karina arranges sound-colours into colour symphonies, which reference her previously highly successful career as a concert pianist and chamber musician. These works, created from a unique combination of acrylic, lacquer and quartz sand on canvas, to form an abstract, yet fluid composition, invariably couched within a minimal intensity of colour resonate with a lyricism, which seemingly draws the viewer in, “demanding that these works be seen and felt rather than merely looked at…”
The exhibition will be taken place at The Depot Gallery, located at: 2 Danks Street, Waterloo NSW 2017.
