TEN: Contemporary Painting at
White Canvas Space, Newstead
White Canvas Space presents an exhibition of ten contemporary painted works surveying the ways that painters continue to explore and re-invent abstract painting. Ten Queensland artists with individual painting practices are invited to participate in the exhibition exploring paint as the idea, the subject, and the medium, on large scale landscape or portrait formats. Formalism, abstraction, and the stylisation of a number of personal and historical realities are expressed through spatial painterly renditions. The significance of the number ten is threefold: The number of artists; The paintings exhibited; The numerology of ten (10) symbolising the completion of a set and, or a new beginning inspiring new behaviours and interpretations of ways of being in the world.
The 21st century is characterised by globalisation and a media infused technological world, yet artists continue to explore a painted pictorial logic, the question arises, why painting, why now? One of the attractions may be that painting and its process of production that takes time; time to think, play, and secure an image. In many ways painting can be considered a conversation with time as the act of painting can represent long durations of creative practice influenced by the visual, and the origins of painting. As an artform painting is deeply historical, self-reflexive and manages to encompass elements of yesterday, today and at times predictions of tomorrow. The painter expresses discourses and thoughts of the world through working with materiality, context and painted conditions that come together as images, during a search for a personal voice.
Because the imitative arts were prominent in the history of easel painting, the visual arts is associated with easel painting. In this context visuality is represented through oil paint, brushes and mimetic imagery. The skillful mimicry of nature through colour and mark were considered, and still to some extent the mark of an accomplished painter. Although painting originated in a technical mimetic context those who paint understand there is an imagining that will not be defeated that arises from the symbolic and painterly nature, and the very act of working with paint. The pleasure for painters is to respond in empathetic and visceral ways through paint and visual languages that are relevant to the maker and the time in which works are produced. In this context, painting can be identified in a number of terms; as an ongoing search for a way to define meaning, a visual language, and a seeking of a particular kind of pleasure.
In any context painting remains deeply connected to its origins and all paintings exist as images that continue from points of reference or departure to be re-invigorated and or explored. By referring to historical origins in a search for meaning the horizon is extended as are interpretations that refer to the origin of the new painting. In this case, the history of painting and the history of the visual itself extends from and toward beginnings new and old.
In this exhibition you will experience the layers of time that are expressed through many influences and languages evolving from the origins of painting. Each artist extends their own visual language through particular ways of seeing and applying the medium, through mark, form, space, colour, fat and lean paint. A continued pursuit of painting can be conceived of as a series of propositions that unfold within the studio. It is a form of labour that is instigated by the self and the projects are defined on their own terms. Through capturing and constructing images, the painter is intent on communicating visually with the viewer through an insight, a glimpse into a feeling, a meaning, or story to be shared. By reflecting imagery back into the world, an act of giving transpires and an exchange of thoughts flow through the visual image that detaches from its maker into the sight and minds of others.
In the exhibition ‘Ten’ works are presented in the context of contemporary art and design as ten voices that respond to the intersection of historical and contemporary worlds that exist in the realms of visuality.
Paula Payne
