ONLINE EXHIBITION
7 AUGUST - 27 SEPTEMBER 2020
SUBURBAN DAYDREAMS
Five artists reflect on the everyday, recreating the life of suburban Australia through painting, drawing and works on paper.
Living in the suburbs can be used as a indication of our overall art and culture. This idea was largely ignored until Architect Robin Boyd wrote in his bestselling book The Australian Ugliness (1960), “there is little or no collective pride in the suburb, only a huge collection of individual prides.” Opening the way for artists and writers to celebrate and find beauty in the world around them.
Exhibiting artists: Gillian Adamson, Tim Messiter, Anh Nguyen, Jane Collins, Andrew Finnie.
All works are for sale; price includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia. Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for any enquiries.
Gillian Adamson
“My series, Foundations (2020), documents the arrangements of different houses, all organised in a similar, yet dying, fashion. The scenes portrayed in these artworks disrupt the modern world’s obsession with aesthetic and materialism, providing a view of a time passed.
This series is exploring the homes and lives of an older generation. The way furniture is arranged, the symmetry and sparseness, are something that I have always found intriguing. Yet, there is a familiarity and comfort to these scenes. They are reminiscent of my grandparent’s home, which has stayed unchanged for decades.
Through these artworks, I wanted to encapsulate the surrender of adaptation that is experienced later in life. As we grow older, we reach a certain point in our lives where aesthetic trends change faster than we are able to adapt. We stay still in an environment that is most comfortable to us, an environment that stays still in time.”
August 2020
Gillian Adamson Foundations (bathroom) 2020 acrylic on board 40cmx50cm $450.00 SOLD
Gillian Adamson Foundations (bedroom) 2020 acrylic on board 25cmx25cm $450.00
Gillian Adamson Foundations (garden) 2020 acrylic on board 40cmx50cm $450.00
Gillian Adamson Foundations (hallway) 2020 acrylic on board 25cmx25cm $450.00 SOLD
Gillian Adamson Foundations (loungeroom) 2020 acrylic on linen 20cmx20cm $280.00
Gillian Adamson Foundations (dining room) 2020 acrylic on canvas 25cmx25cm $450.00
Tim Messiter
“I have always been fascinated with Urban landscapes for their scale & sense of drama. Light behaves differently on built structures as opposed to nature. I find the demolition of the city buildings - which were once lived in, loved & looked after - very profound, and wanted to convey the sense of history remaining in the wreckage of what would have been busy and bustling places.
In contrast, the suburban landscapes speak of quiet serenity and endurance, a a certain timelessness. In both cases I have attempted to reduce the compositions to shapes, planes and angles - shadows of where we spend our lives.”
August 2020
Tim Messiter City no.2 2020 oil on canvas 61cmx61cm $500.00
Tim Messiter City no.3 2020 oil on canvas 61cmx61cm $500.00
Tim Messiter Nocturne, Dudley 2020 acrylic on canvas 46x46cm $300.00
Tim Messiter Bar Beach House 2020 acrylic on canvas 30cmx30cm $300.00
Tim Messiter Cooks Hill 2020 acrylic on canvas 30x30cm $300.00
Tim Messiter Hilltop 2020 acrylic on canvas 30x30cm $300.00
Anh Nguyen
“My paintings are a response to a visual experience - the motifs are familiar and intimate, like the street outside my window or spaces within my home.
The time between when I see something I’d like to paint and the actual painting process can vary from immediate to days, seasons, years. I take whatever approach is possible at that time ie from life, from photographs, from imagination & memory. I’m interested in abstracting real things, because I’m highly addicted to shapes and colour!”
August 2020
Anh Nguyen Blue house on hill (2020) acrylic on canvas board 31cmx31cm $320.00 SOLD
Anh Nguyen Clotheshorse (2020) acrylic on paper 42x60cm $320.00 SOLD
Anh Nguyen Little light before rain (2020) mixed media in paper 25cmx40cm $320.00 SOLD
Anh Nguyen Bedtime routine (2020) acrylic on paper 42x30cm $320.00
Anh Nguyen Whale cloud II (2020) acrylic on paper 21x60cm $450.00
Anh Nguyen Rain at dusk 2020 acrylic on canvas board 30x40cm $450.00
Andrew Finnie
“I am fascinated by how humans absorb familiar surroundings. Familiarity leads to perceptual blindness - a blindness to details. As we make our way through the world we don’t see everything around us. We have seen it all before - telegraph poles, gutters, cars, windows. So we fill in the details with our mind's eye, without really observing, using our imagination to create a virtual world.”
August 2020
Andrew Finnie Hannel Street in the Rain acrylic on canvas 20cmx25cm $$345.00
Andrew Finnie Stevenson Place, Newcastle East acrylic on canvas 20cmx20cm $320.00
Andrew Finnie Styx Creek acrylic on canvas 30cmx30cm $475.00
AndrewFinnie Harbourside Buildings, Newcastle East acrylic on canvas 30cmx30cm $475.00
Jane Collins
“My images are uplifting and inspire positive feelings. Inspired by my surroundings, I express movement with colour and line, depicting street and water scenes, people and interiors. The mixed media art works begin with a sketch. The sketch is transferred to a drypoint etching. It is hand printed. I add gouache paint, pencil and collage (lino prints).”
Jane Collins
Artist statement
Jane Collins Billie and Luna 2020 mixed gouache and collage on paper 49cmx60cm $400.00
Jane Collins New World Order VE (variable edition print) 2020 mixed media on paper 24cmx34cm $365.00
Jane Collins COVID-19, 2020 VE (variable edition print) 2020 mixed media on paper 38cmx56cm $365.00
Jane Collins Unicorn VE (variable edition print) 2020 mixed media on paper 18cmx24cm $180.00