
As selected by Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, Consultant, Quadrant Gallery.
Matthew WATTS, “Suntrap 2” (no 14, mixed media on paper, $320)
Eugene’s first choice as the Exhibition Highlight of the Week is “Suntrap 2” by Matthew Watts: “In the exhibition dominated by figuration, Matthew’s works naturally stand out. While I cannot be certain of Matthew’s influences, the work appeals to me because of its oblique references to Russian Constructivism and pronounced echoes of the Australian early modernist artist, Frank Hinder. It is also one of those works in the exhibition that really needs to be examined closely and in great detail, for only thusly one can truly appreciate and admire the complexity of Matthew’s drawing technique and the rich textural quality of his surfaces.”

Eugene has chosen next Sue Top’s “Fitting Together”: “In a similar way to Watts’s work, Top’s collagraph prints stand out in the exhibition due to their uniqueness of subject matter and approach. It is an image that once repulses and intrigues. Sue has captured the viscerality of science and biology; the universe of dissections, test tubes, Petri dishes, and tissue samples squashed between miniature glass plates. If you wish, the most intimate, the most naked portrait of self that one can imagine. But at the same time she has created images of great beauty; of elegant colour gradations and subtle tonal variations; of compositional balance and rhythmic movement that pulsates and reverberates throughout her enigmatically imaginative works.”

Eugene’s final choice for the Highlight of the Week is Julie Chiffey’s “Bay of Fires 2, Tasmania”: “The Summer Exhibition is truly remarkable for the sheer number of landscapes contained within, which showcases both the importance of Australian landscape as a continuous source of inspiration for Australian artists and the aesthetic diversity of approaches to this subject matter by the exhibiting artists. I find myself drawn to Chiffey’s painting because it conveys, almost in a Cézanne-esque manner, not only what the landscape looks like but also what individual objects within the landscape feel like. One can almost sense the full weight of those huge, grey, cold granite boulders in the middle ground of the composition. The clear definition of the shapes and colour blocking within Chiffey’s paintings places her works within the context of the Australian modernist tradition and display echoes of Fred Williams and Michael Shannon.”
The exhibition is current until Saturday, 1 February.
View complete exhibition online at http://www.quadrantgallery.com.au/summer-exhibition.html