Sight Lines began with a stay on Bundjalung Country at Brays Creek in the Tweed Caldera, NSW, painting under the shelter of a horse stable as cloud and drizzle cycled through for days. This stay led to a studio in Murwillumbah and the paintings in Sight Lines were made in response to observations along the 33km winding road that connects the two places. This connecting line is full of lines – ridge lines, fence lines, tree lines, shadow lines, tyre lines, sight lines. These are reflected in these new paintings where fresh gestures, surfaces and forms of mark making are explored alongside the ever-intriguing pursuit of translating experiences through colour. The works in Sight Lines hold feelings of calm, wonder and awe alongside uneasiness as an outsider. Importantly, the making process invites slow looking and reflection – a step forward in getting to know a new place.
– Bridie Gillman, February 2025
Reminiscent of the early 20th century action painters, Bridie Gillman’s mark-making is an intuitive response to the memories and emotions evoked from her cross-cultural experiences. Initially inspired by her childhood in Indonesia, the now Brisbane-based artist’s practice has evolved to consider more broadly concepts of place, reactions to the environments through which she has travelled, her connection to land as a non-indigenous Australian and the intangibility of memory.
Spontaneous and physical, Gillman’s compositions capture the tension between reminiscence and experience, wanderlust and belonging, combining instinctive use of colour and gesture with literal, poetic titles that hint at sentiments beyond.
Bridie Gillman is an alumna of Queensland College of Art, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours) in 2013. In 2019 she was a finalist of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, winner of the Moreton Bay Art Award and finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Award at Campbelltown Art Centre. She is a past finalist of the Redland Art Award, the MAMA National Photography Prize, Murray Art Museum Albury, and PRIZENOPRIZE, Gold Coast (all 2016), as well as the 2013 GAS Graduate Art Show, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally including the Museum of Brisbane, Metro Arts, Brisbane, The Walls, Gold Coast, Blindside, Melbourne and Run Amok, George Town, Malaysia and she has undertaken residencies at Rimbun Dahan, George Town, Malaysia, in 2015 and Ketjil Bergerak, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2014.
Carrie McCarthy
Image: Learning to look 2024, oil on linen, 168 x 183 cm
