I work with and against a broad range of cultural references such as contemporary abstract painting, gestural and colour field, Chinese ink painting, and the decorative excesses of the rococo, oriental carpets and chintz. My paintings are cyphers to this inclusivity where a gestural exploration of the surface and paint is combined with an understanding of the painterly ‘field’ as a field sensitive to the allusive, that is the poetic, and the discursive, the conceptual. I work this dynamic conception of the field with figurative and abstract elements that shape and twist themselves into expressions of lyrical promise. This “lyric” grows out of a marriage between the materiality of paint and pre-existing floral images, where they together coalesce within of the very activity of painting itself.
Daniel Mafe – Grandiflora II
Opening drinks with the artist
Saturday 6th September
2:00 – 4:00pm
Gallery Hours: Wed – Friday by appointment : Saturday: 10 – 4pm
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Daniel Mafe lived and exhibited in London from 1979 until 1990 when he then returned to Brisbane. He completed postgraduate studies in Painting at the Royal Academy in 1983-6 and in 1986 was the winner of the Europe Prize for Painting in Ostende, Belgium. In 1987 he completed a Painting Fellowship at the Gloucestershire College of Art & Technology in Cheltenham. He has continued to exhibit regularly since his return to Australia with his work residing in important public collections.
In 2003 Mafe completed a floor commission for the atrium of the Royal Brisbane Herston Hospitals Art Built-in Project, as well as a book entitled Working Spaces: Arts Practice in Progress, which focuses on the nature of arts practice through the work of four Brisbane artists. Daniel Mafe has been the recipient of many prestigious awards including the Australia Council Studio Residency (2005), QUT Creative Works in the Arts and Design Grant (1999) and a Greene Street Studio residency in New York (1996).
Recently exhibitions include Porchsongs (2007) Museum of Brisbane; Peer Pressure I (2006) Jan Manton Art, Brisbane; Beijing Film Academy New Media Festival (2005) China; and Abstracting the Collection (2004) Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria.
Daniel is currently employed as Head Lecturer of Visual Arts in the Faculty of Creative Industries at QUT.
For more information please visit – Jan Manton Art
