Marina Strocchi’s upcoming exhibition, Terra Firma, reflects on her time spent on a residency in Kangaroo Valley NSW at the Shark Island Institute in 2018. Featuring new paintings comprising of acrylic paint and oxides on linen or hand-made recycled Indian rag paper, her works are an intuitive response to nature.
Originally from Victoria, Marina Strocchi has lived in Central Australia for the past twenty-six years. Her distinctive art practice was celebrated with a touring survey exhibition, Marina Strocchi: A survey exhibition 1992 – 2014, which commenced at Araluen Arts Centre in the North Territory in 2015.
Over the years her work has been an affirmation of the environment of Central Australia, which she expresses with a flattened perspective of complex patterns. This work reflects the synthesis of nature’s repetition with the clutter of human habitation that one finds in the expanses of the desert. Hovering somewhere between abstraction and landscape, Strocchi’s landscape paintings are rich evocations of her experiences of living in the Central Australian desert.
“ The tension between the interdependent line work and form creates the counterpoint for the structure and colour in my paintings. I am creating spacial harmony: a place of reprieve and refuge, as nature does in life. A fundamental aspect of my work is my response to the brilliant glare of the central Australian light and its effect on land formations.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Strocchi’s work is held in prestigious collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Powerhouse Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, and numerous state, corporate and private collections in Australia and overseas. She completed a commission for Old Parliament House in Canberra and has been a finalist in various awards, including the Eutick Memorial Still Life Prize, The Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and the Wynne Prize.
Image: Marina Strocchi The Escarpment – Kangaroo Valley 2018 acrylic on handmade Indian rag paper 60.0 x 75.7.0 cm
