WHEN : 4th Oct – 10th Nov
WHERE : Fireworks Gallery
Matthew Johnson: Selected Works
Intense fields of colour, cerebral particles of light and rhythmic layered grids reappear as a sensory language for Matthew Johnson’s selected paintings and gouaches from 2006 to present. There is at times an unmistakable parallel between the visual and the audio processes at work.
Johnson says “the idea for this show is a view of selected works over recent years that culminate in a new subjectivity. Whilst the paintings have evolved over time from pure abstraction to the ‘atmospherics’ of the Australian landscape, the works on paper, are titled with terminology that is more often used for musical definitions.”
This collection, his fifth solo exhibition in Brisbane over 10 years, is comprised of 9 new paintings plus a suite of framed works on paper with works ranging from $2500 to $24,000 and won’t disappoint his legion of Queensland fans.
WHEN : 4th Oct – 10th Nov
WHERE : Fireworks Gallery
Ian Waldron: Celebrations
Numerous road trips (back and forth) from the artist’s studio in the Atherton Tablelands t his ancestral home near Normanton in the Gulf of Carpentaria, have produced a virtual album of casual, sometimes candid and even critical reflections on the land and life of the Kurtjar people.
Waldron comments “when I go up to my country a lot of my family are keen to go out to the Smithburne and the Gilbert Rivers to fish and just enjoy being on the water. The river is a shared experience that instantly puts everyone at ease because you are away from all the little problems and worries back in town.”
Waldron is a graphically trained and intrinsically motivated artist, combining and moving effortlessly between artistic genres. Confident in his visual language, Waldron creates a relaxed, rural tone to his works, especially through his more recent incorporation of timber veneer as a painting surface which contributes a sense of contemporary earthiness. As to the nation’s vexed questions of how indigenous people might live and operate in contemporary times, his paintings offer glimpses of hope and positivity.
