Ocular Drift is an exhibition of new works by Brisbane based artist Nicola Scott that explores the ambiguity and illusory nature of visual perception
“Scott’s Ocular Drift works employ the illusory qualities of paint in order to toy with the potential of colour, creating images that prompt contemplation on the nature of understanding. The experience of looking at Scott’s work is that of optical conundrum. As we gaze through the layers of these paintings, trying to rationalise the depth of their images, visual riddles beg to be worked out. A tongue twister for the eye, they don’t give away their tricks readily.
Opaque and translucent floating shapes block and reveal one another, and are further fragmented by overlapping membranes, collectively forming a complex web of voids and solids.”
Lisa Bryan-Brown (Catalogue Essay Writer)
About the Artist
Nicola Scott is an emerging artist based in Brisbane, Australia who focuses primarily on the phenomena of visual perception through her painting practice. Scott has completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (2012) through the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. She is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Psychological Science at the University of Queensland.
Informed by her studies in both a Fine Arts and Psychology, Scott questions the embodied and psychological processes through which we see and make sense of our world. Exploiting paint’s unique capacity to blur, blend, and layer, Scott points to the similarly complex nature of our own visual interpretations. She has a particular interest in the neurobiological basis for we interpret colour, light, movement, and process optical illusions.
Scott’s oeuvre draws from both geometric and organic traditions of abstract art, as well as makes reference to aspects of visual languages found in ubiquitous contemporary online and digital realms. Smooth gradients and sharp edges jostle with bright hues and negative space within her works, encouraging the viewer’s eye to roam and fixate. In the studio, Scott pursues strategy and chance in equal measure, initially experimenting with a multitude of paint applications, shapes and tones to reach a compelling formula. A sense of depth and motion then emerges in her works through the accumulation of each layer, until areas of the finished compositions appear to jump forward or recede.
Nicola Scott has previously shown with Onespace Gallery as part of the group exhibition rightNOW 2020, she also made her first foray into the urban landscape when her work Untitled (2019) was selected for the Brisbane City Council William Jolly Bridge Art Projection Program. In recent years she has exhibited and completed residencies with artist-run initiatives locally, including STABLE Artspace and Outer Space, as well as Visual Bulk in Hobart.
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday to Friday: 10am – 6pm
Saturday: 11am – 5pm
(07) 3846 0642
info@onespacegallery.com.au
Image: Nicola Scott, matrix, 2020. Oil on polycotton, 76 x 76cm
