Featuring new work by Susan Gourley and Cosima Scales, Shelf Life is an intimate exhibition inspired by the everyday objects that surround us and the friendships that sustain us. Each artist engages with the still-life tradition, observing incidental and transient domestic moments. Gourley’s realistic sculptures present life-size assemblages of mushrooms, sponges, teabags and other ordinary things that embrace the mundane in both content and form: they are made from discarded materials, the incidental rubbish of domestic life and construction work. Scales’ modest paintings are careful studies of form, light and colour that depict pieces of fruit, a phone, a cup and other items around the home. The title, Shelf Life, refers to both the tradition of the still life that is the overt content of the exhibition, and to the artists’ long-lasting friendship, which has informed the exhibition.
Image: Susan Gourley, Teabag and Sponge 2021, discarded polystyrene, cardboard, twine, and paper, plus modelling paste, acrylic paint, and adhesive, 3×9.5x6cm. Photograph by Bridie Gillman. Courtesy of the Artist.
