Opening Night: Friday 7 July 6-8pm
Artist Talks: Saturday 22 July 3-5pm.
WEAVE represents Grear’s new body of work. She uses the space of landscape as a starting point for abstractions. The finished works inevitably evolve into images beyond landscape, signifying personal, emotional or social events.
Grear states, ‘Landscape offers me a rhythmic structure where I can play within the imaginative constructs of painting at the same time offering a connection with nature. Colour, form, line, texture and pattern give me so many possibilities to create different compositions. The narrative is not obvious; I like to think of the paintings as thoughts or feelings.
Uncanny, random or specific references do enter the works. After the musician Prince died, I made many purple works with a haphazard rhythm. ‘Big Foot Monster’s is one of these. When Donald Trump was elected I made a work entitled Trump’s Bloodshed- with a grand old oak splitting the composition in two. The large painting; ‘Peppermint Tree’ uses this structure. Sometimes the trigger is public and at other times the impulse to make the work is unknown, it could be based in human identity.
Recently I’ve been listening to John Coltrane. In his music there’s an expression of feeling and meaning that implies rather than tells. The odd note there, a beat here, the fluid rhythm staggered by a loud vibration…
I’m always searching for that pivotal moment in painting where the structure balances the rhythm and where the feeling and the composition weave together’. Lorna Grear June 2017
Lorna Grear is a Sydney based artist who uses paintings, collages and sculptural relief works to emphasise ideas of process, order and the painterly sensation. Recently her abstract work involves convoluted patterns and structures which signify contemporary virtual and real environments or states of the mind. Most of the time the works respond to current affairs, personal travel or emotional experiences which influence or inspire the need for Lorna to respond with a visual work.
This latest body of work exist as digital prints, paintings and drawings. The digital works start as hand drawings of her surroundings then manipulated digitally; sometimes they are seen as wallpapers- other times they hang individually as large paper works.
The paintings stem from the hand-made drawings and the digital prints working as sketches for the paintings. It’s a master painting relationship.
Lorna has held numerous solo exhibitions including at the infamous Tailor Room Gallery, Sydney in 1998 – 2003 under the director, Lee Frost, Peloton Gallery in 2005, 2009, 2011 and MOP Projects in 2013. Her recent solo show is held at Airspace Projects, Marrickville, July 2017. Her work has been shown at; Imperial Slacks, Herringbone, SNO, Phatspace, Zitlip, Sheffer Gallery, Campbelltown Arts Centre, UTS Gallery, NAS and Firstdraft. Lorna’s work has been selected as a finalist for the Portia Geach Memorial Prize, The Fisher’s Ghost Open Award, Mosman Art Prize and the Liverpool Art Prize.
In her independent curatorial practice Lorna co- curated Here is a Fresh Egg, as part of a collective in Zitlip Gallery, 1994 and curated Homefront at Sheffer Gallery, Sydney in 2010 and The Baker’s Dozen at UTS Gallery, Sydney in 2012. Prior to this her time was spent in London, 1987- 1993, initiating community arts groups within the London squat scene, including Scarecrow Tiggy- an artist run co-operative in Camberwell, London with fellow artists Belle Tidswell and Jane Waudby. She is a graduate of three art universities in Sydney; Sydney College of the Arts (BVA, 1st class Honours, and MVA), The National Art School, Sydney ( Dip F A) and Art & Design, UNSW ( Post Grad Cert Design 2014). She currently teaches painting and art history at TAFE NSW, Campbelltown College.
Gallery One, Fangled: Sally Clarke, Brenda Factor, Sean O’Connell and Laura Woodward
Gallery Two, Weave; Lorna Grear
The Cranny, Kiss Them While They’re Sleeping; Marion Abboud
Deep Space, FavourEconomy Volumes 1 & 2; Claire Field and Bronwyn Treacy
Exhibition runs from Friday 7 – Saturday 22 July
10 Junction Street Marrickville NSW 2204
+61 438 020 661 and +61 411 370 361
Open Thursday to Friday 11.00 – 6.00 and Saturday 11.00 – 5.00 the first three weeks of each month. Check the Airspace blog for special events, exhibition previews and any scheduling changes.
Catalogue to be published soon.
Purple Parade, acrylic on board, 21 x 15 cm, framed. SOLD
Lorna Grear 