Art exhibitions capture history
LOCAL and regional exhibitions capture history as it happens, and offer allegorical messages through simple but thought-provoking imagery.
Culliford Gallery at the Toowoomba Art Society, 1 Godsall St, is hosting “Toowoomba... Today, Tomorrow, Time of Transition,” an exhibition of paintings and drawings by A.W. (Bill) Morton.
The works create a parallel and complementary history by documenting the changing profile of the city with the reinvention of the Grand Central shopping complex and the construction of the second range crossing.
Carving a new highway means human intervention on a massive scale which includes re-structuring the landscape and boldly sculpting the escarpments.
Morton has eloquently depicted these projects in artworks that reflect his persistently European palette of subdued tertiary tones.
The paintings are not essays in colour and light but tonal harmonies that capture mood and nature’s nuances through the subtle play of shadows.
The series would seem to woo a corporate market with images well suited to board rooms, foyers, and public spaces rather than to finding niches in household collections. They are paintings-as-document but also carry the artist’s interpretation of events and locations including the authenticity of the construction sites with their accompanying paraphernalia of machinery often within a rangeside setting.
The works offer a softer interface that gives another dimension and reading to progress’s incursion into familiar landscape particularly when compared with the high definition photographic documentation and the drama of aerial imagery that have also tabled these same developments.
Morton’s inclusion of Biro drawings gives an insight into preliminary preparation through on-the-spot notations that have a refreshingly immediate energy sometimes dissipated in the larger paintings.
The exhibition continues until May 27 and presents a time capsule for posterity capturing as it does the changes as they happened.
The Corridor space at the Art Society is showing a selection of past exhibition posters.
The bold and colourful billboards are designed by Lee Perinet who creates a new poster for each exhibition.
The Crows Nest Regional Art Gallery is presenting “A Series of Predicted Events and Peculiar Statements,” a body of work by Brisbane based artist Julie Rees.
The exhibition statement alludes to psychic readings recorded over a twenty year period. Some mention life transforming moments in the artist’s life, perhaps rejected at the time, but later seen as canny predictions of sometimes alarming and unforeseen events.
Rees has used a personal iconography of symbols to conceal and reveal her responses to experience.
The statement suggests layers of meaning and a serious, if introspective approach.
The reality of the artworks is initially disappointing.
Their superficially minimalist style is decorative rather than intellectually gripping.
The prettily coloured scatter of gem-like shapes linking the works creates a rhythmic swathe that hints at an elusive third dimension while framing the imagery that carries a Pollyanna-like optimism.