EXHIBITIONS / STACKED

24.11.2011 to 17.12.2011

Stacked, packed to the rafters, jammed full of stuff. In this new body of work surprising effects happen from the stacked paintings. Recycled plywood is used as grounds; painted and stacked to cause deeper spaces. Shadows move within the works. Meaning is inherent. Silhouettes are painted on tourist stencil templates of Australian fauna; possums, platypus and kangaroos.  Once discarded, used now. The piles of plywood make the issue of space real: 3D. The viewer can travel into them.

Other stuff happens; heroic symbols meet Australiana. Hidden images are there, gallant heroes of a past era. The painting Gruner’s Spring Rainbow uses Elioth Gruner’s image, Spring Frost to re-visit a forgotten landscape. George Raper’s Waratah has also been referenced. There are others; Meere’s fabulous woman in his Beach Pattern, re- envisaged in, Purple Play. Von Guerard’s cloaked man in Northeast View from the Top of Mount Kosciusko is referenced in Guerard’s Traveller. In another, Brolgas from Spirit of the Plains move their way across stencil outlines and Rainbow Warrior brings Gruner’s cow into the pattern. In a playful and intuitive process ideas of place and identity are revealed

Colour is celebrated also and falls easily into place. Sometimes the colour comes from an old T- Shirt design, other times it belongs to midnight; mostly it is intuitive and based on rhythms. The personal is hidden in the choice of colour.

As much as the work references Australian art history the idea remains abstract. Within this abstraction are contradictions of dualities. Baroque but minimal; formal yet easy; geometric and at the same time organic. It is no longer Formalist, no longer Hard Edge; it has Op Art references, even a Modernist theme. It could be old and new.

Lorna has held numerous solo shows including at the infamous Tailor Room Gallery, Sydney between 1998 - 2003 and Peloton in 2005 and 2009. Other galleries include Phatspace, Herringbone Gallery, Imperial Slacks, Zitlip and First Draft. She is a graduate of Sydney College of the Arts and The National Art School. Her work has been hung in The Portia Geach Memorial Prize,The Fishers Ghost Award, The Mosman Art Prize and Liverpool Art Prize. Before this her time was spent in London initiating community arts groups; namely ‘The Dolehouse Collective’ and Scarecrow Tiggy – an artist run co-operative in Camberwell. Lorna currently teaches art history and painting at South Western Sydney Institute of TAFE and is in the middle of curating an exhibition titled ‘The Baker’s  Dozen’ for UTS Gallery in 2012.

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