'Fever’Dreams' explores the fertile and shifting borderlands between abstraction and figuration. In the work of ten contemporary artists, figuration swells and ebbs away. Figuration surfaces here and there like alligators from the hot dark of the swamp.
Colour is lurid and mutable. It is the catalyst for the combustion of figurative imagery out of abstraction. Colour is also the vehicle by which that imagery becomes alien and elusive.
Nothing is stable in 'Fever’Dreams'. The works offer a fertile playground of shifting visions. In these visions, uncertainty and ambiguity are positive, even optimistic properties.
This exhibition includes work by Ingmar Apinis, Naomi Bishop, Mitchel Brannan, Harley Ives, Luke King, Elyss McCleary, Ted Mckinlay, Valentina Palonen, Bundit Puangthong, and Paul Yore. This exhibition is curated by Mitchel Brannan.
“I often think of how imagery is collected, remembered or responded to in the seen and unseen senses of our time here. Once when I was 16, I decided to draw a black and white photo from a library book.Since then I can return to this image in my head, etched in like a pop icon poster. Periodically I watch YouTube videos or read about his life.Sometimes mashed up scenes drip into dreams. I made these flat like stage paintings for and about Nijinsky, a reverie of set designs for portals of thought, desire and acceptance of the in-between spaces of movers and shakers.”
Elyss McCleary, Parts of a reverie tableau of watchers and dancers in the wings, oil on linen, 71cm x 83.5cm, 2023