Nth. is excited to present Settings, a suite of new paintings by Elyss McCleary.
“The stacking of things and gestures of paint are collaged up the wall. There are three different instances of the work: a painting, a reconstructed shelf, and a long mirror. All the different forms unpack the colours to make shapes and settings to themselves – an ambiguous subject of colour that suggests it’s us and our surroundings.
Adopting a response to the interior space of the corridor at Nth., the display of this installation continues my interest in assemblage of colour. These new works contain a measure of closeness to smaller areas, enlarged motes of seen things in in-between spaces, colour blurred and abstracted in its forms in-between the rhythms of the body charged with pulse and hesitation. The distinction between the internal and external space of the work and what it rests on is like a chaotic order, remaking the organisation of colour combinations and structuring of which way they are painted-in from back to front, front to back.
Collecting and responding with immediate application of paint, where things are positioned, to various spaces outside and inside, giving intimacy to the spatial energies of that. Over-emphasising the play of light on surface to colour compositions. Settings reassembles and saturates the fleeting motes with colour, paying close attention to observing spatial substructures of colour and forms.
The scenes within the paintings are intimate but undetermined spaces, with settings that could be of anywhere or time, really; that play with the perception of surface and depth of colour placements.
This exhibition considers our emotional and remembered relationship to colour combinations. Placing perspective, and call and response to observing things and energies taken from walks, interiors and imaginings of made-up imagery in front of me. As an entry point forlight and dark luminosity and colour romanticism; evoking the real and imagined and fantasised – a chase-sequence of motes.
Opening: 6-8, Saturday 3 June
then, by appointment until 10 June
Elyss McCleary Critter Motes , oil on linen, cedarwood 89cm x 41cm x 22cm, 2017