painting

Spring1883 Art Fair - The Hotel Windsor

This week Spring Art Fair opens. I’m showing some new paintings with Nicholas Thompson Gallery alongside wonderful artists. Spring1883 is a young and exciting hotel-based art fair that draws on the traditions of the Gremercy Park Fair, New York to present the best of contemporary art practice from Australia, New Zealand and beyond in a luxury setting.

Here is link to Spring website for more information an to purchase tickets :https://spring1883.com/

Here is link for preview catalogue of artists works: https://www.nicholasthompsongallery.com.au/enter-preview/

Elyss McCleary Magenta 2 Speaker System oil on linen, 2023. Photography by Tim Gresham

Elyss McCleary Screen interlude from the made up film festival, oil on linen, 2023. Photography by Tim Gresham.

INTERVAL DIAGONAL Divisions Gallery

Anna Steele and Elyss McCleary present a suite of new painting compositions that play zig-zag actions across a thinking space. The works locate intersections of the built and natural environment that offer multiple horizons across the canvas. 

Observing and taking notice of the landscape forms the basis of ‘Interval Diagonal’.  Over time, this noticing has formed a correspondence between the two artists. They walk the same creek walk, traverse the same inner city streets yet their embodied memories are unique. These paintings, made up of several layers, reveal and conceal aspects to form landscapes that fuse the natural and the urban.

Both artists share a love of walking and seeing. Insights from the local streets, lockdown walks, found objects and night lights are reflected onto the canvas through making and remaking layers. These abstract works ignite a newly imagined space beyond the real to a picture-plane full of gesture and colour, and a physicality of paint that is directional.

Brushstrokes, drips, hard-edges and soft shimmering lines collage across the surface of the canvases. These layers allude to a mash-up of forms situated in the urban landscape; dense, with intervals of rest and a pace of activity. The interlude between layers of paint allows a thinking space to emerge within each encounter of these works.  

Image: Anna Steele, 38 Degrees And The Pool Is Closed, (cropped) oil on linen, 2023.

Installation of works at Divisions Gallery, June 2023. (L-R) Elyss McCleary, Anna Steele. Photography by Aaron Christopher Rees.

Interval Diagonal Exhibition Opening Friday 9th June 6-8pm

9th June - 9th July at Divisions Gallery

LINK TO DIVISIONS GALLERY/PENTRIDGE ARTS

FEVER DREAMS Group exhibition at Counihan Gallery

'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.”


LINK TO COUNIHAN GALLERY

Elyss McCleary, Parts of a reverie tableau of watchers and dancers in the wings, oil on linen, 71cm x 83.5cm, 2023

Selected works from FANDAGLE CHROMA/S at Scott Lawrie Gallery

I’m happy to share that selected works from FANDANGLE CHROMA/S will be showing in New Zealand.
Excited to be part of the exhibition at Scott Lawrie Gallery with 2 solo shows by Oliver King and Megan Archer.
Thankyou Scott for this wonderful opportunity and excited to have some over my paintings over in lovely space there
.
The Steelworks, Shed 10, 13 Coles Avenue, Mt Eden, Tamaki Makaurau/ Auckland
4- 22 June 2022

https://www.scottlawrie.com/exhibitions/

Elyss McCleary, Octet Loves Nine Again, oil on linen, 138cm x 123cm, 2022.

Bayside Aquisitive Art Prize Finalists

Very exciting news to be a finalist in the Bayside Prize. Delighted to have my painting amongst such amazing artists and looking forward to the exhibition.

Finalist Exhibition: 6 May – 26 June 2022

Tia Ansell, Joel Arthur, Nick Ashby, Emma Beer, Asher Bilu, Elisabeth Bodey, Peter Burke, Echo Cai, Martin Claydon, Geoff Coleman, Brett Colquhoun, Greg Creek, Sarah crowEST, Jonathan Crowther, Claudia Damichi, Ann Debono, Katrina Dobbs, Nikolaus Dolman, Craig Easton, Betra Fraval, Helga Groves, Euan Heng, Franky Howell, Dena Kahan, Sam Martin, Natalie Mather, Ian McCallum, Elyss McCleary, Angilyiya Mitchell, Philip James Mylecharane, Tinieka Page, David Palliser, Steven Rendall, Lucy Roleff, Lisa Sewards, Robin Stewart, Georgia Szmerling, Kate Vassallo, Jake Walker, Darren Wardle, Alice Wormald.

https://baysideacquisitiveartprize.com.au/

Elyss McCleary FEBRUARY NIGHTFALL GLIMMER GLAMOUR oil on linen, 138cm x 123cm, 2022

Sunday Salon

Im happy to be part of an online platform curated by Lily Mora. A selection of some of my paintings are available to see here, and many beautiful works available by the artists through the site. Please see the links below for more information about Sunday Salon and recent article featured on The Design Files.

FOUNDED IN JULY 2020

Sunday Salon is curated and managed by Lily Mora. Lily has spent over ten years working in the arts sector at major institutions including National Gallery of Victoria and Tate. In London, as Head of Content Production at marketing & communications agency, Sutton, she worked with clients including Courtauld Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, India Art Fair, Kochi Biennale, Lévy Gorvy, and Michael Werner Gallery among others. She has also produced digital content for clients at Venice Biennale and Art Basel Hong Kong. 

Her time spent working in the not-for-profit sector often focused on making art more accessible for broader audiences - an ambition she feels is sometimes lacking in the commercial sector. 

Driven by the belief that there is an abundance of exciting and affordable art being created in Australia but that many people don’t know where to find it, Lily set about to create Sunday Salon. 

https://sundaysalon.com.au/pages/about

https://thedesignfiles.net/2020/07/art-sunday-salon-lily-mora/

Lily Mora manager of Sunday Salon , Photograph by Jonathan Rands, 2020.

Lily Mora manager of Sunday Salon , Photograph by Jonathan Rands, 2020.

THESE DAYS @COMA Gallery, Sydney

THESE DAYS

Curated by Sebastian Goldspink

6 March - 28 March, 2020

Opening reception: Friday 6 March, 6-8 PM

COMA is pleased to present These Days, curated by Sebastian Goldspink, a group exhibition focused on painting juxtaposed with archival Video 8 elements taken from the curator's own childhood. 

Painting is about lots of things but perhaps fundamentally it is about problems. It takes a very specific mindset to grapple with all the physical and conceptual rigours required to render an idea visually. This exhibition brings together a seemingly disparate group of young Australian painters who are united in their passion for embracing the challenges of painting, of working through the problems. Painting is a great game that is ultimately between the artist and the surface. This exhibition is idiosyncratic. It is a selection that is based on threads and connections between artists. These Days looks at what is happening now but also what has passed. 

Catherine Clayton-Smith Emily Galicek Zara June Williams Jasper Knight Jack Lanagan Dunbar Tanya Linney Elyss McCleary Marilyn Schneider Laura Skerlj Elena Ortega Tolosana Julia Trybala Bradley Vincent. 

For any enquiries or the request a catalogue please contact : info@comagallery.com

https://comagallery.com/exhibitions/

First Floor, 71-73 Stanley Street
Darlinghurst, NSW, 2010
Australia

Artist talk, 7th March 2020 at COMA gallery with Elena Ortega, Tanya Linney, Jasper Knight, (myself) and Sebastian Goldspink.

Artist talk, 7th March 2020 at COMA gallery with Elena Ortega, Tanya Linney, Jasper Knight, (myself) and Sebastian Goldspink.

SATURDAY FEELS LIKE VERMILLION THEN CHERRY RED Stacks Projects, Sydney.

SATURDAY FEELS LIKE VERMILLION THEN CHERRY RED Elyss McCleary exhibition 28 November – 15 December, 2019
opening on Wednesday 27 November 2019, 6 – 8pm

Saturday feels like Vermilion then Cherry Red is based on portraits of ideas of colour and placement felt through a space
of colour synaesthesia. Colours and numbers resonate strongly when come to mind, based on learnt, felt, media, situations and wanting to re think and understand spaces about how colour is used and reinterpreted by us. These works have been recently made in the studio intuitively over a years duration, painted whilst thinking of a place, person or feeling in front of me. The found objects complement each painting and hold a relationship to what I call unstill lives; watching each other, existing together and reflecting ideas. The works question colour hierarchy and the weight and meaning of each mark.
Each mark re-evaluates the potential value in colour and how colours are constantly reinvented and reconsidered in
peoples’ experiences.

While synesthetes sometimes report they seeing colours in projected in space, they do not confuse their synestic colours with real colours in the external world, rather, they report that they are simultaneously aware of the external colour and also the internal synthetic colour. Merging the two colours in a painting creates an actual real existing thought of projected colour that does exist and reworks those that stand there already. Thinking about people, colours often remind us of some one, or
a letter ‘s’ for me always feels like red, and I see and slick cherry colour red when I see ‘s’ particularly if it is a capital letter. This makes me question why?

When watching forms that sit within space, points of fascination begin to support each other. The shapes and combinations of associated histories continue to perform meetings with each other. The gesture of the application of paint acts as a tipping point and form of slippage to this. The history of colour and how it is used manifests associations depending on my own experiences - or what I can only contemplate and imagine in others. Is a felt thing, learnt thing, an ignorant thing, a changeable and curiosity of possibilities. Saturday feels like Vermillion then Cherry Red continues an consideration of emotional states, reactions and observations led by an open responsiveness to environment through the making of the work document real events played up and pumped up with simple and complex gestural use of materials and paint performing with colour and space.

STACKS Projects is a not-for-profit artist run gallery and project space
​191 Victoria St, Potts Point, NSW, 2011
​Thursday to Saturday 11 - 6, ​Sunday 11 - 4

Wednesday feels like Hot Magenta, oil on linen, 85cm x 71cm, 2018. Photographer: Simon Strong

Elyss McCleary, Wednesday feels like Hot Magenta, oil on linen, 85cm x 71cm, 2018. Photographer: Simon Strong

The Corresponding of Noicing at Counihan Gallery Brunswick Town Hall

Elyss McCleary Margaret McIntosh Hannah Smith Anna Steele Mignon Steele

The Correspondence Of Noticing is a project aimed at drawing attention to our surroundings. As simmering changes occur in our various lived environments a group of artists propose that noticing and making is a type of sustenance, a means of survival. Though addressing the landscape in their own unique way, dialogues emerge between artists as they reflect on still moments that can be seen as an antidote to combat sensations of expansion and erosion: trees that hold space amongst concrete, quietness of a void in the land before development, the quivering anxiety of forms in a shifting seascape.

Through a series of works including painting, installations and assemblages come narratives of lived thoughts and experiences: stories of awareness, acknowledgement and connectivity

Elyss McCleary Night trees frame the moon at Merri Creek skate park, dusk, a beautiful refreshing silver shower 2019 , Oil on linen, 51cm x 41cmThis is an ongoing series of works that are painting love portraits to the night trees. I take photos of…

Elyss McCleary Night trees frame the moon at Merri Creek skate park, dusk, a beautiful refreshing silver shower 2019 , Oil on linen, 51cm x 41cm

This is an ongoing series of works that are painting love portraits to the night trees. I take photos of the trees in the evening, dawn or at night, the paintings are quiet portraits of some of these.The sky and camera flash stage a surreal flat image of it in space.

I often think about the trees there holding space, people and things around, sounds, ciggies, maybe rubbish or piss on it, a road through, a bright light. The neon glow of amber city or suburban occupational and health light for made for us is blaring on the tree, i wish i could give it some sunglasses for this at night at least. so very beautiful and strong, talking and making sounds with each other.

The Pinkness at Tristian Koenig Gallery

Elyss McCleary | The Pinkness | 17.01.19 - 09.02.19

Tristian Koenig is delighted to announce the launch of the gallery’s 2019 exhibition program with The Pinkness - a solo exhibition of new works by Melbourne-based painter Elyss McCleary. McCleary has previously exhibited at the gallery in the group exhibition The Means Make the Ends, with The Pinkness being her first solo project with the gallery.

Elyss McCleary paints from within a vein of lyrical abstraction that is descriptive, as opposed to the proscriptive tenets implied by the quasi-movement within early post-war painting. Fusing memory with materiality, expressive haptics with Art History, along the way McCleary orchestrates a form of physical activity  and moving meditation that is both fast and slow, soft and hard, viscous and unyielding.

The titles of her works veer between evocations of the quotidian and passing, to contemplative archetypal spaces - where seagulls spying hot chips are juxtaposed next to mystical snakes slithering across the sky. Linked by a uniformity of scale, the works share uncanny combinations of hue and thinly veiled and translucent brushwork, with the resultant effect creating a curious circularity - one can clearly demarcate where gestures start and end, overlap and merge, however the works defy an identification of start and end. This effect of eluding elucidation is the mystery of Painting.

To contact the gallery regarding pricing and availability of works click here

--------------------------
TRISTIAN KOENIG
19 GLASSHOUSE ROAD | COLLINGWOOD | VICTORIA | AUSTRALIA | 3066
WWW.TRISTIANKOENIG.COM | +61 498 694 715 | TRISTIAN@TRISTIANKOENIG.COM
THURSDAY-SATURDAY 12-5PM & BY APPOINTMENT

Orchestra of Pink, oil on linen, 140cm x 125.5cm, 2018

Elyss McCleary, Orchestra of Pink, oil on linen, 140cm x 125.5cm, 2018

Extended Gestures at Arcade Projects

Drooping Style, oil on linen, 51cm x 41cm. 2017

Elyss McCleary, Drooping Style, oil on linen, 51cm x 41cm. 2017

EXTENDED GESTURES

Peter Aldrich Matthew Engert Elyss McCleary Khi-Lee Thorpe

The title for this show is borrowed from the writers Claude Cernuschi and Andrzej Hercyznski who in their essay, The Subversion of Gravity in Jackson Pollock’s Abstractions, describe Pollock’s employment of gravity as a means “to extend the duration of his gestures”.1 In easel painting, finding new ways to form gesture, be it, by the brush or through other more unorthodox means (Brice Marden with his extended stick serves as a good example), has been an important pursuit by many artists.

The four artists in Extended Gestures build on this endeavour. Their marks are records of bodily activity, as they pursue methods that are provisional and intuitive. Bold strokes of colour are applied with careful attention to the stroke’s intensity and speed. They innovate ways to disperse paint, be it, through maximum thinning, or strokes that are at once, abbreviated and extended. In Extended Gestures the gesture is distilled, the painting process renovated and the very orthodoxies of easel painting challenged.

Aaron Martin
Curator

1. Cernuschi, Claude, and Andrzej Hercynski. "The Subversion of Gravity in Jackson Pollock's Abstractions." The Art Bulletin 90, no.4(2008):616-39.


Opening Friday, May 18th 6-9pm
Exhibition runs: May 16th -June 2nd 2018

Arcade (back space)
suite 2, level 1 / 119 Hopkins St, Footscray
open wed - sat 12-5pm

(Arcade Project Space is a Five Walls initiative)

Summer New at James Makin Gallery

My painting has been included in first exhibition of 2018 at James Makin Gallery, The Summer New Group Show.

Andrew Chan Carla Fletcher Betra Fraval Elyss McCleary Jack Rowland Paul Ryan

Summer New is on from the 17th January to 10th February 2018.

Link http://jamesmakingallery.com/

McCleary_1-818x1024.jpg

Elyss McCleary, Moon in the River, Oil on linen , 157cm x 123cm, 2018.

Primacy

I have a painting in the upcoming show Primacy curated by Matthew Engert

PRIMACY                                                                                                                                          June 21 - July 8 2017                                                                                                                  Opening: 2-4pm Saturday June 24

Peter Aldrich Matthew Engert Kubota Fumikazu Aaron Martin Elyss McCleary Joanna Mortreux Jennifer Whitten                                                                                                                                                                   

Stephen McLaughlan Gallery Level 8, Room 16 Nicholas Building 37 Swanston Street Melbourne 3000 Open 1-5 pm Wednesday - Friday 11-5pm Saturday & by appointment 0407 317 323

www.stephenmclaughlangallery.com.au

 

Elyss McCleary Woman Looking oil on linen, 51cm x 41cm, 2017.

Elyss McCleary Woman Looking oil on linen, 51cm x 41cm, 2017.

Settings opens at Nth Space on Saturday

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

nthari.space

Elyss McCleary Critter Motes , oil on linen, cedarwood 89cm x 41cm x 22cm, 2017

Elyss McCleary Critter Motes , oil on linen, cedarwood 89cm x 41cm x 22cm, 2017

What's Happening Here? at Town Hall Gallery

What’s Happening Here? takes a look at some of Melbourne’s most interesting emerging abstract painters. This group of artists produce works that are full of vigour, colour, and abject freedom. The title is a play on a common query about abstract art’s meaning as well as a reflection on an apparent surge of young artists working with imagery of this kind in Melbourne.  

Eleanor Louise Butt Nyah Cornish Minna Gilligan Anthea Kemp Merryn Lloyd Elyss McCleary Laura Skerlj Jahnne Pasco-White

 The Town Hall Gallery                                                                                                                        360 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn VIC 312

Opening:  Saturday 18 March 2017
             Exhibition continues to Sunday 7 May 2017

Venue:    Galleries 1, 2 and 3

http://www.townhallgallery.com.au/

 

Astor-Grace running,cleaning, then resting in sun over Neighbour's yard , oil on canvas, 130cm x 110cm, 2016

Elyss McCleary,Astor-Grace running,cleaning, then resting in sun over Neighbour's yard , oil on canvas, 130cm x 110cm, 2016

SUMMER 40

SUMMER 40 Group Exhibition Rubicon Ari

Sarah Gosling, Lizzi Morris, Francis Cannon, Kinai Wong, Camille Thomas, Katie Paine, Isabelle De Kleine, Brad Rusbridge, Jordan Hickey, Joseph Flynn, Nicholas McGinnity, Emma Michaelis, Pip Ryan, Ryan McGennisken, Nicholas Ives, Danny Frommer, Xanthie Dobbie, Julia Trybala, Nyah Cornish, Emma Orbach, Prue Stent, Kimberley Liddle, Patrick Lamour, Rebecca Agnew, Travis Vella, John Brooks, Elyss McCleary, Kubota Fumikazu, Adam Stone, Peter Thomas, Justin Hinder, Jordan Wood, Darren Nedza, Elly Steinlauf, Portland Francis, Aly Westwood, Dean Thompson, Sabastian Franz, Josh Hook.

Opening Launch: Wednesday 1st February 6pm -9pm                                                     Exhibition Dates: February 1st- February 18th 2017                                                                         http://www.rubiconari.com.au/

Screen.jpg

Screen, oil on masonite, 22cm x 27cm, 2016.