Figments
with titles by Simon Leah
23 August - 24 September 2025
Parallel Projects
138 Cowper Street, Footscray, VIC
Official Opening
1-3pm, Saturday 30 August 2025
Painted on repurposed tiles, using leftover paint, this body of work started as an exercise in my studio designed to help me stretch my intuition as a painter. Using materials that may ordinarily go to waste, each piece evolves in a mostly unplanned way – from shapes that build on shapes, from memory, or from basic line drawings collected from the landscape. Using leftover paint on randomly coloured and textured surfaces, encourages less predictable choices. As David Hockney said, “Limitations are really good for you. They are a stimulant.”
Made up of many small figments of ‘imagination’, positioned like random sparks in space, this body of work encompasses everything that currently interests me in painting. From the more formal exploration of colour, mark-making and the role different surfaces can play in making a painting, to more conceptual notions, like what is ‘imagination’ - is it possible to create in a complete vacuum void of any inspiration? Or does everything we do involve imagination. What qualifies as an ‘imagined landscape’? Where does imagination start and end? And perhaps most importantly, what happens in the overlap between my imagination and that of the viewer’s? Are these landscapes simply seen as interpretations conjured from my own world of reference, or is it actually the viewer’s world that brings meaning to each.
As part of this exhibition, I’ve invited my fellow studio artist, Simon Leah, and others to offer alternate titles for each piece - written quickly as an instant response to each work...you can view their responses here!
