New Bodies of Water, 2016—

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Discarded landscape paintings, acrylic paint, garden stakes, L-brackets

Dimensions variable

Project has been included in:

Dhanamenta 2, Miami, Gold Coast 2016
Sculpture at Scenic World, Sydney 2017

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New Bodies of Water is an ongoing collection of second hand paintings that I have sourced from Op-Shops between Northern New South Wales and Gympie, Queensland. Each painting is an original work of art (no prints are included in the project) painted onto canvas-board or MDF. The paintings have unique frames and have been mounted onto garden stakes for sculptural display outdoors. A number of the paintings are signed while others remain author-less. Each painting depicts a landscape that includes within it some form of water (a river, creek, lake or ocean). I have overpainted these bodies of water in burgundy-purple acrylic paint. 

 

In my work I’m interested in working with what is benign and unwanted and injecting it with a potency not immediately apparent inside the local Vinnies or Salvo’s store. By overpainting water I intend to amplify the construction of each painting to evoke new and more potent representations of the landscape. In a country where the landscape is fraught with real tensions and a history wrought by misuse, tragedy and death, this project attempts to unveil a European model of representation that is single-minded in its perspective.