Extended Gestures Extended (2019), Installation View, Five Walls Projects. Images by Guy Grabowsky
Georgie North | Sean McDowell | Charlie Harding | Ben Pell
Curated by Aaron Martin
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 (and in some forms of sculpture), finding new ways to form gesture has been an important pursuit by many artists., be it, by the brush or through other more unorthodox means (Brice Marden with his extended stick or Richard Serra with his frenetic lead flinging, both serve as appropriate examples of this type of activity)
The four artists in Extended Gestures Extended 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 Extended the gesture is distilled, the painting process renovated and the very orthodoxies of easel painting challenged.
Exhibition Dates: May 1st - 18th, 2019
Opening Event: May 3rd, 6-9pm
Five Walls Projects (Galleries 1 & 2), Suite 2, level 1 / 119 Hopkins St, Footscray, Victoria
Make Madly (2019), Marble dust, ink, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, steel frame. Private Collection, Melbourne.
The continued to warn him but he would not listen. It was danger that overwhelmed him with sexual excitement (2019), Marble dust, ink, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, steel frame. Private Collection, Melbourne.
What has happened to all of us (2019), Marble dust, ink, oil, lacquer and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, steel frame, 132cm x 102cm. Private Collection, Melbourne.