The Egg & Dart presents recent works by three abstract painters. Adrian Baiada and Mignon Steele join invited Melbourne artist Elyss McCleary for Otherworldly. Their works variously summon vivid densities and atmospherics through gesture and overlay. Each artist uses the brush to build marks, synthesise layers then knock back and resurrect depth. Surprising colour associations emerge, unfurling landscape spaces where the transcendental exists within the everyday.
The show brings together three divergent approaches that adjust our spatial understanding in landscape painting. With Otherworldly, we expect an immersion into a shifting realm of spatial colour as our eyes move from one sensibility to another.
Adrian Baiada seeks a quality of place that in its rich silences counters the surface trivia of the digital. The act of painting is a tactile response to an accumulating datascape and Baiada uses it as a way of maintaining directness.
Mignon Steele’s colour is so surprising, a chromatic challenge, as it modulates across variations in surface and hue. She shifts effortlessly from her well-established painting practice to mural work on architectural walls and other surfaces, permanent or transitory.
Elyss McCleary works with vibration and colour in painting, intuitively responding to spaces. Recent solo shows include The Pinkness at Tristian Koenig Gallery and Estimating a Fort at C3 Contemporary Arts Space, Melbourne.
- Melody Willis
