'OMISSIONS' | MATTHEW WRIGHT

OMISSIONS

Matthew Wright

Kamile Gallery, at Loam Showroom, Claremont

2nd June - 16th July 2022

There is a spatial minimalism to this body of work, allowing a sense of balance and stillness. To me this is in stark contrast to your previous works, which has been more representational, structured and figurative. It feels as though there is a peaceful patience in these works. Can you talk to us about what is being explored in OMISSIONS?

In terms of the link from the representational to this, I feel as though in my earlier work the painting was the stage on which an event occurred. This is the same thing, yet it’s not populated with “images of recognisable things.” I am still trying to find that sense of activity within a space. So, in that regard, the work is still a space in which activity occurs, yet the process of arrival is different. Painting captures a time, captures a movement. I can’t make those marks again. They are a transient moment immortalised; a sense of something that can’t be obtained or replicated. These works explore that space between expression and control.

Your use of colour is also very considered and in certain works, sparse. What influenced your palette? I can see tones of salt bush, macrocarpa, silver princess and our cobalt blue sea..... has the landscape influenced you?

They felt like landscapes when I was painting them, but I thought perhaps that was more of a private story I was telling myself. A sense of the bigness of landscape, maybe. A vastness; the large working area contrasting with the small marks populating it. The colours reveal themselves; they sort of just happen. I’ve used a lot of ghost gum white... The muted, minimal activity allows for them to feel vast. Washes and glazes also produce unexpected, transitory tones.

What drives you to paint?

It is like a constant, I am in the studio everyday. Quite often there are big mistakes that end up painted over. That process of painting for hours and hours and hours, it builds up. That building up, making decisions, choosing things, making things, removing things, and then a crisis; you make a decision and then something you couldn’t anticipate happens. The revelation/breakthrough brought about by failure has always played a big part in my process. It’s destructive, but it’s also addictive.

OK final question ... what painting would you steal in a heist?

Eroica I or II by Jean-Michel Basquiat. And if I’ve got a spare hand, I’d grab a Giorgio Morandi too.

Interview and Curation by Anna - Lucinda Baxter