Richard Dunlop: Short Walks in North Tasmania
Tuned into the world and environments around him, Tasmanian-based artist Richard Dunlop takes specific events, narratives and landscapes as a starting point and transforms them into paintings with continued resonance by pushing forms beyond the literal and into the elusive. Short Walks in North Tasmania, showing at Colville Gallery in Hobart, continues this approach, synthesising kernels of meaning and ‘real subjects’ through abstraction and classical references, the surface of the works foregrounding functions such the relationship between light, composition and form. The coalescing of specific references with Dunlop’s overarching perspective of their inextricable relationship to wider systems is seen in specific works such as Crossings (2021), which was painted during the invasion of Ukraine and refers to contemporary events all the while showing the historical influence of artists such as Grant Wood and Colin McCahon. Another work, In Search of Thylacine in the Great Western Tiers (2022), takes the canonised and mythologised rapid extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger as starting point to grapple with the colonial mindset in tandem with explorations of the Tasmanian landscape, where the artist lives. Listening to classical music while he works, and with considerations of how the environment has affected art throughout history – to the extent of shaping movements such as the Sublime and Picturesque – at the front of his mind, the artist lets in the layers of any given moment. As such, Short Walks in North Tasmania is both a representation of the contemporary and the enduring. The exhibition is on show at Colville Gallery from May 24 to June 13, 2022.
NOTE: The dates provided are current and speculative. Many Australian and international arts organisations remain closed in accordance with COVID-19 restrictions. Please refer to institutional websites for further details.
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