25/08/2020
Visit BLUE exhibition - a group show by artists cleverly curated by fantastic Beata Geyer ✨
Currently until September 20th !
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Featured work: REBECCA WATERSTONE
Blue 2020
beeswax and oil paint on plywood
This work embodies the visceral experience of immersion in the blue-green eucalypt mists of the Blue Gum Forest. This subtle, sensory experience is distilled, and embodied in the ethereal, material qualities of beeswax, and pure pigments bound in oil paint. The Blue Gum Forest is a special place within the Grose Valley, in the Blue Mountains World Heritage National Park, which has seen dramatic destruction, transformation and regeneration from the notable bushfires of 1982, 2006, and the most recent fires over the summer of 2019 / 2020.
This work, presented in landscape format, references codes of minimal-abstraction, and colour-field aesthetics. It conveys the essence of experiencing the place and atmosphere, rather than reproducing an image of it. In light of the recent environmental devastation from the catastrophic fires, this work is an act of hope and reverence that holds space on the picture plane for the unique and powerful qualities of this location. Beeswax was historically used by the Egyptians for preserving paintings on papyrus and cave walls, and here in this work, it preserves the experience of a moment in time. The wax was gathered locally from hives in secret locations within the Blue Mountains, and the presence of this increasingly rare and valuable material – the by-product of extraordinary amounts of worker-bee labour - gives us pause to consider our impact, not only on our national parks, but on the declining global bee population, and the effects of climate change on fragile ecosystems.
Susan Andrews
M Bozzec
Kris Peta Deray
Tom Isaacs
Beata Geyer
Tom Loveday
Naomi Oliver
Katya Petetskaya .petetskaya
Rebecca Waterstone
Miriam Williamson and Brad Allen-Waters
Curated by Beata Geyer
Photo: @ Blue Mountains, Katoomba, Australia
