The Known World
Simon Barney
Exhibition Dates
20 November - 20 December 2009
Daniel Bunce, who led an expedition from Melbourne to Adelaide in 1849, was pilloried for having 'explored' regions already settled. Yet he began to see the country through the eyes of the Aboriginal people and he recorded what he understood of their already threatened knowledge.
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Overview
Daniel Bunce, who led an expedition from Melbourne to Adelaide in 1849, was pilloried for having 'explored' regions already settled. Yet he began to see the country through the eyes of the Aboriginal people and he recorded what he understood of their already threatened knowledge.
Painting is obviously a country already settled and yet similarly open to exploration. In the group of works in this show, the silver ground, borrowed from modernism and thereby supposedly antithetical to landscape tradition, provides the new terrain. On this silver ground the oil paint seems to float. It reflects light in a way that suggests a light from behind. These days we might look into a source of light as often as we look at objects from which light reflects. (Backlit and frontlit). The saturation and clarity of the coloured light you get from electronic screens is an ongoing challenge for the quieter and less intense colour of paintings.
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Simon Barney, 'The Known World', installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2009
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Simon Barney, 'The Known World', installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2009
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Simon Barney, 'The Known World', installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2009
43 - 51 Cowper Wharf Road
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Sydney Australia
T: +61 2 9356 0555
E: artspace@artspace.org.au
We show our respect and acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and their descendants.
