Kate Elsey – Banksia Mountain
Western Australian artist Kate Elsey introduces her latest exhibition that explores the Australian flora and fauna from a continent at odds with the elements.
A place ravaged by extremes, the burnt and wind swept outback has resulted in a unique biodiversity that attracted Elsey’s eye.
Commenting on the place of inspiration, Elsey stated, “My current exhibition is about the structures of flora and fauna and the underlying mechanisation of the Stirling Ranges National Park where I am developing an abstracted organic aesthetic, distilling the mechanics of the species. This is a series of Life Museum continuing to reference this region.”
There is a something clever about Kate Elsey’s works. In this latest series, Banksia Mountain, depicting Australia’s diverse plant life, seductively blur the lines between realism and abstraction with their geometric forms.
“Finding the qualities in the flora especially of the Stirling Ranges gives me a rhythmical, colourful line and structure to base the forms. The detail of the flower heads might be exaggerated and the veins of the leaves oversized. Banksia Mountain is a study in abstraction of the infinite nature forms nestled in valleys to montane heathland,” commented Elsey.
Pairing delicate flowers, with gnarly weathered forms and creatures, Elsey draws the viewer into her own artistic imaginary of Australia’s ancient landscape.
Successfully entwining material and conceptual practice, there is a sense of energy imbued in her works by her practice. “My paintings are formed out of oil paint scraped into a mix – the picture plain is the palette and is re applied to create a sculpture. The paint becomes the landscape of interpreted flora fauna. Behind the etched quality of the paint is a hint of antiquity of ancient time and an urgency of what time the living force has left on this ever burning rotating planet.
The lively works are cleverly stilled by Elsey’s strong conceptual practice. Really the artist herself says it best, “My paintings are a mediation of a moment, those awe inspiring intricacies of the native bush developed, evolved over billions of years. For me a life affirming experience to be amongst nature’s living breathing force. And to observe how it survives against all that life throws it’s way.”
It’s hard not to agree with her. Opening this Friday 22 August get a glimpse of Elsey’s beguiling landscapes.
EXHIBITION
Kate Elsey – Banksia Mountain
22 August – 20 September
Official Opening Sunday 30 August
Linton and Kay Galleries
I met with Gary Deirmendjian in his studio, or one aspect of it at least, at a café in Sydney’s Kings Cross. He is self-described...
Adam Douglas Hill (AKA Blak Douglas) is an attention-seeking artist. Seemingly on the fringes of the art world but also something of a celebrity whose...
With the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney recently announcing the reintroduction of admission fees from February 2025, there has been a renewed...
The colonial spasm that started in the seventeenth century, that saw the world carved up to fuel capitalism and created a socio-political landscape that led...
On his visit to Australia in 1968 the American art critic Clement Greenberg encouraged young artists to “enjoy their diversity”—advice Jock Clutterbuck appreciated. As a...
Here are brief segments pulled from fieldnotes that emerged from the beginning of the first two weeks of my fieldwork in the rural town of...
Bathurst has inspired the exhibition yet it’s not an exhibition about Bathurst. My mum grew up there. My grandparents and uncle had a farm there,...
The typical arc of a mid-career retrospective exhibition is that of an artist arriving at a fully formed artistic style. But this major exhibition is...
It’s not as though the national attitude toward acts of terrorism was more permissive in the past. Thank you very much, 2006, in which footage...