Peter Sharp @ Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney

Peter Sharp, Moonrise, 2011, oil and acrylic on linen, 150 x 132cm

Peter Sharp travelled to Fowlers Gap, far west New South Wales, as one of the participating artists on our Not the Way Home expedition, which is being documented as a major feature in our next issue. The work produced by each artist will culminate in a major touring exhibition, which launches in May 2012 at Sydney’s S.H. Ervin Gallery and will travel the nation for two years.

In returning to their studios, the artists have been left to their devices to produce a body of work that responds to their personal experience of the landscape, its history and its impressions. In addition to producing the work for the touring show, some artists’ responses to the arid landscape have opened a floodgate of creative output.

Peter Sharp’s newest body of work, on exhibition at Liverpool Street Gallery (Sydney), is the product of 20+ years experience travelling to the outback. A lecturer at Sydney’s College of Fine Arts, Sharp has led numerous student fieldtrips to Fowlers Gap. Not the Way Home presented Sharp the opportunity to participate, rather than lead and instruct, for the first time in his illustrious career, and produce a body of work as he discusses in his artist statement:

“This new body of work is about the relationship I have with the landscape of far western New South Wales near Broken Hill. I have been travelling out there for over 20 Years and these paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints are the first mature works I have made about the arid landscape.

They are not a direct rendering of the place but a reaction and evocation of how I feel and relate to the area. Rather than paint the view I made little sculptures of sampled bits of the landscape, then drew and painted from these constructions.

The pictures may appear abstract but all of them come from drawings made on site and then filtered through various media to explain or question how we see the landscape.”

Peter Sharp, studio, 2011

EXHIBTION

Peter Sharp :: Shadowbox