Victoria Reichelt | Future Ruins
Victoria Reichelt has a nifty way of revealing beauty within seemingly lacklustre everyday scenes that the ordinary observer would glaze over.
In her latest exhibition Future Ruins, Reichelt turns her hand at visualising modern ruins set within a contemporary context.
Exploring the deserted archives of libraries and institutions, Reichelt’s paintings reconceptualise our understanding of a ruin – a remnant and repository of past knowledge – which most of us would associate with the historic buildings of Rome or Greece.
In this case Reichelt responds to the increasing digitalisation of library and archives, transformed into uniformed hubs of new media. Future Ruins reveals the silent, industrial back rooms of media hubs as the dull modern ruins of the future – a stark contrast to the romantic allusions of crumbling walled ruins and statues.
Taking the viewer on an archaeological style look back into the future, Reichelt’s paintings explore empty corridors,close up shots of abandoned library catalogue cards, and bundles of paper bound loosely by ribbon.
Even with this desolate gaze towards the future, there is an enticing pull to these works that can’t be denied. Reichelt’s practice adheres to a technique of photorealism so impressively executed that it requires at least a second closer glance (or more) to confirm it isn’t a photograph.
Drawing the eye in, the works reveal spaces with filled with repetition, monotone colour and patterns that rhythmically pulse in the artificial light. With a clever eye for colour and pattern, Reichelt focuses on a motif within each work – a lurid colour or endless pattern – that in the artist’s light make the assumed monotonous archival subject seem one of a kind.
So to be excited or disappointed for the future? Head along to Jan Murphy Gallery to see these entrancing studies of the new ruins – tangible remnants of human creativity and thought – left over from the modern world.
However seeing them painted from Reichelt’s perspective, there is something about the future that doesn’t look so bleak.
EXHIBITION
Future Ruins
Until 31 October 2015
Jan Murphy Gallery
Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery
Through a multidisciplinary collaboration between Rotterdam-based curators, architect Paul Cournet of CLOUD and artist-designer Sabine Marcelis of Studio Sabine Marcelis, the exhibition explores the interplay...
Artificial intelligence will be used by young artists who started using it as kids on their phones. They will see it as a natural extension...
This year’s Biennale arrives under more complex circumstances than most. It is shaped by the profound loss of its curator, Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), whose exhibition...
No artist creates in isolation. Every painting carries traces of the conversations, places and histories that shaped it, preserving within its surface a particular moment...
The weekend markets at Fairfield Showground have been one of Western Sydney’s great institutions for more than fifty years. Fresh fruit and vegetables, children’s clothes,...
In recent times, Yorgos Lanthimos has shifted toward photography, noting in a Guardian interview, 2026, that he needs respite, saying, “it might be a couple...
In Australia, political cartoons were altered by several events during the 1960s: the arrival of Les Tanner’s (1927‒2001) instinctual wit at The Bulletin, Bruce Petty’s...
Recognition of the importance of early bark paintings and their link to the world’s oldest continuing culture, is what makes them both highly sought and...
I had come to see my daughter sing in Deborah Kelly’s Creation Choir and was fortunate enough to make it inside the gallery for the...