August 5, 2023 - August 20, 2023
STEPHEN EASTAUGH – NEARAWAY
Artist:
Stephen Eastaugh
Location:
subiaco
Far is not in the vicinity and away is not here. If an object is ‘faraway’, it is remote and distant in both space and time: off the map, not in sight, nowhere close and requiring imagination to visualise the precise location. I see ‘nearaway’ as a term that could mean something that is directly in front of you, but also adrift or floating away.
A landscape painting hanging on a wall is obviously not far-away but perhaps it can be ‘nearaway’. Can a small art work be equally here and elsewhere? Simultaneously afar and nearby? Domestic and exotic? Physically it is close and intimate so you can touch it, but the array of personal responses that may arise in the form of feelings and memories conjured up by a painting can possibly land the viewer in strange outlying mind-scapes.
In this selection of mixed media views, I dispute, mis-directed and run amok with materials and abstractions. Roads, mounds, patterns, mountains, threads, grids, postcards, knots, pilgrims, bloody skies, signs, colours, birdhouses, leather, smudges, rocks, desires, stains, shapes, clouds and textures have all been gathered during extensive geographical travels, as well as many kilometres of cerebral rambling.
These works were created in a number of studios over recent years - in a small jungle garden on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, a tin shed in Broome, a remote village on a Norwegian fjord, an old Perth shop-front - but all were collated in an obscure place ‘nearaway’ in the back blocks of my brain.
A landscape painting hanging on a wall is obviously not far-away but perhaps it can be ‘nearaway’. Can a small art work be equally here and elsewhere? Simultaneously afar and nearby? Domestic and exotic? Physically it is close and intimate so you can touch it, but the array of personal responses that may arise in the form of feelings and memories conjured up by a painting can possibly land the viewer in strange outlying mind-scapes.
In this selection of mixed media views, I dispute, mis-directed and run amok with materials and abstractions. Roads, mounds, patterns, mountains, threads, grids, postcards, knots, pilgrims, bloody skies, signs, colours, birdhouses, leather, smudges, rocks, desires, stains, shapes, clouds and textures have all been gathered during extensive geographical travels, as well as many kilometres of cerebral rambling.
These works were created in a number of studios over recent years - in a small jungle garden on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, a tin shed in Broome, a remote village on a Norwegian fjord, an old Perth shop-front - but all were collated in an obscure place ‘nearaway’ in the back blocks of my brain.
