2009 Oil on Italian Linen, 1520 x 1520
Finalist, the 2009 Whyalla Contemporary Art Prize
With the demands of the 24 hour news and entertainment media coupled with the public’s seemingly ever-decreasing attention span, the qualifications required of today’s celebrity are both dubious and minimal. For example, a celebrity can be someone who has lost (or gained) a lot of weight, or even someone who has done nothing more than sit around the Big Brother house. Which led the artist, inevitably, to think of Paris Hilton. Careers and businesses have been built on following her actions and she provides the content for a host of media from magazines to television and the internet. Yet she has done nothing more from being born (an achievement she shares with even the most unfortunate amongst us) albeit she was clever enough to do so with a famous surname. It is a career built upon nothing, a structure without foundation. The spiral staircase is especially appropriate, as it not only echoes the human DNA double helix spiral, but also winds around itself in a whirl-wind; the perfect metaphor for the hubris that accompanies today’s media “personalities.”
Pure is a series that explores humanity in an unconventional way. On the surface they could be seen as just moody skies. But to dismiss them so would be to miss the point: the clouds provide each painting a grounding in reality, but their main purpose is to provide a linking yet changing backdrop against which complex foreground dramas unfold.
Unusually, with these paintings the titles are as important as the works themselves, as they alert the viewer to the fact that they are not witnessing merely a scene, but that each is a quirky metaphor for a particular personality characteristic. With the combination of title and image, deeper meanings emerge, triggering the opening chapters to an endless array of stories the viewer is invited to create.
2007 Oil on Linen, 1000 x 1000
Selected for the Blake Prize Directors Cut
Pure Faith exploits the iconic image of the “velvet rope” - in this celebrity-saturated world it has become the ultimate symbol that separates the haves from the have-nots, the celebrated from the un-celebrated, the famous from the almost-famous. By altering its context and adding a vertiginous precipice at either side it poses questions about where in fact the “chosen path” actually leads. That the path is broken by a gap clearly too great to be hurdled further causes pause for thought. Is this a warning about the modern obsession to pursue fame seemingly at any cost? A metaphor for the difficulty of life lived in the spotlight? Or a fable regarding leaps of faith?
Pure is a series that explores humanity in an unconventional way. On the surface they could be seen as just moody skies. But to dismiss them so would be to miss the point: the clouds provide each painting a grounding in reality, but their main purpose is to provide a linking yet changing backdrop against which complex foreground dramas unfold.
Unusually, with these paintings the titles are as important as the works themselves, as they alert the viewer to the fact that they are not witnessing merely a scene, but that each is a quirky metaphor for a particular personality characteristic. With the combination of title and image, deeper meanings emerge, triggering the opening chapters to an endless array of stories the viewer is invited to create.
2008 Oil on Linen, 1000 x 1000
Winner, 2008 Townsville Open Art Award. Now in the permanent collection of the Perc Tucker Regional gallery, Townsville.
Pure Escapism plays with the ideals of the great Australian family holiday and the current trend of Baby Boomer Grey Nomads and evolves it into a ‘playful nightmare.’ That the ‘escapees’ are still tethered is deliberately poignant.
These new paintings continue the exploration of humanity begun in my earlier works, but moves from the external world to the internal. Ostensibly moody skies, they are more than mere landscapes: The clouds provide a grounding in reality, but their purpose is to provide a unifying yet changing backdrop against which complex foreground dramas unfold.
Recognizable cliche are used to trigger viewer familiarity - after which the narrative unexpectedly departs. Deliberately ambiguous, the concepts invite multiple interpretations with subtle, yet barbed, wry social and political satire. The combination of image and title adds an additional level of meaning, for together it becomes apparent that each is a quirky metaphor for a particular personality characteristic - and ultimately, the opening chapter in an endless set of stories the viewer is invited to create.
2009 Oil on Italian Linen, 1520 x 1520
A noble visage, fragmented to be an echo of its former stateliness: this is doubt. The potential is there - the possible elegance clearly visible - indeed within reach, but reduced, weakened and distorted by the insidious lack of faith eating away from within. Pure is a series that explores humanity in an unconventional way.
On the surface they could be seen as just moody skies. But to dismiss them so would be to miss the point: the clouds provide each painting a grounding in reality, but their main purpose is to provide a linking yet changing backdrop against which complex foreground dramas unfold.
Unusually, with these paintings the titles are as important as the works themselves, as they alert the viewer to the fact that they are not witnessing merely a scene, but that each is a quirky metaphor for a particular personality characteristic. With the combination of title and image, deeper meanings emerge, triggering the opening chapters to an endless array of stories the viewer is invited to create.
Melbourne artist Matthew Quick has in the last few weeks been nominated as a finalist in both the $25,000 2009 Whyalla Contemporary Art Prize and the $15,000 2009 Eutick Memorial Still Life Award. He is also heading to Art Sydney 09, to be held at Moore Park, Sydney from 22 – 25 October 2009.
The first 20 people to contact him via his site www.matthewquick.com.au will receive 2 tickets to the premier art fair in Sydney that weekend.
Check out Matthew Quick
