Title

Earth Lines

Venues

UTS Gallery (17 September 2002 – 18 October 2002)

Date

(2002)

Summary

Single-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (NSW). Paintings, Monotypes

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

EARTH LINES a new exhibition of geologically inspired work by Sydney artist Kate Briscoe will open at the UTS Gallery on 17 September 2002.

The exhibition features a selection of abstract paintings, pigment on tapa, montypes and wax rubbings exploring two very distinct and separate Australian landscapes - the volcanic plains of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory and the Great Escarpment of the Murramarang National Park. [gallery media]

Briscoe has been travelling around Australia during the past three years, spending time in Arnhem Land and the Coburg Peninsula, sailing on the Arafura Sea and walking through the National Parks on the south coast of NSW. Her work is a mixture of different media emulating the different textures and rich colours found in these spectacular landscapes.

In the EARTH LINES catalogue, artist and academic Professor Peter Pinson claims that Briscoe's most recent works "may allude obliquely to rock platforms and geological turmoil but essentially they remain abstract conjugations of saturated colour".

In response to the physicality of the Australian landscape, Briscoe's 'paint' is a combination of fine Yass river sand mixed with earth colour pigments.

"This mixing of dense materials has a surface quality that both holds saturated colour and reflects light." says Briscoe. "I found the colours on the rocks of the South Coast were more subdued than those of the Northern Territory and were dominated by earth red, ochre and a blue that could harden to a steel grey."

In her larger, more experimental pieces, she examines the creasing folds and long, shifting, broken lines of rock formations through pigmented wax rubbings." Creighton says. "Some of these extraordinary pieces are over 4.5 metres long."