Title

Simeon Walker: The beauty of the ordinary.

Venues

Flinders Lane Gallery (8 September 2009 – 26 September 2009)

Date

(2009)

Summary

Single-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (VIC). Paintings.

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

Flinders Lane Gallery is pleased to introduce the work of Geelong based painter Simeon Walker.

For this, his first solo exhibition with Flinders Lane Gallery, Walker presents a series of works depicting the Australian landscape in all its wonder and individuality. Choosing to focus on isolated elements of the landscape, Walker's ‘portraits’ of red gums and rock formations expresses the artist's interest in the power that landscape can have upon the psyche. From the unique quality of our light to the textures and forms of our native trees, this exhibition seeks to reaffirm the grandeur and awe of nature.

The exhibition title is drawn from a passage within Murray Bail’s highly acclaimed novel ‘Eucalyptus’, in which the author articulates the degree to which Australians overlook the splendor of their local landscape, blinded by a vial of ‘ordinariness’.

Walker’s large scale River Red Gums are anything but ordinary. Trunks, branches and bark become supple, velvety forms, coaxed into life through detailed examination. Through their branches a sky so unique to Australia radiates a deeply salient light. States the artist of his practice, “The point of interest for me lies where naturally dramatic forms meet the edge of civilized suburbia. It is here where human society is pushing out into the open land to both embrace and eradicate it. I am fascinated with these paradoxes and recurring opposites that define our relationship with the landscape.’’ [Gallery media, 2009].