*Please note - The exhibition will be closed 10:30am-5pm Friday 18 September for assessments, but join us for the reception in the evening at 6PM.

Liz Bodey
Doctor of Philosophy
Painting

Aspects of painting such as colour, line, material, surface and touch have joined with those of place such as landscape, country, and cultural forms such as song and music, to create a place of resonance in abstract painting. With the acknowledgement of both European and Aboriginal cultural forms, the grid has become the ground for the exploration of these different threads.

I have been a practicing artist since 1988 and have had numerous solo exhibitions and group shows. I am primarily a painter but have also presented installation works. My work is represented in both public and private collections.

Ella Whateley
Doctor of Philosophy
Painting

The Metaphysics of Space: Painting a Body of Light

This investigation explores an invitation to the metaphysical—to the spiritual—through the visual language of painting. As an abstract painter and a person of faith, abstraction offers me a contemporary, non-prescriptive language with the potential to explore space and light as both subject and medium.

It builds on the tradition of Western religious painting to inspire the viewer to imagine the metaphysical. My fieldtrip encounters, with historic sacred paintings and with the lived monastic cycle, directed my investigations to two approaches towards luminosity in paint: materialising light through the materials used and painting the changing light. This reflected two intentions underpinning historic sacred works of art: the devotional purpose and the narrative, didactic objective. These experiences of light and space in the company of religious paintings and in sacred environments gave me the conceptual and methodological framework of affect with which to structure my enquiry.

The intention of the works was to stimulate the viewer’s sense of interior and exterior space experienced through the body and prompt new experiences of the metaphysical.
The result was a series of painted investigations into the nature of light and space in which interactive materials and colour interactions are facilitative devices for exploring the spiritual potential of the image.

Image: Ella Whately, Passing: Coming to Compline, 2015, acrylic on linen, 238.5cm x 130cm. Photographer: Brenton Mc Geachie