LUSCIOUS

Rivergarden Gallery
Denville, New Jersey, USA
http://www.rivergardengallery.com/

April 13 - June 20 2008

Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey, USA
(Stadler, Zenner, Hoffmann-La Roche Academic Building)

Sept18 - Oct 19 2008

Rivergarden Gallery

Rivergarden Gallery

          
Kurt Brereton in  his studio

Artist Statement

I live on the littoral edge of the Pacific East Coast of Australia, just south of Sydney. My work is a response to the changing nature of my local rainforest, mangrove and beach environments. The impacts of rapid urban development, global warming and tourism have all been significant players in my work over the years.

I wish to impart the beauty of this land (“singing up the country”) while at the same time address the many disappearances and erasures I witness occurring around me.

Using a combination of media I have aimed to create a tension between representation and abstraction. My paintings tend to grow out of each other in a non-linear rhizomatic fashion, both formally and conceptually.

Layers of information, colours, sensations of space and time are both highlighted and undermined by turn. Nothing is fixed, everything is speculative. Desire for some solid notion of place is raised then dashed with each overlay skin of signs – be they iconic palms, dream homes or idyllic beach views. We find our selves looking through a series of illusive planes (skeins and glazes) or screens.

While these image-maps deliver an immediate gestalt-like impact, they also operate on our consciousness rather like slow release fertiliser – comforting us with familiar aesthetic art references, historical icons and cozy cultural myths. These images overtly play in a reconstructive sense with concepts of place, territory and landscape (real estate and art lots) that rely on fixed known boundaries.

I have a sympathy with Eugene Delacroix when he said that "Nothing is so real to me as the illusions I create in my painting". These images (fictions) that spring from one's imagination are made in response to experience and offer a way of seeing that is neccessarily both a critique and a reflective enquiry.

Donna Compton, director of Rivergarden Gallery at the exhibition opening 20th April

Exhibition preview night

LUSCIOUS - Monograph

72 pp, full colour, hard cover and paperback editions

Includes all the paintings in the Luscious exhibition plus selected related works.
Essays by Anne Howell, Harry Zephyr, Edward Dore, Janet Henderson and Kurt Brereton.

Provides an excellent context to Brereton's recent work.

Contents page and sample article of book - PDFs.

Available only from Rivergarden Gallery in a limited edition (100) signed by the artist. Paperback edition also available.
Please contact gallery direct on Tel: + 1 973 627 1554 or Kurt Brereton on +61 2 42681919

Exhibition

Click on works below to see blowup images

Series 1 - Illawarra Escarpment

Escarpment Littoral, oil and linocuts on canvas, 66" x 48"

Escarpment after Bushfire No 3, oil and linocuts on canvas,40" x 30"

Escarpment after Bushfire No 4, oil and linocuts on canvas, 40" x 30"

Escarpment after Bushfire No 5, oil and linocuts on canvas,40" x 30"

Series 2 - Orpheus & Eurydice In the Mangroves

Eurydice in Mangroves No1, oil and linocuts on canvas, 66" x 48

Series 3- Holiday in Vanuatu

Fairstar Holiday-Vanuatu No 1, oil and linocuts on canvas, 66" x 48"

Fairstar Holiday -Vanuatu No2, oil and linocuts on canvas, 20" x15"