Viewing Room
ExhibitionFree Form: Contemporary Abstraction
Naarm/Melbourne
06 Feb – 08 Mar 25
06 Feb – 08 Mar 25
INTRODUCTION
Featuring Sydney Ball, Yvette Coppersmith, Daniel Crooks, Lynda Draper, Kanchana Gupta, Gregory Hodge, Lindy Lee, Tiffany Loy, Lara Merrett, Marrnyula Munuŋgurr, Dawn Ng, Gemma Smith and Jemima Wyman.
Sullivan+Strumpf is delighted to announce their first Naarm/ Melbourne group exhibition, bringing together key voices working in contemporary abstraction. A celebration of the genre as we know it today, Free Form includes new works from an exceptional lineup of internationally recognised Australian and Asia Pacific artists from within the Sullivan+Strumpf stable.
Since the early 1900s, abstract art has been central to the story of modern art. Moving away from representational imagery, abstraction favoured the sensory and placed focus on colour, shape, form and gestural marks. To abstract something is to subtract, to reduce to its purest form or most simple interpretation. Abstract art can be seen to hold spiritual and moral connotations, for order and purity. It may also evoke lyrical qualities, influenced by sound and music.
Free Form seeks to share a fresh perspective on abstraction and how these influences still apply yet have come to find new meaning and relevance in contemporary practice. Curated by Sullivan+Strumpf Associate Director, Siobhan Sloper, the exhibition includes a diverse collection of works traversing painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography and video.
Waterfall IX 2025
4K video, 16:9, colour
52:59 minutes
Dawn Ng is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, who has worked across a breadth of mediums, motifs, and scales, including sculpture, photography, light, film, collage, painting, and large-scale installations. Her practice deals with time, memory, and the ephemeral.
Often characterized by lyricism and nuanced use of colour, her work has been acquired by the Singapore Art Museum, and exhibited at the Musee d’art contemporain de Lyon, the Jeju Biennale (2017), and the Lille3000 art festival, France. She has had solos in Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze New York and the Art Paris Art Fair, and has shown in London, Sydney, Seoul, Shanghai, and Jakarta.
Ng has been commissioned by the Hermés Foundation (2016), the ArtScience Museum (2019), the Asian Civilisations Museum (2020), and most recently by the National Gallery Singapore (2023) and the UBS Art Collection to create an immersive installation for the UBS Lounge at the inaugural ART SG (2023). In 2024 Dawn will be included in the prestigious Asia Pacific Triennial held at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Australia with a work from her ongoing series Into Air.
Her works are collected by public and private collections, including the Singapore Art Museum, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Art Collection.
Object No.10 2024
plywood and stainless steel
134 × 29 × 34 cm
Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs
Body Drawing #1 2024
drawing machine, acid-free gel ink on 100% cotton rag Dutch Etching 250gsm
112 × 76 cm (unframed)
Ink drawing edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs
Body Drawing #3 2024
drawing machine, acid-free gel ink on 100% cotton rag Dutch Etching 250gsm
112 × 76 cm (unframed)
Ink drawing edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs
A pre-eminent figure and authority in his field, Daniel Crooks has spent his career crafting a distinct visual language unique to his practice. Working predominantly in video, photography and sculpture, Crooks is preoccupied with time and motion in an altered state.
Crooks is a careful observer of the everyday through a lens that splinters and refracts. His treatment of time is non-linear, pliable and warped. Within Crooks’s video work, our perception of space does not remain in a solid-state. Like many scientists and philosophers, Crooks is fascinated by the potential of a fourth dimension to the human existence. His works are a suggestion of what it might be like to experience the world beyond three spatial dimensions with a fourth dimension that is temporal: the dimension of time.
Crooks’s technique is the result of rigorous exploration and experimentation throughout his career, with the artist repeatedly examining and altering the same subject matter through new perspectives.
His recent public projects include Boundary Conditions, Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, 2022; Structured Light, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2022; Water Clocks, 2022, Murdoch University, Perth; and Phantom Ride, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 2016.
Daniel Crooks’s works are included in significant international collections and institutions including National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; M+/Museum of Visual Culture, Hong Kong; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and the Chartwell Collection, Auckland.
Mirroring Heaven 2023
flung bronze
120 cm diameter
53 elements
Over four decades, Lindy Lee has established herself as one of Australia’s most influential and respected contemporary artists with a practice that explores her Chinese heritage through the philosophies of Taoism and Buddhism - principles which emphasise humanity’s intimate and inextricable relationship to nature. Her work investigates the interdependence between spirit and matter, often employing elements of chance to produce works that embody this profound connection with the cosmos.
Lee has received widespread national and international recognition for her multi-disciplinary artistic practice, having exhibited in over 150 exhibitions in Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and the USA. In 2020-2021, the artist was the subject of a major survey exhibition, Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Receiving widespread popular and critical acclaim, the solo exhibition was one of the most visited shows in the Museum’s history.
The artist’s work has been widely collected in Australia and internationally and is represented in numerous major public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of South Australia; Adelaide; Queensland Art Gallery + Gallery of Modern Art; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum of Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Museum of Art and Culture, Lake Macquarie, NSW; Newcastle Art Gallery, NSW; Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre, NSW; Wollongong Art Gallery, NSW; Geelong Gallery, VIC, University of Melbourne – Ian Potter Museum of Art; Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane; Artbank, Sydney; The Westfarmers Collection, Allen Allen & Hemsley Collection and private collections around the world.
Over the last decade the artist’s practice has extended into the public realm, with the development of large-scale sculptural works that create sublime spaces of belonging in Australia and abroad. Vault of Heaven, Seeds of Cosmos (2020), in Sydney, won the Property Council of Australia’s Innovation & Excellence Award for Best Public Art Project (2022) and The Garden of Cloud and Stone won the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects Award for Civic Excellence. Other notable works include Eye of Infinity (2022), Hong Kong, Secret World of a Starlight Ember, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Life of Stars, Art Gallery of South Australia; The Garden of Cloud and Stone, Chinatown, Sydney; and Life of Stars: Tenderness of Rain, Zheng Zhou Cultural Centre, China.
Commissioned to celebrate the National Gallery’s 40th anniversary in 2022, Lee’s first immersive public sculpture, Ouroboros, was unveiled at The National Gallery’s Grand Gala in October 2024. Visitors can enter the ‘mouth of the sculpture at the entrance of the gallery and experience darkness that is illuminated by light beams emanating from the hundreds of perforations on its surface. During the day its polished mirror surface reflects the imagery of the ‘floating world’ passing it by. Lit from within, at night the Ouroboros returns its light to the external world.
Furthermore, Lindy Lee has made a significant contribution to the development of contemporary art in Australia through ongoing leadership in the cultural sector as an academic, board member, cultural advocate, educator, founder, and mentor. Lee’s far-reaching influence and dedication to the art community was officially acknowledged in 2024 when she was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for her ‘distinguished service to contemporary visual as a sculptor and painter, and to arts administration through leadership roles.’
Coordinate 2024
acrylic on linen
137 × 117 cm
A process-based approach to painting has led Gemma Smith’s exploration of abstraction for over two decades. She has continually pushed her practice in new directions, approaching painting through a variety of conceptual methodologies. Sometimes, self-imposed boundaries set the terms of compositional games; while at others times she pits intuition and chance against analysis and control. A sense of discovery infiltrates each work, never moving towards a pre-determined composition but harnessing an infectious sense of potentiality. While the method may vary for different bodies of work, the embrace of the pleasure or sensation of painting is key to Smith’s practice.
Emily Cormack writes, “Smith’s practice is like an ecosystem unto itself, adhering to its own codes and systems that mutate wilfully and with obvious pleasure.” Colour is arguably Smith’s subject as a painter. She has long been interested in its theories and histories but is also attuned to its sensational qualities. Through relentless trial and error, she explores its interactions and dimensionality, creating complex visual puzzles that create deeply rewarding experiences for the viewer. Smith’s painting is a celebration of chromatic dynamism, teetering on the line between a focused methodology and improvised intuition. As Julie Ewington so aptly writes, Smith’s painting “takes a perverse pleasure in colour”, and it is truly the joy of colour that lies at the heart of her practice.
A leading figure in contemporary painting, Smith’s work has been collected extensively, and is held in major institutional collections across the country. Recently her work featured in the inaugural collection display at the AGNSW's new Naala Badu building and has been included in exhibitions such as Living Patterns, Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2023), Know My Name, National Gallery, Canberra (2020), and Wheriko - Brilliant!, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhet, Christchurch (2019).
Smith has completed major public art projects such as Collision and Improvisation at the Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law (Brisbane, 2012), and Triple Tangle, the 2018 Foyer Wall Commission at the MCA. A major survey of her career, Rhythm Sequence (2019), was exhibited at UNSW Galleries in Sydney, and travelled to QUT Art Museum, Brisbane.
Abstraction (blue and green) 2024
oil and sand on jute
102 × 86.5 cm
Abstraction (paysley) 2024
oil and sand on jute
113 × 97.5 cm
Yvette Coppersmith is a painter specialising in both portraiture and abstraction. While her painting practice originally formed through portraiture in the realist tradition, over the last 20 years her visual language has developed and evolved to include still life and abstraction, with an interest in the interplay between these genres and the figure.
Coppersmith’s representations of self evolve through the process of her medium and stylistic transformation, utilising the traditions of Australian and European modernism as a vehicle to image her own subjectivity as well as the people she paints. Depicting predominantly women in her portraits, the artist explores the contemporary female gaze and the body, while similarly illuminating potent social, cultural, and environmental issues. In contrast, her abstract works reclaim signature elements from key practices within 20th century Australian modernism, engaging with emotive rhythmic compositions and ‘colour orchestrations’ that evoke the spiritual strands of transcendental painting.
In 2018, Coppersmith was awarded the Archibald Prize for her painting Self Portrait, after George Lambert. This was the fifth year being included as a finalist, and she was the 10th woman to win the Prize. As a Melbourne-based artist, Coppersmith graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001. She won the inaugural Metro Prize in 2003 and has previously been selected as a finalist in the Darling Portrait Prize (National Portrait Gallery, Canberra), Arthur Guy Memorial Award (Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria), Geelong Contemporary Art Prize (Geelong Gallery, Victoria), the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize (Moran Arts Foundation, Sydney), and the Portia Geach Memorial Award (S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney). Coppersmith has exhibited her work in artist-run-initiatives, commercial galleries, and public spaces in Melbourne, across Australia and internationally. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections. The making of her 2017 Archibald portrait of Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs features in Foxtel Arts’ documentary film ‘The Archibald’ by Mint Pictures.
Apparition 2024
glazed ceramic and blown glass
53 × 47 × 33 cm
Lynda Draper is a contemporary Australian artist who primarily works in the ceramic medium. Her practice explores the intersection between dreams and reality, shaped by fragmented images from her surrounding environment, recollected memories, and interest in talismans from ancient cultures.
Created by a combination of pinching and coiling hand building techniques, Draper’s ceramic sculptures evoke dreamlike, ethereal qualities with the visual fragility of paper or wax, and yet are instilled with the resilience and permanence of fired clay. The skeletal structures evolve intuitively, each part gradually cultivating the connective tissue of the work. Often towering into the air, they hold an anthropomorphic presence; each sculpture is imbued with a life of their own. Ultimately, Draper is interested in the relationship between the mind and material world, and the related phenomenon of the metaphysical. Creating art is her way of bridging the gap between these worlds and inviting contemplation about other possible realms.
Draper exhibited as a part of The National 4: Australian Art Now with her exhibition Talismans for Unsettled Times (2023) at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Draper has received numerous national and international awards, including being the recipient of the 2019 Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award. Other awards include the 16th International Gold Coast Ceramic Award, Queensland; Fisher’s Ghost Award, Sydney; and 54th Acquisition Award MIC, Faenza, Italy.
The artist’s works are held in significant national and international collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza, Italy; FA Grue Collection, Italy; Renwick Alliance Gallery, Smithsonian Institute Washington; Artbank, Australia; Collection of the Dutch Royal Family, Netherlands; IAC Collection FLICAM Museum, Fuping, China; Shepparton Art Museum (SAM), Victoria; The Myer Foundation, Victoria; Campbelltown City Art Gallery; Gold Coast City Art Gallery; and the University of Wollongong, New South Wales.
Djapu Miny'tji 2024
painting on board
122 × 122 cm
Djapu Miny'tji 2024
painting on board
122 × 122 cm
Marrnyula began working for the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre whilst Steve Fox was the art coordinator in the 1980’s. She still resides at Yirrkala to work at Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka as an artist and senior printmaker in the Printspace. As well as being an art-worker she was brought up in one of the most artistically prolific camps in Yirrkala over this period. Both her mother Noŋgirrŋa and her father Djutjadjutja (dec. c.1935-1999) were constantly producing art with the help of their sons and daughters. She grew to assist her father (winner of the 1997 Best Bark painting prize National Aboriginal and Islander Art Award) with his sacred Djapu paintings as well as developing her own style of narrative naive paintings. All this whilst providing material support and moral leadership for her large family and being ‘mother’ to her brother’s three children.
In 2007 Marrnyula exhibited works at Annandale Gallery with her Mother Noŋgirrnga Marawili where they painted the Djapu clan design. In 2009 she was featured in a major survey of contemporary art ‘Making it New’ at the MCA in Sydney. She was a participant in the Djalkiri project with John Wolseley and Fiona Hall, which is still touring Australia. In 2013 she exhibited at Seva Frangos Gallery, Perth and at Marshall Arts, Adelaide in 2014. In early 2015 her groundbreaking installation of 252 barks at Gertrude Street Contemporary brought significant notice. Arranging a large number of small barks has remained a major theme in her works since. In 2019 an installation of over 200 barks was exhibited during the Tarnanthi Festival in Adelaide at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
In 2020 a work of hers which used painted representations of the flurry of small barks but which was actually only one large bark won Best Bark Prize at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award.
Structural Gradient II-1536 2021
cotton
77 × 116 × 2 cm
Tiffany Loy is an emerging Singaporean textile artist whose practice is defined by both experimental technique and material complexity. Trained in industrial design in Singapore and textile-weaving in Kyoto, Loy employs an investigative approach to weaving, to materiality and to art-making more broadly. Loy’s practice explores relationships between fundamental elements such as colour, structure, and the invisible force in weaving – tension.
Exploring both the limitations and poetic potential of tension in threads, Loy is drawn to the ways that the human eye perceives the depth and volume of colour at both the scale of a single thread and that of a larger woven work. Loy considers weaving as lines in, within and around space with the power to augment perception. Her densely woven and intricate abstract sculptures invite viewers to consider textile not as a surface but lines that penetrate space and observe limits of what can be observable.
Since 2014, Loy’s works have been exhibited internationally, including Singapore Art Museum, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, La Triennale di Milano, Milan Design Week and Dubai Art Week. She graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, with an MA in Textiles in 2020, specialising in weaving, and was a recipient of the Design Singapore Scholarship.
manyana matters 2023
ink and acrylic on cloth and linen
220 x 300 cm
Photography by Aaron Anderson
Lara Merrett’s practice interrogates the relationship between painting and its surrounding architecture with site-specific work that invites us to enter and navigate its folds. Merrett’s larger scale commissioned work has involved public participation through touch, movement, cuttings, and its relationship to the built environment. Her simultaneous agility, amplification and softening of the rigid confines of canvas and gallery, both complicate and honour painterly traditions.
Merrett's works expand the field of traditional painting; working often on a large scale, the artist layers and pours water-based materials onto textile surfaces, the outcomes of which are impossible to anticipate. For Merrett writes, “It’s like magic when the unexpected starts to happen. I love it – it’s completely intoxicating. Each work has its own personality and therefore takes its own time.” Such alchemy might last days, weeks or perhaps months. In each case, the artist and works are always driven in part by their material exigencies but also by their conceptual sources drawn from literature, nature, community and activism.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Lara Merrett currently lives and works between Sydney and Bendalong, New South Wales. She studied painting abroad at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, before completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales and graduating with a Master of Arts (Painting).
Merrett’s recent solo and group exhibitions have been presented nationally and internationally, including at Goulburn Regional Gallery, NSW (2022-23); Town Hall Gallery, VIC (2022); University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2018); Artspace, Sydney (2017); Swab Art Fair, Barcelona (2015); Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne (2009-10); Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Perth (2008); Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne (2006); Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria (2009-10, touring) as well as with Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong; Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane; Sumer Gallery, Tauranga, New Zealand; Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne (2014); and Kaliman Gallery, Sydney.
She has received various grants and awards including the Sense of Place Grant, Shoalhaven City Council (2023) and The Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (2022). She has been commissioned for various projects including the St Regis Hotel in Chengdu, China; the Victorian Tapestry Workshop for St Michaels Church, Melbourne; the Sofitel Hotel, Melbourne and her work is held by collections of the University of New South Wales, Sydney; Bundanon Trust; Artbank, Australia; Royal Automobile Club of Victoria; and Macquarie Bank and UBS, Australia.
Open and Close #24 2024
Oil paint skin burnt and
stripped off French machine made lace
79 × 65 cm (framed)
Open and Close #19 2024
oil paint skin burnt and stripped off
French machine made lace
84 × 64 cm (framed)
Open and Close #22 2024
oil paint skin burnt and
stripped off French machine made lace
86 × 70 cm (framed)
Kanchana Gupta’s practice yokes materiality with process and this is both the impetus and structure behind most of her works. The materials that she deploys range from quotidian socially loaded substances like vermillion powder, henna, and sandalwood, to oil paint and canvas, and to construction materials like jute and tarpaulin. Each brings its own particular identity, social symbology, texture, structure, and colour, which she manipulates using a combination of studio and industrial processes irreversibly altering the inherent properties and contexts.
Her ongoing fascination with the materiality of paint has seen her investigate the physicality of the medium in her two-dimensional works, mixed media, and more recently through her sculptural installations. Her practice has been described as a process-driven exploration of and response to, urban environments. The pressures of unprecedented migrations, rapid urbanization, and overwhelming globalization are expressed through the extreme manual and industrial duress that she subjects her medium to. Paint set on a sub-structure of quotidian material is ritually ripped, torn, detached, peeled, burnt, and compressed to produce works that expose the strata of a deeply personal geology.
Gupta has had several solo exhibitions including FOLDED PIERCED STRETCHED, Gillman Barracks, Singapore (2022); 458.32 Square Meters, Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore (2019); Traces and Residues, Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore (2017); and Identity II, Institute of Contemporary Arts, LASALLE College of Arts, Singapore (2011). Her work was included in The Sceneries and Portraits of an Era - Featuring the Asia Collection of Benesse Art Site Naoshima at the Fukutake House Asian Gallery, Shodoshima, Japan, and she was a finalist in the prestigious The 2024 Sovereign Asian Art Prize.
Haze 24 2024
Hand-cut digital photos
104 × 140 cm
Haze 26 2024
Hand-cut digital photos
104 × 140 cm
Jemima Wyman is a Palawa woman, with Paternal descendants from the Pairrebeener people of Tebrakunna and Poredareme. She has maternal descendants from England. Wyman’s practice focuses on patterns and masking to investigate visual resistance: specifically camouflage as a formal, social and political strategy in negotiating identity.
Through her hand-cut photograph collages, she preserves universal acts of protest and confrontation, exploring themes of upheaval, uncertainty, and distress. These events are extensively documented by Wyman’s artwork titles that caption collective histories of global demonstration.
Wyman has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. Her first survey exhibition, Crisis Patterns opened at Artspace Mackay in October 2024. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Sullivan+Strumpf, Melbourne (2023) and Sydney (2024, 2021, 2019 & 2017); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2018 & 2015) and Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2015). The artist has participated in group exhibitions at QAGOMA, Brisbane (2023); Melbourne Art Fair, Sullivan+Strumpf (2022); IMA, Brisbane (2021); Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto (2020); TRANSFER, New York (2019), HeK, Basel, (2019), Chronus Art Center, Shanghai (2019); La Ga.t. Lyrique, Paris (2019); ZKM, Germany (2018) and Wellington City Gallery, New Zealand (2018). Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Artforum, Frieze, Eyeline, Art Monthly Australasia and Artlink.
Wyman’s work is held in several significant collections, including the Whitney Museum (USA), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane), Artbank (Australia), and 21st Century Museum of Art (Japan).
Rainforest 1978
Stain series
acrylic and enamel on canvas
219 × 382 cm
Sydney Ball is widely considered a pioneer in Australian Abstraction, and his long and impressive career has had a formidable impact on Australian art. Definitively a colourist, Ball spent his formative years living and studying in New York at the Art Students League under Theodoros Stamos, one of the ‘Irascible Eighteen’, which also included Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning.
Ball’s oeuvre is expansive and diverse, with each series marked by a monumental and dynamic change. All, however, share the prerogative to investigate the possibilities of colour and form; from the lyrical abstraction that defines his Stain paintings to the architectonic coloured forms of his famed Modular works. Ball continued to ambitiously push the limits of his own practice to greater heights while also having significant relevance as a contemporary Australian artist. Ball exhibited prolifically with more than 70 solo exhibitions both in Australia and overseas and is represented in public collections across Australia and internationally.
Ball has exhibited extensively in Australia and overseas. The survey exhibition Sydney Ball – The Colour Paintings 1963 – 2007 toured Penrith Regional Gallery and the Lewers Bequest (2008), McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Melbourne (2009), and The Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (2009). Recent group exhibitions include Shut Up And Paint, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2016); Birth of the Cool, Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (2015); The Less There Is To See The More Important It Is To Look, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne (2014); 20th and 21st Century Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2012-13); Hard Edge and Colour: Field Paintings and Sculpture, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2012); Tackling ‘THE FIELD’, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2009); Australian Abstraction 1965-1985 from the collection of the AGNSW, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2007); and New to the Modern – Heide 25 Years On, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria (2006). Ball was also notably included in the historic Australian exhibition The Field, held at both the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1968. In 2013, he was awarded the Honorary Award ‘Doctor of the University’ (DUniv) at the University of South Australia.
Bodies 2024
acrylic on linen
70 × 50 cm
Ties 2024
acrylic on linen
70 × 50 cm
Precious Things 2024
acrylic on linen
92 × 60 cm
Gregory Hodge is an Australian artist based in Paris, France. His paintings oscillate between abstraction and figuration, layering personal source material with painterly gestural marks and obscured motifs of architecture, interiors and foliage.
Hodge is interested in devising ways to render material surfaces in paint. His recent bodies of work honour a deliberately handmade quality, where he uses bespoke tools and brushes to create marks that resemble the warp and weft of tapestries. Initially working from illustrations and digitally collaged photographs, Hodge meticulously recreates these layered compositions in paint. Through his deliberate use of shadows and sharp edges, he achieves convincing trompe l’oeil planes that reinforce intellectual and visual collisions, where forms and shapes appear to hover and stack together.
Hodge’s foremost layer within his paintings are perhaps the ribbon-like gestures that undulate across the surface of his compositions, which have become a signature motif. Standing in for figures, fabric and other restless forms, these gestural devices are designed to disrupt representational symbols and any coherent reading of the paintings, returning densely arranged works back to the subject and experience of painting itself.
Gregory Hodge has completed international residencies at the Cité internationale des art, Paris (2019-2020 and 2024); The British School at Rome (2015); and Basso Berlin (2011). He holds a PhD from the Australian National University Canberra School of Art (2016). Hodge has been a finalist in numerous prizes including the Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of NSW (2023); Bendigo Art Gallery’s Arthur Guy Memorial Prize (2019); The Geelong Art Prize (2018); and the Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of NSW (2016) (2017). His work is held in several permanent collections including the National Gallery of Australia; The Wollongong Art Gallery; The A.C.T Legislative Assembly; and the Australian National University.
Sullivan+Strumpf acknowledge the Indigenous People of this land, the traditional custodians on whose Country we work, live and learn. We pay respect to Elders, past and present, and recognise their continued connection to culture, land, waters and community.
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