Damien Minton Gallery

Ross Laurie Artist Profile Feature
- A journey to desert country

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Artist Profile invited 13 prominent Australian artists on an expedition to a research station at Fowlers Gap, broken hill. In this interview Ross Laurie reflects upon his experience of the project and the relationship between landscape and his painting.

Paintings and Works on Paper, 2010
The bush around Ross Laurie’s homestead near Walcha contains all of his motifs. There are rows of stringybark eucalypts, forming portals through to other zones of bush; and trees divided at their bases, like a large letter V; or fallen between others, making for the distinctive N-shape. All of this is sheltered by a low ceiling of foliage that filters the light of the sky and gives the feeling of a protective enclosure, of a place slightly set apart from the wider world.

In his paintings of the last couple of years the forms have shifted into bold configurations that take the landscape sensation to a high pitch of expression. The heavy volumes of tree-trunks have seemed almost to hover above the ground, and colour, rather than sitting on the surfaces of objects, has illuminated them from within.

Having witnessed the artist in his home environment I would say that these qualities of levitation and incandescence are not wholly of the place. They are in the eye of the artist. He is striving for a picture that’s adequate to what life contains: the weight and yet lightness of life, and the presence of beauty. The painting of landscape is not, for him, an attempt to traverse vast distances and reach a place that is somewhere else, but the recognition that the fullness of life can be found in the familiar place called home.

Joe Frost

Born

1986Walcha, 1961

Study

1986Painting, Victorian College of the Arts, Prahan Campus, Melbourne
1985Painting, printmaking and sculpture, Newcastle Polytechnic, UK 1984Painting and drawing, Foundation Course, St Martins School of Arts, London 1983Painting and Printmaking, Mitchell College, Bathurst 1982Visual Art, Sydney College of the Arts

Solo exhibitions

2010Paintings and Works on Paper.Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney 2009Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney 2009Moree Plains Regional Gallery 2008Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney 2007Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney 2006Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney 2005Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney 2005Wrestles with Landscape, New England Regional Art Museum 2002Damien Minton Gallery, Newcastle 1999Coventry Gallery, Sydney 1998Old School Gallery, Walcha 1997Coventry Gallery, Sydney 1996Coventry Gallery, Sydney 1995Coventry Gallery, Sydney 1994Coventry Gallery, Sydney 1993William Mora Galleries, Melbourne 1992New England Art Museum 1991Tamworth City Gallery 1991William Mora Galleries, Melbourne 1991Ben Grady Gallery, Canberra 1990Linden Gallery, Melbourne 1988Girgis and Klym Gallery, Melbourne 1981Tamworth City Gallery 1981Parmenter Gallery, Walcha

Selected group exhibitions

2011Salon des Refuses, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 2010Melbourne Art Fair 2009Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Gymea, Works on Paper Award 2009New England Regional Art Museum, ‘New England Views’ 2009Defiance Gallery, Sydney, ‘Same Place, Many Views’ 2009Salon des Refuses, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 2008Melbourne Art Fair, Damien Minton Gallery 2008Paddington Art Prize (winner of the COFA Print Award) 2008North South East West, Damien Minton Gallery 2007Salon des Refuses, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 2006Salon des Refuses, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 2006Regional Encounters, Tamworth City Gallery 2006Walcha – City of Art, Gallery Karlovy Vary, Ostrov, Czech Republic 2006Same Place Different Views, Defiance Gallery, Sydney 2005The Year in Art, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 2005(Going) Out There, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, COFA, UNSW 2005Country Energy Art Prize, Coffs Harbour Regional
Gallery and NSW Parliament House 2004England Picture, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale 2003Surface Memories, Tamworth City Gallery 2004Hazelhurst Work on Paper Award, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Gymea 2003Country Energy Art Prize, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale 2003Walcha – City of Art, New Contemporaries Gallery, Sydney 2000Melbourne Art Fair, Bryan Hooper Gallery, Sydney 1998Coventry Diary, Coventry Gallery, Sydney 1997Salon des Refuses, SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney 1995Salon des Refuses, SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney 1991Syme Dodson Gallery, Sydney 1989Drawings, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne 1988New Art Melbourne, Ivan Dougherty, Sydney 1988Gallery Artists, Girgis and Klym Gallery, Melbourne 1988Moet and Chandon Touring Exhibition 1987Moet and Chandon Touring Exhibition 1982New England Artists, Tamworth City Gallery

Commissions

2004Sculpture, Walcha Central School, Walcha 2001Preschool entrance sculpture, Walcha Preschool Inc, Walcha 1998Town entrance sculpture, Walcha Shire Council, Walcha

Prizes

2008Paddington Art Prize (winner of the COFA Print Award) 1999Inaugural winner of the Norville Prize for Landscape Painting, Murrurundi

Collections

Macquarie Bank Art Collection
Australian National Gallery, Canberra
State Bank Collection, Victoria
Maritime Museum, Sydney
NRMA Collection, Sydney
Artbank
Gaden Ridgeway
La Trobe University Collection, Melbourne
New England Regional Art Gallery
Benalla Regional Art Gallery
Tamworth City Gallery
Coventry Collection, Sydney
Laverty Collection, Sydney
Private Collections, Australia, New Zealand and England
Newcastle Region Art Gallery

Publications

Spectrum Review by John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 April 2006
‘Current Affairs’, John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 2005
New England Picture Catalogue, NERAM
Surfaces Memories Catalogue, Tamworth City Gallery
Walcha City of Art Catalogue, New contemporaries Gallery, Sydney
‘Past Master’, John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 June 1996
‘Paintings that peer behind the shadows of reality’, Christopher Heathcote, Age, 19 May 1993
New Melbourne Catalogue, 1988
Moet and Chandon Catalogue 1987 and 1988