Hat Hill Gallery Solo Exhibition

RISE

November 1 – 25, 2007

Hat Hill Gallery
3 Hat Hill Road Blackheath NSW 2785
(02) 4787 7033

info@hathillgallery.com.au www.hathillgallery.com.au

click on images below to go to individual paintings

Orpheus Entering The Mangroves Rhizome, oil on canvas 180cm x 300cm

Bulli Point Rhizome, oil and linocut stamps on canvas
180cm x 300cm

Bulli Cycle Track No 1, oil on canvas, 95cm x 124cm

Three Cabbage Tree Palms , oil on board, 60cm x 62cm

Dreamhome No 2, oil on canvas, 61cm x 91cm

to view Dreamhome series and Mutant Hybrid Palms sculptures also in this exhibition

Works on paper

SOLD
Palms After Bushfire No2, oil, graphite, linocut stamps on paper, 70cm x 100cm 2007

Escarpment After Bushfire No1, oil, graphite, linocut stamps on paper, 70cm x 100cm 2007 SOLD

RISE

This exhibition continues Brereton's fertile preoccupation with the concept of rhizomatic image maps.The subject focus of this exhibition revolves around his home environment of the Illawarra south coast of New South Wales, Australia. Using a combination of media (linocut stamps, oil, graphite, perspex, wood and copper), a certain tension is created between the Real (representation) and abstraction. The images grow out of each other in a non-linear fashion, both formally and conceptually, rather like a ginger root does.

The title of the show RISE alludes to a host of connotations – of climatic increasing in sealevels, air temperatures and greenhouse gases. There is also a play on the risible; humorous play acting - taking the piss out of the deathly serious - as an antidote to the morbidity that surrounds us at every media news corner.

While the overt political or social message grapples with the impact of global warming on coastal habit (both urban and natural), there is also an aesthetic struggle at work. Layers of information, colours, sensations of space and time are both highlighted and undermined by turn. Nothing is solid, everything is speculative. Desire for the Real is at raised then dashed with each skin of signs  – be they iconic palms, dreamhomes or idyllic beach views. We find our selves looking through a series of illusive planes (glazes) and screens.

Brereton is also keen to construct highly seductive images. These are objects of desire to be hang on walls of your home, to be lived with and enjoyed over time. While there is an immediate gestalt-like impact of these images as abstract or representations "of or about things" they also operate on our consciousness rather like slow release fertiliser – sustaining us with art historical methods and ideas; playing in the gaps between material and immaterial worlds or the solidity and fluidity of what we hold as true and close to our cultural hearts.

Brereton says that "I want people to gain a lot of pleasure from my paintings – from the material sensations of the colours, the nature of paint (coloured mud) and other media. Art by definition challenges the prevailing notions of what "the Real" and for me does so through irony, parody and play rather than any didactic moral politic."

For Brereton, each of his "image maps" is a "art node" that is connected to other nodes that may lie next it or across space and time. These days much of us (our presence) now resides in virtual cyberspace and time as does in actual space and time. This goes for art too. Brereton has exhibitions in both actual and virtual space. The physical ones are exhibited for a few weeks at various galleries around the world. The virtual shows are "up there" 24/7 being everywhere and nowhere at the same time as you are now seeing.  Yet there is remains a sensorial value and connection with the material (the relationship with paint or other physical media) that cannot be experienced unless you can haptically touch, smell and feel the object. The virtual image of a painting is never a substitute for the actual painting – since it is by definition a hyper-real image (second degree) that has undergone a transformation and a transition in the digital simulation process. The generative net image is another species altogether and can not survive outside the virtual world. Brereton creates pixel-based art as well and object-based art.

This exhibition on at Hat Hill Gallery up in beautiful Blackheath west of Sydney is definitely a pleasurable experience that can only be gained by going there first hand. These small web-based images you see on this homepage are poor translations of "the real thing". So there you go...rise up, gather thy bag of bones and travel to the cool charms of the Blue Mountains for a sensorial excursion.

Edward Dore (Wollongong, 2007)

http://www.hathillgallery.com.au/