Paul Maher install view
Dino Consalvo install view
Peter Lankas install view
CONSALVO | LANKAS | MAHER
at UoN Gallery
curated by Ahn Wells
15 Feb - 18 Mar 2017
Official opening: Saturday 18 February, 2pm
University gallery hours: Wednesday to Friday 10am - 5pm, Saturday 12pm - 4pm, or by appointment. For enquiries please phone +61 2 4921 5255
The University Gallery is delighted to collaborate with Gallery 139 to present CONSALVO | LANKAS | MAHER, an extensive exhibition profiling the work of three Gallery 139 artists, Dino Consalvo, Peter Lankas and Paul Maher.
Building on the success of CONSALVO | LANKAS | MAHER at the Depot Gallery in Sydney in 2016, curator Ahn Wells has recontextualised the exhibition for the University Gallery, bringing together new works from their studios that focus on practice and continual developments in defining and refining subject matter, materiality and process.
The three artists live and work in Newcastle and their works respond to the environment in different ways. These artists each employ their own unique visual language to reflect on the landscape around them, whether suburban, urban or natural. Through working and exhibiting together, they as a group enjoy a collegial frankness in their discussions that brings a freshness to these independant approaches and evident mastery of medium.
Download the EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
PRESS
Films of art and ideas | Melinda McMillan | newcastlestar.com.au
15 Feb 2017, 10:24 a.m.
Inspired trio | John Barnes ART review The Weekender, Newcastle Herald
the herald.com.au
22 Feb 2017, 5:17 p.m.
"I have begun to explore the details within a larger subject, zooming in and focusing on the painting's composition, surface texture and colour palette. All these paintings have been painted using this approach. Starting 'en plein air' at Merewether baths in the middle of the cold Autumn nights, I was drawn to the starkness of the pool edges and the reflection of the wall within the water. Allowing myself to finish the paintings in the studio, gave me the time and space to fully explore this new approach to my painting."
Dino Consalvo
“My current body of work continues the fascination with the ordinary and the everyday. I have made a conscious decision to return to the human form within the suburban/urban landscape. The nature of the imagery is from anywhere, as long as a visceral or a heart connection was made and had room to develop a familiar narrative. This body of work feels like a new beginning of my painting process, not only due to a complete painting technique change but also the return to figurative representation. There is a new excitement in my studio.”
Peter Lankas
“This new work is about the scale, reach and aspiration of provincial life that is once removed from the great dramas of the metropolis. I’ve been painting this section of our urban coastline since about 2009 looking North and South. Limiting myself in this way has allowed me to accumulate a collection of imagery and compositional components developed into something original and relevant. Every time I draw this landscape it is new, I see it for the first time again. I never get bored with making new images because as a society we’re always changing; as is the environment; and so does my take on it.
My work investigates what binds us together. The depiction of coastal suburbs is a response to our eternal need for an idealised sense of progress tied to civility, community and home. In this way my paintings draw on distinctions between public and private space, and how the generosity of shared, public space informs what we are in terms of democracy and civilisation: each facade reflects the public face - just as our private backyards say a lot about our private persona.”
Paul Maher
iPad drawing install view