Greg's works have always fluctuated between artificial structures and imaginary landscapes, sourced from TV, cartoons...Dr Seuss.
With several recent visits over the past two years to central South Australian desert, the Kimberley region and beyond, the exhibition...'Land' is a result of an eye opening experience for Ades.
"Over the past couple of years I've found myself travelling through the countryside, beyond the farmland to the remote interior of the desert. Instead of staring out the window at the urban landscape or into the corner of an empty room, I found myself staring at rocks and dirt." Greg Ades 2004
Greg compares his visits to the desert with the city-
'there was this threat of the endless rather than the confined'.
In the past three exhibitions at Helen Gory Galerie, Ades' exhibitions were about the internal environment. It's always been about space being confronting or confining.
Using his typical toxic colour palette, Greg deliberately gives a mysterious almost fantasy quality to 'Land'.
"I tried to fade everything, to get that dryness and slight fluctuations of colour. When you get up real close to a dead shrub...you suddenly notice a hint of colour- a slight lavender tinge. I did what I have always done and try to look at it [the landscape] the way children would depict it." Greg Ades 2004
Greg has captured the mysterious plains of the desert in a fashion that is disconcerting. ..."the results are powerful indeed, cool yet connected with the land, toxic, but somehow accurate in capturing the mysterious plains of the outback.'
Ashley Crawford , Art and Australia, 2004
Edward Colless [Australian Art Collector] writes of Greg Ades' paintings...
" ...they have the sort of sharp delineation and graphic quality of John Brack's illustrative style...the images, the use of cartoon like colour and the distortion makes the viewer uncomfortable but...we get to see just how peculiar our comfort zone is."
Ashley Crawford is freelance writer for the Age, Co-author of "Spray"-Howard Arkley and more.
Edward Colless is Head of History of Art at VCA and Arts Writer. |
