heartfelt

26 february – 23 march 2019

Gallery 9, Sydney, Australia

Accompanying text

HEARTFELT / A quiet manifesto on painting the dynamic

Recently I’ve become interested in time and duration, namely how distance becomes visible only when considering the separateness of two forms (i.e. point a and point b). Space is quantified by the distance between these forms. But what if there were no markers in space or time to indicate a distance? Could this still be measured?

When considering infinity, a concept our minds cannot fully comprehend, we might think of a great distance or space stretching out forever. But what if infinity is not endless space, but wholeness or ‘one’? What if infinity is not horizontal space but vertical space, the infinite depth of a fleeting moment? Perhaps a clock striking the passing seconds are only abstract markers considered true by the mind. If we remove these markers, we might become one with all time, walking the same earth as our ancestors and future selves.

Condensing time and space offers an alternative way to think about history. Instead of a linear line trailing behind us, history is a mesh. A web spun around humanity, past, present and future tightly weaving every soul that has ever existed into the tapestry of the universe. Time and space become one. We might be better able to feel this with our body than to think it with our mind.

I seek to provoke a presence in the viewer. A brief moment of horizontal time, but eternal in vertical time. The presence found in a sundrenched afternoon, a glass of rosé warming in your hand and beyond, a surging horizon of sea. Against the roar you float.

You were really there.

The silence of a rolling hillside, a deep vert against a pale pastel sky, and candyfloss clouds shifting among a gentle breeze. The world sleepy beneath this pale indigo, but you are awake. Blood storms through flesh as you stretch your legs during a long car ride home.

You were really there.

These moments of vertical depth connect us to cycles, seasons and the ebb and flow of the universe experiencing itself through form. I was recently told my work is a tangle of energy, dynamic-ness and confusion, but it’s the way it all clicks together on the canvas is how memory, sensation and connectedness manifests. I want the audience to lose themselves in the curvy, twisting and coiling that pulls them into this heightened consciousness. An alternate perspective that jolts them back down to their body and ultimately brings them home.

Grace Wright, HEARTFELT,
Gallery 9 Sydney, 27 February – 23 March 2019