ABSTRACT

Immerse yourself in the world of ABSTRACT. Featuring the work of 15 artists working with abstraction, roughly a hundred years after the concept entered the western canon of art history with the paintings of Vassily Kandinsky and, more recently included but equally important, Hilma Af Klint before him. Simply defined as ‘non-representational art’ or art that preoccupies itself with the formal qualities of lines, shape, colour and geometry, an ‘abstract’ is also the summary of a text. This exhibition invites the viewer to engage on a deeply personal level with the emotions and thoughts that take shape and form through the hands of the artist in the gallery space.

In Victoria, centre of the arts, on an island in the southern hemisphere that is also large enough to call it a continent, what has changed in just over a century? How are artists painting in an ‘abstract’ manner today and what does the word mean to each of them, individually? Threads that converge and those that digress on their own tangents and push the boundaries of what is defined as abstract can all be seen and experienced in this summary of art made by artists who define their work as abstract in this moment in time.

Media and methods of making may have changed, while others have remained the same as they were a hundred years ago. Themes that emerge in this exhibition include healing, metaphorical introspection, coded symbolism, the metaphysical and the power of colour and shape. Gallery Sunari invites you to a cultural and artistic adventure that opens up a myriad possibilities for understanding through the language of visual communication.