A two person show of new mixed media and paintings that investigate the overlap between natural forms and materials highlighting current approaches to abstraction in contemporary art.

Drawing through fluid oil paint, Stefany Hemming’s lines shape-shift into complex networks and forms that conjure the natural world. In these new works Hemming explores the uncertainty and contingency surrounding our current relationships to the environment. Working reductively and within a strict set of formal parameters, Hemming pares down the painting process, manipulating the oily sludge until the surface is no longer malleable. What remains is evidence of a presence that has been and gone. In the absence of humanity, there is a life force that continues.

Carole Sinclair uses discarded objects and mixed media to explore and elevate the energy present in non-living matter. Allowing stains, tears and marks to remain visible, she foregrounds these elements to create the content and imagery in the works. By placing these worn and marked source material in relation and juxtaposition to each other, she generates a vibrancy and vitality within the works that suggest the history of the selected materials and elements, indicating previous uses and a record of labour of both the original components and their reuse in the artwork. Sinclair’s work is heavily processed based, and the adding, adapting and subtracting of elements lead to works that are constructed and assembled in more of a sculptural, rather than painterly way.

Image: Stefany Hemming, Hubbub, 2018