‘EVERYTHING CHANGES’ is a comprehensive survey of Tim Maguire’s practice featuring works personally selected by the artist from private collections, as well as lightboxes and paintings recently produced in his studio in France. Maguire’s images are suspended between abstraction and representation, exploring the thematic elements of colour balance and the duality of light and dark.
Maguire’s use of digital photography has modified his painting techniques. Maguire explains:
‘By constructing my paintings as transparently as possible, I seek to make the process apparent, so that every gesture remains visible. And as it is inherent in the nature of paint to dry, each layer is itself a little battle with time… Due to the vagaries of materials and climate, the drying time is always unpredictable. So I need to work fast, with big brushes and loosely approximate gestures…The nature of my colour separation process means that flaws in my representation are only visible after the application…at that point I might realise that I have put too much yellow or magenta in the preceding layers, by now well-dried and beyond changing.’
Central to the exhibition is the monumental Kinglake Panorama (2015), which depicts the Victorian region a year after devastating bushfires; the print echoes the artist’s ongoing fascination with transformation and revival.
Tim Maguire, Untitled 20170302, 2017, oil on canvas, 198 x 198cm. Artist collection. Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Newcastle Art Gallery, New South Wales
Newcastle Art Gallery
Until 18 February, 2018
New South Wales
