Things are not always as they appear in Matthew de Moiser’s sparse suburban landscapes. Although seemingly paintings, his meticulous works are assemblages made from laminate – a thin plastic veneer used to conceal and protect.
The conceit is deliberate and metaphoric, but the laminate also has an ethereal quality that has a way of transforming ordinary service stations, houses, and freeway overpasses into acid trip impressions of the Australian suburban condition. Like his earlier abstract sculptural works made from IKEA furniture parts, the laminate paintings, as de Moiser calls them, are an escape – a yearning for the sublime in the most unlikely of places.
Flinders Street Gallery
5 to 30 November, 2013
Sydney
Servo No. 2, 2013, laminex on board, 60 x 40cm
Courtesy the artist and Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney