For almost 30 years, through painting, prints, drawing and digital imagery, Melbourne-based artist T J Bateson explores an iteration of mark that embraces and celebrates machine-made aesthetics alongside evidence of the artist’s hand within an immersive, visual experience.
Through introspection into the personal meaning of the work, he has a gentle, calming influence that is striving to be immersive – a totality of aesthetic experience – and intriguing, process-based that both requires and reflects time spent by both the artist and the viewer. It looks to the essay in discretion, inwardness and silence of artists such as Agnes Martin in its minimalist, ethereal quiet.
T J Bateson, Mechanical Black Grey Ivory, 2016, synthetic polymer on paper, 120 x 160cm. Courtesy the artist and Tacit Galleries, Melbourne
Long influenced by Australian artist Ian Fairweather in celebrating meditative pattern and rhythm of quiet tonality, Bateson looks to embody, through multiple iterations, a passage of thought, respond to time, take a breath and replenish self whilst providing a vehicle for others to contemplate and re-evaluate. Through the extended contemplation of a field of limited colour and tonality, the subtle shifts and nuances take on an amplified resonance.
Exhibition to be opened by Euan Heng on Wed 5 July, 6.30-8pm.
Tacit Galleries
123a, Gipps Street, Collingwood, VIC 3066
5 July to 13 August, 2017
Melbourne
