ANDREW CHRISTOFIDES MARK GALEA DONALD LAYCOCK

28 OCTOBER - 29 NOVEMBER 2015

The Nancy Sever Gallery, in association with the Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne, is presenting an exhibition of classic abstract art, featuring three Melbourne painters whose work in this genre ranks them amongst Australia’s leading artists: Andrew Christofides, Mark Galea and Donald Laycock.

ABSTRACTION x3 opens at the Nancy Sever Gallery on Thursday 29 October and runs until 29 November 2015. For further information please contact Nancy Sever at nancy.sever@iinet.com.au or Tel 02 62395434. The Gallery is open Wednesday–Sunday 11 am–6 pm.

ANDREW CHRISTOFIDES was born in 1946 and completed studies in Fine Art at the Chelsea School of Art in London (1975-78) where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He has always been drawn to an aesthetic of order, simplicity and elegance. He is intrigued by geometry, which is about order, precision and clarity and which has a kind of visual efficiency in which nothing is superfluous. His goal is to achieve an art that combines the simple grandeur of the Italian Renaissance with the heroic idealism of such early European utopian art movements as Constructivism. He introduces space through the use of frames, which create a “window” effect; uses a hierarchy of scale in which some elements are made larger and more prominent while others are made smaller. He overlaps elements and handles paint more atmospherically to generate greater depth. “I’ve also introduced my own expressive presence into the work” he explains, “via subtle painterly surface gesture, a more personal use of colour and a halo effect around some of the elements, which I feel projects a sense of the spiritual or esoteric”

Works included in the exhibition

MARK GALEA has a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts). His work characteristically presents the viewer with optical dilemmas created through the subtle manipulation of colour relationships. He delights in the potential of the square and the capacity for colour to generate meaning. With careful and disciplined application of monochromatic paints, he creates abstract forms that quiver and vibrate, setting up a rhythm produced by contrasting harmonious and discordant colours within the composition. There is a tension between movement and stillness, visual structure and imbalance. His works can be quiet and uplifting or vibrantly dynamic and strong.

DONALD LAYCOCK

Donald Laycock was born in 1931 and attended the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, graduating in 1953. He travelled and studied throughout Europe, principally in Spain, in 1966-67. His work first attracted attention in a group exhibition shared with Clifton Pugh, John Howley and Lawrence Daws at the Victorian Artists’ Society Galleries in 1955. His early interest in surrealist painting was succeeded by a later phase in which he sought to use his art to interpret problems relating to time and space. Amongst his commissioned works is a mural, Night Sky, for the Australian Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal and another, Earth Fire, for the Australian pavilion at Expo ’69 in Osaka. His works are held in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Galleries of NSW, South Australia and Western Australia. He is best known as the creator of the interior paintings of Hamer Hall, a huge concert hall in Melbourne.

ABSTRACTION X 3

ANDREW CHRISTOFIDES MARK GALEA DONALD LAYCOCK

28 OCTOBER - 29 NOVEMBER 2015

Works included in the exhibition