Angus Gardner, Landscape Painting 5, 2023. Glazed Earthenware, 45 × 40 × 12cm. Courtesy: the artist and Gallery 9, Sydney.

Gallery 9 presents Landscape Paintings by Angus Gardner.

Gardner is an artist currently living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Utilising experiences within the landscape his practice explores the relationship between drawing, painting and ceramics.

The movement between materials and making techniques is central to Gardner’s studio practice. Paintings and sculptures develop simultaneously in the studio as connections are constructed between 2D surfaces and the 3D forms. It is these connections that allow him to utilise not only traditional hand building techniques but also work with clay in a way that reflects his approach to painting. Mark making, energy and surface are at the forefront of his making process as he explores the physicality and nuances of the material.

“Landscape Paintings is a series of works on ceramic and linen that continue my investigation into the relationship between the 2D and 3D. Developed out of a series of drawings made whilst visiting Tjorita/West MacDonnell National Park last year, this body of work sees the energy and approach to painting transcend the linen surface onto ceramic structures.

A trip last year to the Northern Territory allowed me to experience an environment that was very different to those that have informed recent bodies of work. Familiar ideas of colour, light and movement were at the forefront of my thinking whilst walking in the landscape. However, it was the enormity of the spatial environment, both physically and psychologically, which demanded my attention. Ideas of scale and expanse transcended my drawings made in the landscape and have become key ideas explored in this body of work.

The drawings came back to Naarm/Melbourne with me and began to inform a series of oil paintings on linen. I found an approach and directness in these works that felt very connected to my experiences in the desert. Not wanting to lose this energy I began making clay structures that allowed me to explore a non-linear relationship between painting, sculpture and material. The box like ceramic structures provide a three-dimensional surface to refine my approach, explore mark making and reveal and conceal in ways that stretched linen does not.

I would like to acknowledge the Anangu and the Arrernte people as the traditional owners of lands where the drawings and ideas for this body of work were seeded. I would also like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners and custodians of the lands on which I live & practice.” –  Angus Gardner, 2023.

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