Kate Vassallo, Secrets, 2022. Acrylic on aluminium composite panel. Courtesy: the artist and Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, NSW. Photography: Document Photography.

Kate Vassallo is an Australian-Maltese visual artist, currently based on Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri Country (Canberra, Australia).

Vassallo designs materially driven systems as a methodology to produce artworks, combining rules, repetitious labour and serendipitous material textures. Equal parts chance and conscious decision-making in the studio, the artist seeks to visualise a tension between system-based perfection and the looseness inherent in handmade objects. Rules dictate the composition, colours and density of the works.

The paintings in Vassallo’s exhibition are slowly and ritualistically built up with thin layers of acrylic paint. Incorporating a diligent mark making process, these works are made in a controlled and disciplined fashion. The paint is always applied by dragging a brush in a consistent radial direction. Through developing these softly geometric works, Vassallo considers colour and light in an abstracted way, while imbedding a sense of time, memory and labour into their surfaces.

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