Nicholas Currie, DOG Paintings and Candles, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and FUTURES, Melbourne.

This suite of new paintings are bold abstract reckonings of body and place, conceived through a mixed Indigenous Australian and European perspective. Nicholas Currie eschews the brush for an immediate mode of mark making. Swaths of spray-paint are layered with thick paint spread with fingers, referencing reflections of light on water. In select works, the artist’s handprints create punctum.

Currie views these works as emotions, histories, and actions with an undercurrent of kindness – the acronym DOG means ‘do only good’. His art and curatorial practice spring from themes of men’s mental health, Indigenous bodies, culture, identity and joy in humour. But back to what these paintings do – there’s physicality in the paint application and this action and material agency is transferred to the viewer with the mixed effect of a muscular lyrical impact and a warm hug; textural dexterity, wetness and swathes of colour are primed for immersion. Rich purple, green, yellows and blues have elemental connection to land and sea.

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