Peter Daverington, The Messenger, 2014-2024. Oil, spraypaint and gold and copper metal leaf on canvas, 198 x 152cm. Courtesy: the artist and ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne.

You can’t put the nose back on the Sphinx. It’s hard not to stare at the gaps in a flaking fresco. The silk costumes of the Ballets Russes are stained with the sweat of long-dead dancers. The old bottles they fish out of the Thames are more beautiful than the ones in 7-Eleven. It’s not healthy to be too nostalgic. But time has its own aesthetic, and the past is seductive.

Peter Daverington’s new series Palimpsest tugs on the past. With his renowned technical skills, Daverington has excavated his own painted archive, providing a tactile exploration of his history as an artist. Using canvases that have been painted, painted again, abandoned (even destroyed), before being rescued, Daverington’s delicate surfaces are composed out of crumbling images, oxidisation, and entrancing lacunas. With each artwork containing traces of countless other paintings, this exhibition acts as a visual diary, even a retrospective.

Daverington’s intentional pentimenti reveal both problems and solutions that he has discovered. As the artist notes, “These paintings are an aggregate of imperfections. The scar tissue left after a fight between hope and despair. The beauty of painting is that you can always paint over it. Nothing’s irredeemable.” Despite the ravishing effects of decay and disintegration that haunt Daverington’s process, the artist maintains faith throughout. Look at certain paintings in this exhibition and you will find an exquisite hummingbird. A fragile hummingbird in flight cannot be easily perceived by the human eye. Immersed in a maelstrom of painted history, the hummingbird represents a fixed point of optimism for the artist, as well as a symbol of a beauty that is difficult to see.

Opening Event: Wednesday 10 April, 6 – 8pm.

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