10 - 26 February 2022
about the exhibition
Sarah Tomasetti’s work is distinguished by luminous fresco paintings that deal with glacial and mountainous landscapes in states of rapid change. She has gained substantial knowledge and training in the traditional methods of fresco, using materials that have been employed since antiquity. The fresco surfaces that form the basis of her work are constructed by stretching cloth over a wall and laying lime mortar over the top. On these surfaces she paints landscapes, rendered through successive transparent layers of staining and encaustic wax. Once complete, the work is detached from the wall and adhered to a panel of canvas, wood or stone. The cracked façade alludes to the process of “continual disintegration and reformation in nature” and is caused by the slow movement of moisture from the curing surface into the mass of the lime mortar wall. Her recent series is a reflection on time spent in a small village at the foot of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand, India. The surrounding mountains, Sarah observed, hold deep spiritual significance to the local people and it is the mountain imagery that provides the inspiration for this body of work. She writes “the work has emerged from a single dawn trek climbing upwards to a small stone temple to witness a sacred puja, during which the goddess Parvati is sent over the range to Mount Kailash. Mountains ring the temple site, the snow a glittering mantle on stony ground. Back in the studio searching for a way to echo the mountain imaginary in this part of the world, I mixed pigment, the colour of the local dirt, into the lime-based fresco plaster and then constructed the painting in negotiation with the cracks and creases that emerge in the fresco skin. The dream state portraits symbolise the mountain as mnemonic, a reminder of interior states of mind and spirit.”
In 2020, Sarah Tomasetti was awarded the prestigious John Leslie Art Prize for her painting of a Tibetan Mountain, ‘Kailash from the Air’, described by Gippsland Art Gallery director Simon Gregg as “a dazzling tour-de-force that draws you in”. Sarah Tomasetti graduated from RMIT University and La Trobe University, Melbourne with a graduate diploma in Fine Art and Italian Studies in 1994. After graduating, Sarah undertook an internship in fresco painting at the Laboratorio per Affresco di Vainella in Italy and, on returning to Australia, completed a Masters in Fine Art at RMIT University. She has undertaken further residencies in China, Fiji, Italy and the USA and has numerous solo and group exhibitions to her name. Her work is represented in a number of public collections including Artbank, Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, BHP Billiton and National Australia Bank.
