1 – 17 September 2022
about the exhibition
Agneta Ekholm’s abstract paintings explore forces of energy and immortality, her soft, flowing organic shapes encompassing the perpetual motion of life. By way of imagined imagery and technical process, mysterious forms and colours emerge. Conscious and unconscious forces direct her intuitive process, her memories and emotions influencing the colour and tone of works that might suggest the ice landscapes of her Finnish childhood, the play of light and the flow of water. Agneta’s work is paradoxical: at first glance simple and immediate, it is in fact created over weeks and months, the result of exploration and discovery inherent in a technique honed over a number of years. Working with fast-drying acrylic and water, she uses a sponge to apply shapes and gestures in layers of solid pigment and transparent washes, continually rinsing and rubbing sections away until the final image is built. It is an obsessive and fastidious process and the work travels a complex journey before its final incarnation is revealed. Reflecting on her painting practice, she identifies with the observation of American abstract painter Clyfford Still that “no painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones”. At the same time, she recognises that “each of my paintings – once complete and released into the world – is its own contained object and has its own meaning for, and influence on the viewer”.
Agneta was born in Helsinki, Finland where she undertook visual art training at the College of Fine Arts, Västra Nylands College and Swedish Art School of Nykarleby. In 1994 she received a grant from the Swedish Cultural Foundation for further research at RMIT in Melbourne where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours (Painting). Over the past twenty years Agneta has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Christchurch, Hong Kong and Reykjavik and has been a finalist in the Ravenswood Art Prize (2020, 2018), the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2020) and the Calleen Art Award (2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012). Her work is in collections including Artbank; Embassy of Finland, Australia; Google, San Francisco, USA; Goya Collection; Rydges Hotel Group; Scarpi Collection; Sony Music Corporation and Val Morgan Collection.
