5 – 22 May 2016
about the exhibition
Sarah Tomasetti is highly regarded for her luminous fresco paintings and installations. 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 made on a wall constructed with lime mortar and then detached by means of a cloth embedded early in the process. On these surfaces she paints landscapes, rendered through successive transparent layers of staining and encaustic wax. These landscapes seek to explore our shifting relationship with the natural world in an atmosphere of contemporary unease, and are at once both fragile and contemplative. Sarah says of the work in this exhibition, “Influxus refers to flowing in, of water, of air, of light, of people. This body of work brings the notion of human journey to my longstanding interest in our relationship to wild and fragile landscapes, in particular the glacial regions currently under threat from global warming. These places are integral to the water cycle we rely on for life and yet we also experience them as beautiful, uninhabitable, inhospitable and other. In juxtaposing the glacial images with anonymous travellers drawn from various historic sources, I aim to explore an inner experience of estrangement via the outer experience of traversing the land.”
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 private and public collections, both in Australia and overseas, including Artbank, Macquarie Bank, BHP Billiton and National Australia Bank.
