11 - 27 May 2023
about the exhibition
Sue Lovegrove’s work explores her relationship to place, in particular the landscape of Tasmania, through close observation and sensory perceptions of the natural environment. In this exhibition, Sue continues to be fascinated by water, drawing inspiration from lakes located in the south west of Tasmania such as Lake Promontory in the Western Arthur Range. For the artist, “There is an inherent abstraction in the mesmerising patterns of light and shadow that play out on the surface in a constant state of flux and transience…” The use of fine delicate lines and layers of subtle watercolour washes capture the patterns of movement and exquisite depth found within water. Through the repetitive motion of her painting process, combined with the layering of thousands of tiny brush marks, Sue contemplates how the rhythms of her own body are mirrored within the landscape. “I think of the surface of water as a threshold space, a place of liminality, an intermediate or transitional space between the known and unknown, between the cacophonous sounds of life above and the imperceptible sounds below….These paintings are about a state of mind – a way of being in and within a landscape ….” In all of Sue’s work, she harnesses the rhythm of the place – the sounds and patterns, the cycle of emergence and retreat – creating works that are seemingly fleeting but vibrantly present.
Born in Adelaide, Sue Lovegrove graduated from ANU School of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1990 and a PhD in 2002. Her PhD research was on Aboriginal women’s painting from the desert with a focus on Indigenous perceptions of pictorial and cultural space in painting through experience of everyday life. Sue has undertaken numerous residencies in remote locations including Antarctica, Macquarie Island, Maatsuyker Island and Tasman Island and, in 2015, she studied Persian miniature painting at The Prince’s Foundation in London. In 2018, she was awarded an Australia Council Grant to publish ‘The Voice of Water’ in collaboration with Tasmanian poet Adrienne Eberhard, bringing together Adrienne’s poems and Sue’s paintings. Sue won the 2020 Elaine Bermingham National Watercolour Prize in Landscape Painting and was awarded a Highly Commended in the 2017 Hadley’s Art Prize. Sue has had over 25 solo exhibitions around Australia and her work is represented in numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Parliament House, Macquarie Bank, Canberra Museum and Gallery and the University of Canberra.
