3 - 22 March 2011
about the exhibition
Kirrily Hammond’s recent work captures the quiet, sublime moments of our everyday surroundings and the different qualities of light in the landscape. Her paintings of twilight skylines feature landscapes that are indistinguishable, creating a sense of familiarity as if from a distant memory or dream long past. Whilst geographically unrecognisable, Kirrily has taken direct inspiration from existing locations, including Kansai airport in Japan, North Beach in Perth and the Gippsland region in Victoria. One series of paintings captures the blurred vista of dark landscapes, punctuated by the glow of city lights and the silhouettes of overhead rail wires that Kirrily experienced on her travels around Japan on the ‘Hikari’ (the Japanese word for light) bullet trains. Kirrily’s elevation of the ordinary to the sublime is seen in her pencil renderings of fragile dandelions and the coarse bloom of a milk thistle; accentuating the delicate transience of our natural world.
Kirrily studied visual arts at the Canberra School of Art and Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, graduating with Honours in 1997. Since completing a Masters in Curatorship at the University of Melbourne in 2002, Kirrily has balanced curating for state galleries and academic art institutions with exhibiting her own work in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. In 2005, Kirrily was awarded a Harold Wright Scholarship to study at the British Museum in London and, since then, has been employed as Curator – Collection at the Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne. Kirrily Hammond’s work is held in numerous collections including the Glasgow School of Art (Scotland), Australian National University, University of Wollongong and Latrobe Regional Art Gallery.
