25 March – 11 April 2021
about the exhibition
Sue Lovegrove’s paintings begin with her immersion in the shimmering light and phenomena of wind and weather around her home in Tasmania. This exhibition extends her painterly explorations of the fluctuating wetlands of Tasmania to the waterholes of Central Australia. For Sue, “water allows a private space of reverie reflecting both the physical environment; the fluctuating colours, light and sounds of life from the surrounding landscape, as well as psychological and emotional states of being”. ‘Pond-gazing’ has been the subject of art and poetry throughout history but the presence of water in the landscape is becoming increasingly transient, rare and precious. These large-scale works and phenomenally detailed miniatures capture, as Sue describes, “the fragility and fleeting nature of life sustained by these small unassuming bodies of water – the constantly shifting light patterns, the melancholy darkness and the movement of wind imprinting on the surface.”
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 2020, Sue Lovegrove was awarded the Elaine Birmingham National Watercolour Prize in Landscape Painting for one of her miniature paintings. 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. She was also 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.
