GRAHAM FRANSELLA
eau forte
GRAHAM FRANSELLA
eau forte
Opening Night
Tuesday 4 March 20 25 6pm – 8pm
28 Derby Street Collingwood VIC 3066
Artist Talk
Saturday 15 March 2pm
Exhibition Dates
Tuesday 4 March – Saturday 22 March 2025
Open 7 days 10am – 6pm T 03 9417 2422
melbourne@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au
Cover image: Bending figure 1994 etching 160 x 176 cm edition 10 Photography by Viki Petherbridge
Graham in the studio with Burt, Melbourne 2024
Photography by Kathleen Coelho
Graham Fransella: reflections
Printmaker and painter Graham Fransella has long navigated the figure in the landscape, paring back his subjects to essential outlines that hint at an elemental humanity, a vulnerability. His stark, vivid depictions create grand gestural images that flirt with abstraction through a minimal palette. When painting figures, he blocks them in black over yellow, embracing commitment and speed, and will often turn the canvas to reveal new perspectives. ‘After an outburst, you start to hunt the image down’, he says, describing his technique of slashing with a palette knife and employing various strategies to manipulate his medium. ‘Through desperation, you go through hell trying to make it work ... and then you must live with yourself.’
Fransella’s recent work, however, also leans towards the non-figurative, the marks themselves becoming the focal point. It is the freedom of the marks that he looks for, highlighting a lack of self-consciousness that speaks to authentic expression. He embraces chance and accident, viewing them as essential to the life of the work.
Fransella admires the disregard of perfection in Edvard Munch’s prints, and he aims to make his own printmaking process appear effortless, preferring ordered chaos, ‘as if it flows and glows with acid and turps’. For example, Orange Head 1998 was sketched in just 25 seconds, but it took two weeks to develop, reflecting years of experience. Fransella believes that simplicity often creates more powerful art, his instinctive responses yielding coherent and distinctive images.
In his works on canvas, Fransella moves from applying dramatic textures and frantic lines in many colours to achieving a looser, more subdued (yet monumental) style with a reduced palette. While printmaking demands acceptance of the final outcome, painting allows for greater freedom and spontaneity. In working quickly, he is not second guessing: ‘As the artist you are responding to something the theatre of making something. The irrationality is much more apparent and somehow it ends up making a much more rational image.’ It is a balance that can only come through a stylistic evolution and the maturity of creative expression.
In 2003, I curated a landmark exhibition of Fransella’s work at the Stonington Stables Museum of Art, Deakin University. In the intervening two decades, his practice has come to acquire this maturity, a quiet confidence, a focused engagement with his creative materials and concerns. Time has enabled him to revel in the transformative power of his textured, earthy mark-making. ‘Time separates things and lets you see objectively; the imagery is part of my vocabulary now,’ he says.
Caroline Field 2024 Curator, ACU Art Collection
1 All quotes are from an interview with author, at the artist’s studio in Brooklyn, Melbourne, 22 October 2024.
SEL E CTED E TC HI NGS
Figure on beach 1994 176 x 144 cm edition 10
Two figures 2005 176 x 145 cm edition 25
Three figures 2002 176 x 143 cm edition 20
Four
Orange
Dance
Beach figure 1994 178 x 136 cm edition 10
Mirror
Street figures 2007 142 x 176 cm edition 10
Two heads 1992 160 x 177 cm edition 10
Figure and post 2007 176 x 145 cm edition 10
Figures in landscape 2007 176 x 142 cm edition 10
GRAHAM FRANSELLA
Born 1950, Harrow, England
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘eau forte’
2022
Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘The barrier’
2019 Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘Figure and Landscape’
2017 Beaver Galleries, Canberra ‘People and Places’
2016 Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘Recent work’
2014 Beaver Galleries, Canberra ‘figure and landscape’
2013
Heiser Gallery, Brisbane
Australian Galleries, Sydney
2012 Australian Galle ries, Melbourne ‘Recent Work’
2011 Beaver Galleries, Canberra
2010 Heiser Gallery, Brisbane
Australian Galle ries, Melbourne ‘Lakeline’
2009 Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney
2008 Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘Canvas • Paper • Bronze’
Beaver Galleries, Canberra ‘paintings, prints & sculpture’
2007 Heiser Gallery, Brisbane
Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney
2005 Beaver Galleries, Canberra
Heiser Gallery, Brisbane
Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
Port Jackson Press, Melbourne
2004 Grahame Galleries, Brisbane
2003 Beaver Galleries, Canberra
Stonington Stables Museum of Art, Deakin University, Melbourne
Australian Art Resources, Sydney
2002 Axia Modern Art, Melbourne
2001 Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
2000 Axia Modern Art, Melbourne
Beaver Galleries, Canberra
1999 Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
Axia Modern Art, Melbourne
1998 Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘Recent Work’ Beaver Galleries, Canberra
1997 Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
1996 Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, England
1995 Beaver Galleries, Canberra
Australian Galleries, Sydney ‘Recent Work’
Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘Recent Work’
Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
1993 Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
Australian Galleries, Sydney
Grahame Galleries, Brisbane
Beaver Galleries, Canberra
1992
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne
Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, England
1991 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1990 Grahame Galleries, Brisbane
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1989 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, England
1988 Anima Gallery, Adelaide
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1987 Gerstman Abdullah Fine Arts International, Cologne, Germany
1986 Gerstman Abdullah Fine Arts International, Melbourne
Alba Fine Art, Kew, London, England
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1985 Gerstman Abdullah Fine Arts International, Cologne, Germany
1984 Gerstman Abdullah Fine Arts International, Melbourne
Solander Gallery, Canberra
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1983 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1982 Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Melbourne
1981 Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Melbourne
1978 Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Melbourne
