Adriane Strampp

StoriesWheretheLightFalls: oftheEveryday Adriane Strampp

1 - 19 October 2024

This new work explores the idea that human presence can be deeply felt, even when unseen. It invites the viewer to imagine the narratives and lives that unfold within quiet, intimate spaces, where the intangible presence of inhabitants lingers. Light plays a critical role as both witness and storyteller, illuminating remnants of daily life and drawing the viewer into the subtle drama of domestic interiors, where it reveals, conceals, and transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.

As the philosopher and phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty stated, “painting does not imitate the visible; it renders visible.” In this body of work, I investigate the interplay of light and shadow to reveal how the act of seeing conjures a world that exists in the tension between the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknowable.

The theme of absence as presence has long been central to my practice. From the large-scale depictions of empty dresses in the late 1980s and 1990s to the empty roads and landscapes that followed, my work positions the viewer as a witness — someone who recognises, yet is separated from, familiar scenes. These works serve as reminders that we are always only the observer of other’s lives, not the participant, and can never know the full story.

This latest body of work is directly influenced by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the prolonged lockdowns in Melbourne. Spending extended periods at home, I observed the changing qualities of light through the seasons and the ebb and flow of domestic life, both during the day and on restless nights, discovering a new landscape within my own walls.

Adriane Strampp, 2024.