Adrienne Gaha - Grand Tour 2024

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COMPILER: Bianca Luciano ARTWORK PHOTOGRAPHER: Omid Daghighi

SEPARATIONS: Spitting Image, Sydney

ADRIENNE GAHA

Reception Saturday 27 April 2024 2:00 - 4:00 PM

Adrienne Gaha loves painting: its histories, its painstaking processes, the minutiae of its colour combinations, both scientific and serendipitous. The entire complex convention-laden panoply of European and Australian painting is a field open for her exploration. Once, the ‘Grand Tour’ on the Continent was the epitome of cultural awakening; English artists, architects and wealthy gentlemen combed Italy and France seeking enlightenment. Today, the artist in her studio revisits paintings seen in museums, images in books, her own photographs. What to do with this wealth of information, this surfeit of delight?

Gaha’s voyage of discovery is entirely practical. It’s messy, and she revels in it. Gaha relishes the physicality of pigments and mediums, and she does have favourite colour combinations— cadmium orange, purples, ultramarine blue. This year she’s enjoying the new marriage of magenta and cerulean blue, a fine example of how many paintings start with her wish to work with certain colour combinations, or the curious behaviour of a medium like Liquin, with its robust consistency. Above all else, Gaha plays with evanescent veils of paint: the unearthly glow of The Olympus, after Tiepolo, uses a glaze of burnt umber, then pale cerulean on top.

This lightest of touches is applied not only to the surface of the paintings but to Gaha’s handling of her sources. She orchestrates a fine conversation between slippage and structure. Look at Hunter. The solid little scarlet figure dashes off into what seems to be another painterly dimension, held together only by the straight tree trunks in the foreground. What is important is that Gaha’s paintings are not copies of the images that kicked them off. They are treatments, considerations, ways of thinking through images, coming to know them. Gaha’s paintings are ‘After’ her sources—whether Veronese, Goya, Fragonard as her titles say, in both senses of the word.

This is a venerable practice, both in Europe and Asia, but Gaha’s adventures are always driven by her delight in certain images—the spectacular red lionfish in his dark aquarium in Pterois Volitans—or by coming to grips with a particular challenge, such as Les Romains de la Décadence, after Couture, the gigantic mid-nineteenth century Salon painting in the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris. When she ‘takes on’ a source, as she puts it, Gaha is learning it, as one does a new language. In this process of revisitation, she can come to understand, perhaps, the source of her own attraction to the original. And indeed, these ravishing paintings manifest the painter’s delight in her work. The Italian word summing up this particular ‘Grand Tour’ would be allegria, the feminine noun capturing joy, and vivacity, and an enduring spirit of hopefulness.

Adrienne Gaha does indeed love painting. On her own terms.

Julie Ewington

1. The Meeting, after Fragonard, 2024, oil on linen, 130 x 97 cm

2. Hunter, 2024, oil on linen, 137 x 153 cm

3. The Pursuit, after Fragonard, 2024, oil on linen, 130 x 97 cm

4. Mare and Foal, 2024, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

5. Study from Titian’s ‘Pastoral Concert, 2024, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm

6. Scorn, after Veronese, 2024, oil on linen, 137 x 153 cm

7. Les Romains de la Décadence, after Couture, 2024, oil on linen, 137 x 153 cm

8. Pterois Volitans, 2024, oil on linen, 147 x 122 cm

9. The Olympus, after Tiepolo, 2024, oil on linen, 110 x 100 cm

10. Shelter, 2024, oil on linen, 61 x 61 cm

11. The Parasol, after Goya, 2024, oil on jute, 120 x 164 cm

12. Seven Shillings Beach, 2024, oil on linen,127 x 101 cm

The Meeting, after Fragonard, 2024

The Pursuit, after Fragonard, 2024

and Foal, 2024

Study from Titian’s ‘Pastoral Concert’, 2024, Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm

Scorn, after Veronese, 2024

Les Romains de la Décadence, after Couture, 2024

Pterois Volitans,

The Olympus, after Tiepolo, 2024

The Parasol, after Goya, 2024

ADRIENNE GAHA

Born Sydney, Australia

Lives and works in Australia and France

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2024 Grand Tour, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

2023 Two Autumns, Edwina Corlette, Brisbane

2022 The Turning, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

2021 Verdure Edwina Corlette, Brisbane

2020 Arcadia, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

2018 Recent Work Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

2016 Recent Work Kalli Rolfe Contemporary art Neon Parc, Melbourne

2016 Snake dance, Greenwood Street Projects, Melbourne

2014 Vestiges, Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Sofitel Melbourne on Collins

2013 New Paintings Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney

2009 Recent works, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

2006 London Paintings & Drawings, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

2006 Recent Works (with Brooke Fitzsimmons), Hewer Street Studios, London

2004 Recent Works (with Brooke Fitzsimmons), Hewer Street Studios, London

1999 Recent Drawings, Mori Gallery, Sydney

1998 Drawings & Photographs, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

1994 Adrienne Gaha The Merchants House of the National Trust, Sydney

1993 Recent Work Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

1990 A Merchant Sailors Gift, Chameleon, Hobart (Artist in Residence that year)

1990 The Camels Hump, Mori Gallery, Sydney

1987 The Crossing First Draft Gallery, Sydney

1986 Cockles and Muscles, Mori Gallery, Sydney

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2022 Autumn Group Show, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

2021 Summer Group Show, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

2021 Sydney Contemporary, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

2019 Spring 1883 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Sydney

2019 Side by Side, Piers Feetham Gallery, London

2019 Auckland Art Fair, Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Auckland, New Zealand

2018 Couplings, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

2018 All We Can’t See, Yellow House, Sydney

2018 Condo, Mexico City

2018 Spring 1883 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne

2017 10, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

2017 Sydney Contemporary, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

2017 Spring 1883 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Sydney

2016 Spring 1883 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne

2015 Spring 1883 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Sydney

2015 Grace Cossington Smith Painting Award Exhibition, Wahroonga

2014 Spring 1883 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne

2014 Grace Cossington Smith Painting Award Exhibition, Wahroonga

2014 Geelong Contemporary Painting Prize Exhibition, Vic

2002 Sweet Spot, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

2002 Savill Contemporary, Savill Galleries, Melbourne

2002 The Human Portrayed, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

2001 Male Nude: A Private View Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

1998 Erotic, Melbourne Fine Art Gallery

1998 Spring Exhibition, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

1998 Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne

COLLECTIONS

ArtBank

National Gallery of Victoria

Art Gallery of Western Australia

Art Gallery of South Australia

Macquarie University

Monash University Museum of Art

University of Tasmania

Private and Corporate collection in Australia, France, UK and USA