visual arts 84 DUO MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2014 duomagazine.com.au
visual arts
ARTICULATE SKINS OF LIGHT As the Queensland Festival of Photography 5 (QFP5) – which will be held at arts venues throughout the state during April – fast approaches, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery is making the final arrangements for its contribution; a major exhibition of digital prints by renowned London-based artist Tim Maguire. The exhibition, entitled Tim Maguire: The Douglas Kagi Gift, will showcase a major gift of 24 digital prints, acquired in June 2012. On the surface the choice to feature this exhibition as a major event in the QFP5 program could puzzle, particularly as Maguire identifies primarily as a painter. However, with photography also playing a significant role in Maguire’s creative process, the exhibition highlights and celebrates the blurring of boundaries between traditionally segmented techniques currently being fuelled by progressive contemporary artists. The main subject matter explored in the digital prints within Tim Maguire: The Douglas Kagi Gift is the same as that explored in the artist’s traditional oil paintings; striking macro or closely cropped visions of flowers. Due to the impressive
DUO MAGAZINE IS PROUD TO PARTNER WITH PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY AND SHANE FITZGERALD, MANAGER GALLERY SERVICES, TOWNSVILLE CITY COUNCIL, IN A SERIES THAT DISCUSSES CURRENT TRENDS, MUSINGS AND INSIGHTS INTO CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ARTS.
THE ARTIST TIM MAGUIRE
scale of the works, these delicate forms take on a heightened power and mesmerise the viewer. However, as with his paintings, the subject matter means little to the artist. Laurent Boudier wrote; “The subject means nothing. Tim Maguire is well aware of this… One can comprehend the interest in a subject that has been so utterly exhausted: the flower devoid of any further pretensions, merits its rehabilitation as a perfect expression of both difference and indifference.”
A Melbourne-based scientist and prolific collector of international prints since the 1970s, Dr Kagi bestowed this generous gift to the City of Townsville Art Collection in 2012 following discussions with then Gallery Services Curator Sue Smith. In gifting these works, Dr Kagi has not only provided the community with access to a major artist, but also re-focused the community’s attention on the impressive quality within and significance of the City of Townsville Art Collection.
While the floral subject may not be of huge importance, it provides Maguire with a perfect vehicle and the freedom to explore his true interests – colour and light – in the hope of providing a new vision of this ‘exhausted’ subject matter. He states; “Poppies are fantastically translucent, vehicles for light. That’s why I was so interested … the way the light fell on them and shone through them. The petals are skins of light.”
Dr Kagi has demonstrated a great generosity for gifting works to public collections all over the country, including a significant gift of 157 modern British prints to the Rockhampton Art Gallery in 2008. Set to visit Townsville and conduct an in-conversation session with Gallery Services Curator Eric Nash in late February, Dr Kagi stated, “Most of my donations have been to less endowed institutions who I believe in general have been very grateful and these donations will hold them in good stead in perpetuity.”
Tim Maguire: The Douglas Kagi Gift will provide the Townsville arts calendar with an international flavour, and it is with thanks to donor Dr Douglas Kagi that this was possible.
Indeed we are grateful, and I anticipate all those who take the opportunity to view these stunning works will feel similarly.
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Tim MAGUIRE United Kingdom b. 1958 Love of the Plants II, 2007
Tim MAGUIRE United Kingdom b. 1958 Love of the Plants IV, 2007 Digital pigment print on paper, 69.8 x 90 cm (sheet); 60 x 80 cm (image), ed. 16/35. Acc. 2012.043. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Tech-Dry Building Protection Systems Pty Ltd as trustee for the Dr Douglas A Kagi Scientific Research Trust. City of Townsville Art Collection. Photograph: Holly Grech-Fitzgerald
Digital pigment print on paper 72.3 x 91.61 cm (sheet); 60 x 80 cm (image), ed. 11/35. Acc. 2012.033. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Tech-Dry Building Protection Systems Pty Ltd as trustee for the Dr Douglas A Kagi Scientific Research Trust. City of Townsville Art Collection. Photograph: Holly Grech-Fitzgerald
DUO MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2014 duomagazine.com.au 85