Brett Colquhoun

Brett Colquhoun’s paintings explore momentary shifts and transitions within both natural and artificial environments. Quiet gestures underscore defined vignettes as Colquhoun paints with an airiness and dexterity that bridges the chasm between the internal and external world. Incremental variances of form and perception emerge freely through a phenomenological enquiry into themes of absence, presence, and memory. 

Colquhoun’s subjects often invoke a symbolist quality to encircle shifts in being, depicting impressions such as the striking of a match, residual mark of a fingerprint, the imminent landing of an aeroplane, the violent thrashing of a lightning bolt, the vestigial mark of breath on a window, or the radiant passage of moonlight. Constantly searching for ways to both articulate and abstract the manifold interpretations of human existence from the micro to the macrolevel, Colquhoun produces profound moments of introspection whereby figurative elements offer a conduit to timeless concerns.

Brett Colquhoun (b. 1958, Albury, NSW) has exhibited widely across Australia since 1982. Throughout the 1980s, Colquhoun held exhibitions at pivotal Australian arts institutions and galleries including Art Projects, 200 Gertrude (now Gertrude Contemporary) and Pinacotheca. His work has been shown in significant surveys of contemporary Australian art, including the 1st Adelaide Biennial (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1990), Perspecta (1983, Art Gallery of New South Wales) and Phenomena 1: New Painting in Australia (2001, Art Gallery of New South Wales), among additional exhibitions at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, and the Bendigo Art Gallery. 

Examples of his work are found in institutions across Australia, including the National Gallery of Art, Canberra; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Geelong Gallery, Geelong, among others. 

Artist's CV (PDF)

Colquhoun takes moments of introspective melancholy and makes them a celebration – neither manic nor moribund but decidedly powerful.

Ashley Crawford, 2005
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