Rosslynd Piggott Gardenia, gardenia and vapour window

3 – 31 August 2019

Rosslynd Piggott

Imagined rose and expanding violet

, 2018–2019
Oil on linen
50 x 100cm

The refined beauty of Rosslynd Piggott’s practice permeates her thoughtfully curated National Gallery of Victoria exhibition, I can sense you, but I cannot see you, closing Sunday 18 August, 2019. This stunning survey exhibition offers viewers the unique opportunity to reflect on Piggott’s career to date, encountering significant paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations created by the artist over the last four decades.

For her concurrent exhibition at Sutton Gallery, Gardenia, gardenia and vapour window, Piggott has produced a series of exquisite, minimal paintings. In these new artworks, Piggott extends upon her poetic system of translating unseen elements such as fragrance, time, and emotion into a suite of coded visual references. Far from abstractions, these paintings are in fact deliberate and heightened observations of flowers.

Piggott carefully composes each painting with thin washes of colour, layered to produce powdery blues alongside blushes of magenta and warm yellow auras. Points of focus emerge as if from a fog, revealing geometric forms and fine linear markings that may well indicate texture or time within each portrait. Compelling the viewer to concentrate, these paintings are an act of resistance in an age of prevalent speed. They call us to a space where we might slow, pause and open our senses.

Selected solo exhibitions

I sense you, but I cannot see you, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2019; Selected Works: 1987 – 1997, Sutton Projects, Melbourne, 2019; Bloom, Spring 1883, Melbourne, 2018; Mirror Shift (doubled), Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; Garden Fracture/Mirror shift: part 2-Museo del Vertro, Murano, Italy, 2017; Garden Fracture: Mirror in vapour, Venice Art Factory, Venice, 2016; Last light/in vapour, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2015; Scent notations + ether and collapse: part 2, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2013; Murmur, The Johnston Collection, Melbourne, 2013; Dividing Infinity: A Room for Painting, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Healesville, 2011; Measuring Night – new paintings and mirrors, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2010; Several types of flight – letters to the sky, Gallery 360 Degrees, Tokyo, 2009; Extract: in 3 parts, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, 2009; Circling Ether, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2008; Extract: in 3 parts, ACCA, Melbourne, 2008.

Selected group exhibitions

Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2017; A discernible air,QAGOMA, Brisbane, 2017; Contemporary Murano Glass Art, Murano Glass Museum, Venice, 2016; Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2015; Animal arch, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 2014; Mix Tape 1980’s: Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2013; Reading the Space: Contemporary Australian Drawing 4, New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, New York, 2013; Ten Years of Contemporary Art – The James C Sourris Collection, QAGOMA, Brisbane, 2012; Negotiating this World: Contemporary Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2012; Fountains and Drains, The British School at Rome, Italy, 2011

Artist’s profile