Rosslynd Piggott Last light / in vapour

13 November –
12 December 2015

Sutton Gallery is delighted to present Last light / in vapour an immersive exhibition by Rosslynd Piggott incorporating three key elements; painting, fabric work and a flower intervention.

As a response to spending Winter 2013-2014 in London on an Australia Council residency, Piggott created fabric gardens using antique lace acquired from Portobello Road markets. Drawing upon the fabric’s history of unknown women twisting, separating and knotting in an era previous to electric light, these pieces form new micro gardens or ‘vegetal universes’. Sitting alongside these gardens are Piggott’s responses; cut and fringed silk as the artist comments, ‘a simple mirror in silk that attempts to collapse time between one era and another’. These fabric works hang as weightless groups, floating on walls draped with graduated dyed silk.

The paintings in this exhibition are based around the flower, the garden and our multi sensorial encounter with this ephemeral space. The canvases, hazy and breathy, offer a space of super sensitivity and self reflection. Three of the paintings are directly based on the artists’ observation of the Tasmanian peony’s transition during late spring.

Finally, a Tasmanian peony hovers delicately in the centre of the gallery space, mounted high on a ceiling beam with a silk covered floor plinth beneath catching its falling petals. The single flower acting as the in between and uniting portal or silent interpreter for the conversation between the painting and fabric works.

Rosslynd Piggott is a highly acclaimed Australian artist with an exhibiting history of more than 30 years. Alongside regular exhibitions with Sutton Gallery since 1994, Piggott has presented many international solo shows in Antwerp, Belgium, Japan and Saitama. Other recent exhibitions include: Lurid Beauty, National Gallery of Victoria, 2015; Animal Arch, Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2014; Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, 2013; Negotiating This World: Contemporary Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2012; The Beauty of Distance- Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, The Biennale of Sydney, 2010; Dividing Infinity: A Room for Painting, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2011;
paint/h/ing, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2010; Soft Sculpture, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2009; and Extract: in 3 parts, Helen Macpherson Smith Commission, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2008; and Suspended Breath, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1998. Piggott’s work is held in all of Australia’s major state galleries and numerous prestigious private collections. Piggott has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants including studios in France, Italy, Japan and London. In 2011 Piggott held the Australia Council studio at the British School at Rome, and in 2012 she undertook a residency with Berengo studio in Murano, Venice in
collaboration with the famed Giardino di Ninfa. Her work with a Venetian master engraver is in continuum.

Artist’s profile