In her exhibition Realm-peripheral scenes, Rosslynd Piggott presents a suite of elegant paintings and drawings that continue her focus of making visible that which is often overlooked or intangible. In this deeply personal body of work, the artist has turned her attention to moments of beauty experienced in times of darkness.
Piggott meticulously applies washes of pigment, generating resonant hues which are then punctuated with ephemeral elements. It is these details, the optical shifts between colours, cloud formations, prisms of light, and characteristics of botanical subjects that emerge from Piggott’s pristine surfaces. They are paintings that benefit from quiet contemplation and reward the patient viewer.
For Piggott, each artwork operates as a vessel or window into the minutiae of time and atmospheres, whether that be a wintery ocean or shades of the dawn sky, she teases out the increments of experience into a subtle and nuanced visual language.
Selected solo exhibitions: I sense you, but I cannot see you, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2019; Gardenia, gardenia and vapour window, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2019; Selected Works: 19876 – 1997, Sutton Projects, Melbourne, 2019; Mirror Shift (doubled), Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; Garden Fracture/Mirror shift: part 2, Museo del Vetro, 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; Scent Notations + Ether and Collapse, William Wright Artists Projects, Sydney, 2012; 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; Storm 2 Tracing Sky and Island, EbisuSpace, Tokyo, 2006; Dividing Infinity, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2006.
Selected group exhibitions: wHole, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2023; Air, QAGOMA, Brisbane, 2023; XXX: Celebrating 30 Years of Sutton Gallery, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2022; Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2020; Bloom, Spring 1883, Melbourne, 2018; 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; Forever Young: 30 years of the Heide Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2011.
Artist’s profile Realm–Peripheral Scenes. Transcribed writings from notebook, 18 January 2023, Venezia, 3:53pm