Sutton Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new, ethereal paintings by Rosslynd Piggott that, in their subtle and eloquent style, provide painterly meditations on natural phenomena.
Piggott has produced a series of exquisitely detailed and finely textured paintings which evoke a quiet and reflective space. Featuring mysterious visual elements and profound depths of colour, each work invites the viewer to look, and then look again. Longing for a space to pause—to draw back from contemporary life—Piggott’s paintings slow our momentum, creating a space within which unhurried contemplation can occur and notions of collapse are subtly implied.
Piggott’s consideration of our sensory engagement with the natural world sees her induce a synaesthetic experience in many recent paintings by establishing poetic relationships between colour and scent. For example, the bruised pink hues of Evaporated Flower – Paeonia Suffruticosa are sourced directly from the Tree Peony (as it is commonly known) as a way for Piggott to capture the memory of this particular flower’s scent and texture. Beyond the sensory, other paintings are equally engaged with natural phenomena, such as Actual Event – Round Rainbow which depicts a surprisingly circular rainbow witnessed by the artist from an airplane window.
Influenced by natural forms, Japanese design and surrealistic figuration, Piggott’s practice is marked by an attention to aesthetics and the material properties of things. She works with a wide-range of media and techniques, including glass-blowing, fabric, painting, installation, drawing and photography, and maintains a fascination for the beautiful and poetic—air, glass, mirrors, fabric and flowers are all ongoing elements that permeate her visual vocabulary. Indeed, within Piggott’s work there exists an enduring desire to look beyond the mundane to the elusive and unknowable.
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, she has presented international solo shows in Antwerp, Saitama Victoria, 2011; Shelter 2006-2010, as part of The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, 17th Biennale of Sydney, 2010; Extract: in 3 parts, Helen Macpherson Smith Commission, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2008; Trace, as part of the 1999 Liverpool Biennial; and Suspended Breath, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1998.
Piggott’s work has also been invited into many significant group exhibitions and prizes. Recent shows include: Negotiating This World: Contemporary Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2012; paint/h/ing, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2010; and Soft Sculpture, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2009. Piggott has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants which have taken her to studios in France, Italy and Japan. 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, where she collaborated with the famed Giardino di Ninfa to produce a new work. Piggott’s work is held in numerous private and public collections, including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.
Artist’s profile