Walkthrough with Laura Lisbon: Saturday, September 21 | 4:30pm
Reception: Saturday, September 21 | 5-7PM
The experimental project, Impermanent Durations, was initiated against the backdrop of a long-standing conversation about the possibilities of painting between three established international artists, Beth Harland (United Kingdom), David Thomas (Australia), and Ian Woo (Singapore). This led to initial exhibitions in Melbourne and Singapore in 2016. Laura Lisbon (United States) was invited to join the collaborative team for the third iteration in the United Kingdom in 2017.
Impermanent Durations: On Painting and Time (part 4) builds upon and extends the collaborative process developed in the three previous exhibitions. The artists bring works and materials to the site and collaborate together for a week in response to the exhibition space and each other’s work. This experimental exhibition engages with concepts of time and site-sensitivity as the condition and experience of painting. Developed here within this fourth exhibition space, the international scope of the artists brings a rich interplay of approaches to concepts of time and duration in painting.
Beth Harland
Beth Harland studied at The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, and Royal College of Art, London and completed a practice-based PhD at the University of Southampton. She is Professor of Fine Art at Lancaster University and Associate Editor of Journal of Contemporary Painting.
Harland’s research interests include: pictorial modes of address and spectator experience; painting and digital imaging; notions of temporality in art. Her recent research projects include Modes of Address in Pictorial Art, a collaboration with psychologists at the Centre for Visual Cognition, University of Southampton.
David Thomas
David Thomas was educated in Australia studying at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and RMIT University, Melbourne. He holds an M.A.in Fine Arts and a Ph.D. from RMIT University where he is a Professor of Fine Art (Painting,) in the School of Art.
Thomas’ work explores the contemplative function of painting, photopainting and installation in the contemporary world, in particular how new iterations of the monochrome tradition can address issues of the perception of time and space, complexity, knowing and feeling.
Ian Woo
Ian Woo studied painting at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury (UK) in 1994. He received a Masters in European Fine Art at the Winchester School of Art (UK) in 1995 and a research practice DFA with RMIT University (Australia) in 2006. He is a professor in the McNally School of Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
Woo is an artist working in the language of abstraction. Influenced by forms of modernism, perceptual abstraction and the sound structures of music improvisation, his work is characterized by a sense of gravitational and representational change. He often uses the term ‘picture making’ when describing his position and approach, maintaining the discipline and evolvement of painting as a vehicle for pictorial reflectivity.
Laura Lisbon
Laura Lisbon studied at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design where she received her BFA. Her MFA is from Syracuse University. She is a professor of art at The Ohio State University and is on the Editorial Board of Journal of Contemporary Painting.
Lisbon’s research interests include the critical limits of painting and drawing in relation to concepts of the apparatus, tableau and temporality. Her art practice also incorporates writing on painting and drawing.
