“Although Clare Thackway and Gregory Hodge are both painters, their work could not be more different. Thackway is known for her portraiture and her painterly, figurative narratives. Hodge is known for his vivid, kaleidoscopic abstractions on paper and canvas. The disparity of the artists’ approach is deliberately preserved in their process.[…] Although the large-scale canvases in this exhibition restore the unity of the painted surface, the cut-and-paste quality of the collaged prototype remains. Thackway reconstitutes the found ephemera into a painted narrative, while Hodge’s interventions (luminous concertinas of colour) are clearly delineated from the more figurative aspects. In this respect, their collaboration cannot be adequately described as a doubling or unification, because there is no repudiation of self or reconciliation of content/style evident. Alternatively, the introduction of the two artists’ polarity is preserved as if to anticipate coalescence, eruption, or fragmentation. Just as the raised surfaces between their paints refuse to merge, so the moment of contact that threatens to engulf the represented figures is forever suspended…” Excerpted from Contact by Jaime Tsai .
Clare Thackway and Gregory Hodge, Introduction, Firstdraft, Sydney, until January 29, 2013.
Wow! Just freakin’ wow!