From Andrew Frost…
In Tony Curran’s exhibition Parts of You Are Dying the artist has taken digital drawings and adapted them to the canvas, then further taken them into the realm of animation in digital video works. Is this drawing, painting or some form of new media, or even perhaps, eep, expanded painting? If it is the latter then it’s the most pleasurable form of post-painting imaginable, with an emphasis on colour and line, careful application and modest scale.
Based in part on the artist’s “collecting” of sitter’s body parts – that is, drawing sessions where Curran will invite a subject to sit but only make a drawing an ear or nose etc and then combine them in various works – the paintings float between figuration and abstraction in a manner that seems immediately modern and colourful with a strong flavour of British painting of the 1980s informing the work. That vibe flows into the video works with a faint suggestion of Julian Opie’s painting to animations. But wherever Curran is drawing his influence from the show is a remarkably different show in art world blighted by sameness.
Until August 3
Art Atrium, Bondi Junction.
Pic: Tony Curran, Banou, 2013. Oil on linen, 30 x 40 cm.
