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The Sydney-based artist Anthony Galbraith works in mixed media, making shallow constructions of primed paper, balsa wood and canvas. He usually works on a number of these constructions simultaneously. Although his work has some historical references in Australian Modernism (Godfrey Miller, Eric Wilson, Grace Crowley, Ralph Balson, Frank Hinder), it is better understood outside the parenthesis.
For Poussin (1593/4-1665) "painting is nothing but an image of incorporeal things, despite the fact that it exhibits bodies, for it represents only the arrangement, proportions and forms of things and is more intent on the idea of beauty than any other". Regarded as the greatest French painter of the 17th century, of Baroque classicism, Poussin imposed a geometric way of thought, derived from logical reasoning upon his surface. The figure, landscape and architectural forms, the representation of human emotion were arranged in pictorial proportion in order that Poussin 's theoretical notions could find visual articulation. He was a maker of picture windows.
The rationalisation of space is the subject matter of Anthony Galbraith's constructions. Painting and drawing combine surface and structure, creating a box-like picture window. All these works are titled Untitled, suggesting that the viewer enter the window without preconception, without prerequisite, embracing the works of other artists within contemporary history who have subscribed to a similar system of naming. The objects in the picture are the same objects used to make the pictures- the tools of the artist's trade-triangles, rulers, set squares and T-squares. Together they create an autobiography of the artist's domestic life.
It is an artistic approach to the current historical method, rearranging lists of objects from daily existence in order to document the times we live in