The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
There is nothing shocking or avant-guard about ‘Paluma Catalyst’, but the premise is sound. Pinnacles Gallery at Thuringowa (twin city to Townsville, North Queensland) put twelve regional artists and one of Australia’s leading abstract painters, John Firth-Smith, into a rainforest artist retreat, and subsequently exhibited one artwork produced by each participant during this retreat. Rather than conducting formal workshops, Firth-Smith worked one-on-one with each artist to further develop their concepts and approaches, while the artists also explored and shared ideas amongst the group.
Curator, Anne Donohue, explained that the retreat actually came about as part of the Gallery’s education program to accompany her other curatorial project for September—Anneke Silver’s and James Brown’s exhibition ‘Hinterlands’. Both Hinterlands artists participated in the retreat as an adjunct to their exhibition, and Paluma Catalyst ran concurrently with Hinterlands.
Noted for her landscapes of dry forest areas and boulders, for the exhibition Anneke Silver produced Hidden Valley, an austere, yet meditative charcoal drawing of a study of a single boulder and branch. Silver has been exploring this approach in recent drawings, focussing on the spirituality of the land within a simplicity of subject matter. Like Silver, Therese Duff incorporated a spiritual element with Outcrop. This oil on paper painting presented a serene cluster of rocks in isolation in warm glowing hues, mildly cooled by a blue background. Capturing the atmosphere of the misty mountaintop in Sounds of Paluma, Trish Nixon-Smith rubbed back into charcoal in a steady rhythmic manner which imbued her drawing with an eerie dreamlike quality.
James Brown captured the light and airiness of the forest fringe in his watercolour on paper, Paluma Screen. As usual, Brown executed this