Newtown’s Boom Gallery is set to welcome two new exhibitions from next week.
From Thursday, the gallery will present Ben Crawford’s The Unwritten Places and Cricket Saleh’s Sullied.
The exhibitions will have their official opening on Saturday, February 26 and run until March 20.
Crawford’s The Unwritten Places uses his figurative painting style to explore the story telling possibilities of distorted memories and dreams.
Surreal elements transform the landscapes he paints into somewhat mystical realms, bursting with colour and charged with mystery.
Figures, architecture and landmarks drawn from his life imbue the paintings with a sense of narrative, anchoring his work tentatively to reality.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about landscapes over the past year. Landscapes are subject to the changing of the seasons, variations in light, and even alterations to their topographies over time,” Crawford said.
“This makes the experience of being in these places quite unreal to me at times, almost preternatural.
“Whether it’s somewhere new or familiar, my perception is inevitably informed and distorted by the prism of my memory and imagination.
“This collection of paintings is about those landscapes and places that don’t necessarily appear on any maps. They are ‘the unwritten places’ that exist in a moment of time, tethered to our hearts and memories.”
Running at the same time will be Cricket Saleh’s Sullied.
A highly sought after photographer, Saleh’s photographs depict an ongoing interest in the ephemeral nature of life. Beauty, indulgence, consumption and decay are underlying themes in her artwork.
Saleh explores the genre of Still Life, simultaneously referencing art historical understandings of the medium and subverting it. She creates the illusion of a painted surface through considered lighting. Her works are crisp; simple compositions, tangible texture and moody tones.
“The intention with Sullied was to get some flesh in there,” she said.
“It needed red, and it needed to hurt a little.
“This work shifts the gaze a few degrees, from human consumption to individual and collective value systems, and the impact they have on the natural world.
“I was very much committed to working with the interior/still life and in the landscape, but as the work unfurled, I found myself incapable of leaving the interior. I became fearful of enlarging the space. I found incredible comfort in the steaming, and the folding. I meditated in the unravelling and the decay.
“I am at peace with this, as this work is a conduit between the past, and readies me for the next. The exhibition houses all the symbols, vessels and vehicles I have used in my work for the past 15 years. In Sullied I lay them bare.”
Boom Gallery is open 9am-4pm Monday to Saturday and 9am-3pm Sunday.
