Familiar Unfamiliar, Mostyn Bramley-Moore’s latest exhibition at the Brisbane Andrew Baker Art Dealer gallery at Bowen Hills, ran from 6 July–6 August 2011. The exhibition was a mixture of offerings ranging in size, orientation and medium, from large oils on linen or polyester to modest drawing and collage on paper.
Although he produces work in a variety of media, Bramley-Moore is best known for his paintings and works on paper investigating landscape, identity and narration. His work has been described as enigmatic and mysterious and yet these paintings and drawings have that look of assured and confident works, the paintings identifiable by scale and colour set.
Bramley-Moore has always painted and describes his method as a ‘manifestation of mind-set…of artefacts and processing ideas’. By working with a group of ideas that fit his chosen theme, Bramley-Moore’s paintings reflect his preferences and strategies for resolving his ideas on the canvas.
To suggest his works are abstract is too narrow a definition for Bramley-Moore’s paintings, as he explains on the Griffith University website: 'typically, my paintings flicker between abstraction and figuration. Really, they are neither one nor the other. I try to tell stories, and paintings need a large repertoire of strategies and devices to do this’.
Bramley-Moore’s paintings are best experienced en masse. In this space, the thematic content bundles us into the car and takes us on a journey of his world and to locations with which he is familiar. He is the narrator of his own life – we travel with him through rural settings, coastal and urban landscapes, and social situations past and present.
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N OIS Y D US K , B OLIVIA H ILL (201 1) Oil on polyester 178 x 148 cm |
Noisy Dusk, Bolivia Hill, which was also featured in his Emotional Landscapes exhibition at Watters Gallery in Sydney earlier this year, exemplifies the reflection of Bramley-Moore’s journey in his art. In a recent review of the Sydney exhibition, Raymond Chai related this story by the artist about this particular painting: ‘On a recent summer road trip I was stopped by road works on the New England Highway past Bolivia Hill in Northern NSW, right on dusk. I turned off the car motor and rolled down the windows to be greeted by an amazing outpouring of bush sound. Birds, insects and animals were competing for dominance and we found ourselves instinctively recoiling from the deafening chirruping, screeching and braying. It was remarkable.’
Big Music (2011)* is a wonderful production of loud, crashing orchestral sounds, resonant of his love of music, which is so much a part of his life. The notes swirl on the canvas to the beat of the large red band leader.
For those of us at Queensland College of Art who know him best as Mostyn, Professor-educator-mentor, it is inspiring to know that his work is included in many major collections, including the Australian National Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Queensland Art Gallery.
Bramley-Moore has a certain pattern of exhibiting, usually one show one year and two shows the next. This latest show – Familiar Unfamiliar – is a testament to his conviction...‘I don’t show paintings that I’m not confident about’. Karen Waddell
QCA
*see Familiar Unfamiliar PDF Catalogue
References
ABC music arts and culture website/online magazine viewed at
http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/Event/263415,familiar-unfamiliar-paintings-and-drawings-by-mostyn-bramley-moore.aspx on 13/09/2011
Bramley-Moore, M (2011), Familiar Unfamiliar, Andrew Baker Art Dealer, electronic catalogue http://www.andrew-baker.com/Mostyn%20Bramley-Moore_Familiar%20Unfamiliar.pdf.
Chai, R (2011), Emotional Landscapes (Source: Watters Gallery) viewed at http://fashionstreets.com/features/art-gallery/mostyn-bramley-moore/mostyn-bramley-moore.html on 13/09/2011.
Lismore Gallery viewed at http://collection.lismoregallery.org/artists/detail/mosbra on 14/09/2011
Professor Mostyn Bramley-Moore viewed at http://www.griffith.edu.au/visual-creative-arts/queensland-college-art/staff/professor-mostyn-bramley-moore on 12/09/2011
Lovely to read this Karen as I missed the show myself. Since we've been discussing it in class a lot,'m curious as to whether you think Mostyn's work would lose, perhaps not its narrative power, but the specificity of meaning you talk about seeing in Noisy Dusk and Big Music if you had not read Mostyn's artist statements, or if they were untitled? Do you think you would have written a very different review without this information? Would you perhaps have focused on possible influences instead, for example?
ReplyDeleteLovely to read this Karen as I missed the show myself. Since we've been discussing it in class a lot,'m curious as to whether you think Mostyn's work would lose, perhaps not its narrative power, but the specificity of meaning you talk about seeing in Noisy Dusk and Big Music if you had not read Mostyn's artist statements, or if they were untitled? Do you think you would have written a very different review without this information? Would you perhaps have focused on possible influences, for example? Nicola
ReplyDeleteThis was a great show. These works really stand on their own and have to be seen in person to do their rich texture and colour justice.
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