COMMUNICANTS
ELLA WHATELY Opens Thursday, 2nd August 2012
Ends Sunday, 12th August 2012
CCAS Manuka
Ends Sunday, 12th August 2012
CCAS Manuka
Ella Whately Communicant BlueGreen ink on paper 2012 photography Stuart Hay ANU photography
Abstraction has never looked so good, nor has it ever made you think so much! Ella Whateley’s upcoming exhibition Communicants at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Manuka takes abstraction to new levels, offering an aesthetically awesome experience and, if you please, a little meditation on the side. You are invited into a space of immense and subliminal colour. You will have to fight hard to resist being enveloped by the pools of inky colour and clouds of pigment that swarm you, inducing a dense state of contemplation. Although simple fields of colour appear empty of subject matter, they are fulsome in the depth of their tones. These are works of art, but in the volumes they create they can also be gateways to spaces beyond the real world. Spaces of contemplation for thinking about all that is above and beyond the human sphere.
We all know very well that art is powerful, but here, art is a vehicle to a new state of mind, one that can be a haven from the everyday. You find your conception of the space around you destabilized as the boundaries between the real and the ‘other’ collapse into one. What Whateley offers is not only stunning works to look at from the outside, but art that provides an inner experience. Yes, do expect philosophical questions like ‘What is the meaning of life?’ to come to mind in the presence of these spiritually charged paintings. But if metaphysics scare you, don’t stay away, for there is a wonderful array of colour and impressive artistic technique on display.
Abstraction has never looked so good, nor has it ever made you think so much! Ella Whateley’s upcoming exhibition Communicants at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Manuka takes abstraction to new levels, offering an aesthetically awesome experience and, if you please, a little meditation on the side. You are invited into a space of immense and subliminal colour. You will have to fight hard to resist being enveloped by the pools of inky colour and clouds of pigment that swarm you, inducing a dense state of contemplation. Although simple fields of colour appear empty of subject matter, they are fulsome in the depth of their tones. These are works of art, but in the volumes they create they can also be gateways to spaces beyond the real world. Spaces of contemplation for thinking about all that is above and beyond the human sphere.
We all know very well that art is powerful, but here, art is a vehicle to a new state of mind, one that can be a haven from the everyday. You find your conception of the space around you destabilized as the boundaries between the real and the ‘other’ collapse into one. What Whateley offers is not only stunning works to look at from the outside, but art that provides an inner experience. Yes, do expect philosophical questions like ‘What is the meaning of life?’ to come to mind in the presence of these spiritually charged paintings. But if metaphysics scare you, don’t stay away, for there is a wonderful array of colour and impressive artistic technique on display.
