Melanie- Graphic Design: Walker Street Gallery

I went during the afternoon instead of the 6.30 opening as I wasn’t going to be able to make it. The current exhibition featuring works by Peter Biram and Peter Rowe is running from November 2- 25. Both artists have an abstract style to their works but use completely different mediums.

Peter Biram’s work used oil paint as the medium on large scale canvas. The work showing is an exploration of the theme land ownership and usage within an environmental framework. The work came from a visit to the Murray River and deals with the water shortage crisis and the Black Saturday bushfires. His works had a very abstract style, combining thick paint to create a crazy/messy look and well as smooth areas blending colours together. This helps with his investigation between order and chaos.

My favourite piece of Biram’s was ‘Black Saturday landscape regrowth’ which was the first painting. I thought that the colours he had used were beautiful and loved how he mixed all of the warm colours like red, purple and pink together. The yellow and orange dots looked like scattered leaves blowing in the wind but also thought maybe they were meant to represent the ferocious fire and strong winds that made it spread so quickly. You could see the aboriginal influence and exploration he was using with all the dots. There were also a few others paintings that I liked. One of them was ‘Tidal river landscape with vapour trial’. It showed the trees on the riverbank reflecting in the water.

Peter Rowe’s series called ‘Torn’, used paper, coloured pencil and photographic images on acrylic paint. Rowe deconstructed photos by cutting them into circles and rearranged them to produce abstract pieces. The series uses geometric shapes combined with torn edges to create this abstract feel. I wasn’t as keen on these pieces as I didn’t understand what the meaning behind them was. Because of this I found I was less interested and focused more on Biram’s work.

I enjoyed this exhibition as I found the work to be interesting as they were different. I preferred Peter Biram’s works as I found them to be more interesting and I loved the strong use of colour and dots to create the imagery.

SORRY THE PHOTOS ARE SIDEWAYS

Peter Biram's 'Environmental reflections with undertones of possible disaster'