NIGHTSHADE IN THE SUN

‘Nightshade in the Sun’ – HEATH NEWMAN

19 – 30 June 2019

EXHIBITION LAUNCH
Wednesday 19 June, 6-8pm

This June Saint Cloche brings you Nightshade in the Sun, a solo show by multidisciplinary Melbourne-based artist, Heath Newman. This colorful and compelling show speaks in languages from the past; symbols, glyphs, scrawls and ciphers collide with iconographic imagery from this age and one’s past.

Newman’s intentions with this series is to break down boundaries of mythology and looks to create a new dialogue between fable and history. Each work takes its cue from inert symbology of a particular place or sentiment and opens the dialogue into a new world of intrigue.

Seemingly capable of infinite self-alteration Newman draws inspiration for seemingly endless directions, amalgamating concepts from ancient history, medicinal and ethnobotanical plants, poetry and environments that surround him. Breaking away from his recent works, Nightshade in the Sun is a voyage through the artist’s sub consciousness.  The works take on an existence of their own, weaving a story which Newman describes as “collected ethereal abstraction”. These latest works have incorporated sculpture from found and ancient vessels which Newman describes as vessels for the sun, a metaphor for our life.

 “Everything depends on the warmth and radiance of the sun, our life giver, with historical and mythological presence which surpasses everything else. Nightshade in the Sun asks the viewers to take a journey into a world of where lines and marks have a mind of their own, a world of impulse and calculation balancing abstract expressionism with iconographic details which leap and lecerate with bold colour and careless marking into a life both old and new”
– Heath Newman.

Heavily influenced by the art of The Southern School (China/Japan) and Bonsai learned from his father; Heath draws from the idea of Literati: the scrawl of the drunken monk. Literati is a culture of art formed in China and then Japan notably concerned with ink painting, splashes, calligraphic scrawls and minimalistic plant styling (bonsai.) This culture of painting and the creation of bonsai were deep in philosophical subtext concerning the art of harmonious involvement with nature. Drawing from this Newman’s work incorporates elements of hesitancy and fragility into the confident physical gestures of abstract expressionism. Combining fragments of still life, myths of the world, strokes, scrawls and colour fields Heath describes his work as a mental map; both of his subconscious and of the greater, deeper collective consciousness. These ideas and the exploration of colour in Heaths work continues to drive his exploration of texture, tone, perception and depth; the arise of colour in the human eye and brain, the appreciation and discrimination of harmony and the confusion and intrigue of visual perception.

OPENING NIGHT

Wednesday 19 June, 6-8pm

CATALOGUE

Click to view Catalogue & Price List (1.3 Mb PDF)

For more information, please contact: info[at]saintcloche.com