Tristian Koenig is pleased to announce the opening of New Swamp Paintings - the Melbourne debut solo exhibition of New Jersey-born, Sydney-based Seth Birchall. A curious amalgam of outsider, anachronistic, non-Western and wayward wayfarers are the reference points for Birchall’s visual exploration of autobiography, genre and if one can so put it, studio hijinks. New Swamp Paintings is both earnestly romantic, and clinically calculating - articulating the complexity of painting-making in an age of unsurpassed visual wealth and interconnectivity. Seth Birchall’s work requires a significant conceptual and perceptual re-orientation on behalf of the viewer. Contained within a singular practice, Birchall conceives and crafts his paintings from a variety of position and perspectives - from the Romantic and Messianic figure of the artist as revealer of mystic truths, through to the use of a Duchampian alter ego; or more correctly, nom de plume, which allows him certain liberties in the creation of work. Another somewhat perplexing facet of Birchall’s practice is what can best be described as his discursive amble through the art history; particularly French, of early modernism - Courbet, Manet, the Nabis and Japanese woodblock printers of the Ukiyo-e are all sourced and cited, and linked with Burchfield-like brushwork and depictions of landscape. To preview works in the exhibition click here

OPENING: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29th, 6-8pm

mpefm AUSTRALIA art press release

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