"Lady Luck"Lara Merrett
TRISTIAN KOENIG
19 GLASSHOUSE ROAD, COLLINGWOOD, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA 3066
Telephone : +61 498 694715 email
18th October - 10th November, 2018
 Split the colours | 2018 | Acrylic and ink on canvas and linen | 153 x 122 cm |
 Overtricks | 2018 | Acrylic and ink on canvas and linen | 153 x 122 cm |
It is with great pleasure that Tristian Koenig announces the opening of Lady Luck - a solo exhibition of new easel-based paintings by Lara Merrett. In a career spanning over 20 years, Merrett has established her career with a distinctive touch, gesture and conceptual approach to biomiorphic abstraction that in recent years has transitioned to un-stretched canvases positioned in site specific tableaux. Lady Luck runs with this recent development in Merrett's practice, taking many of the cues from her 'expanded painting', distilling them into the borders of a suite of 10 traditional easel-based pieces.
Taking colour inspiration from a diverse selection of artists such as Sean Scully, Matisse and Ellsworth Kelly, Merrett’s new works revisit compositional structures she previously worked with over twenty years ago. In returning to formats such as those exemplified by pieces such as Stacks I and Stacks II, artists such as Blinky Palermo, Imi Knobel and Howard Hodgkin are foregrounded in Merrett’s current easel-based painting, where process and materiality dictate outcomes.
Merrett’s recent ‘expanded painting’, in which her canvases unspooled themselves of their stretchers to occupy the space beyond the picture plane have also marked a significant reinterpretation of her previous practice. Whereas in the past Merrett poured paint and moved the canvas in various ways, in some respects playing with the sculptural poles of grace and gravity, the performative possibility of painting have always been a part of her practice. Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ from 1968 and Rudolf Stingel’s silver foil insulation room from his Whitney Museum survey has also been important reference points where action and activity between artist and audience playfully open up the idea of what painting can be, and have reorientated Merrett toward a deeper engagement beyond the painting’s surface.
The use and reuse and materials within Merrett’s studio also find corollaries in the way in which an artist such as Sterling Ruby discusses 'scavenging the studio’. Works within Lady Luck incorporate older painting substrates, over which Merrett has cut, stitched and sewn newer drop sheet-like layers. As Merett has made mention, ‘every time I cut a work I am swinging between the image of Lucio Fontana's slashes and irregular holes in the later lyrical collages of Matisse’.
Referencing a constellation of unique and singular positions within recent painting art history has allowed Merrett to creatively reinterpret her own painting trajectory. In some sense this mirrors how an artist such as Mary Heilmann manages to straddle minimalism and the counter-counter aesthetic, or how Vivian Suter bridges modernist utopianism, the tribal, environmentalism and of course 20th century abstraction. Its a particularly feminine approach to painting - a minor discourse, if you will.
Lara Merrett was born in Melbourne in 1971. She graduated with an MFA from The College of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, Sydney, in 1997, and has held numerous solo and group exhibitions across Australia, most recently being awarded the Bella Room commission at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Merrett’s work resides in a number of significant collections, including Artbank, The Bundanon Trust, RACV Collection, the Sofitel, Macqarie and UBS Banks and the University of New South Wales.
Taking colour inspiration from a diverse selection of artists such as Sean Scully, Matisse and Ellsworth Kelly, Merrett’s new works revisit compositional structures she previously worked with over twenty years ago. In returning to formats such as those exemplified by pieces such as Stacks I and Stacks II, artists such as Blinky Palermo, Imi Knobel and Howard Hodgkin are foregrounded in Merrett’s current easel-based painting, where process and materiality dictate outcomes.
Merrett’s recent ‘expanded painting’, in which her canvases unspooled themselves of their stretchers to occupy the space beyond the picture plane have also marked a significant reinterpretation of her previous practice. Whereas in the past Merrett poured paint and moved the canvas in various ways, in some respects playing with the sculptural poles of grace and gravity, the performative possibility of painting have always been a part of her practice. Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ from 1968 and Rudolf Stingel’s silver foil insulation room from his Whitney Museum survey has also been important reference points where action and activity between artist and audience playfully open up the idea of what painting can be, and have reorientated Merrett toward a deeper engagement beyond the painting’s surface.
The use and reuse and materials within Merrett’s studio also find corollaries in the way in which an artist such as Sterling Ruby discusses 'scavenging the studio’. Works within Lady Luck incorporate older painting substrates, over which Merrett has cut, stitched and sewn newer drop sheet-like layers. As Merett has made mention, ‘every time I cut a work I am swinging between the image of Lucio Fontana's slashes and irregular holes in the later lyrical collages of Matisse’.
Referencing a constellation of unique and singular positions within recent painting art history has allowed Merrett to creatively reinterpret her own painting trajectory. In some sense this mirrors how an artist such as Mary Heilmann manages to straddle minimalism and the counter-counter aesthetic, or how Vivian Suter bridges modernist utopianism, the tribal, environmentalism and of course 20th century abstraction. Its a particularly feminine approach to painting - a minor discourse, if you will.
Lara Merrett was born in Melbourne in 1971. She graduated with an MFA from The College of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, Sydney, in 1997, and has held numerous solo and group exhibitions across Australia, most recently being awarded the Bella Room commission at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Merrett’s work resides in a number of significant collections, including Artbank, The Bundanon Trust, RACV Collection, the Sofitel, Macqarie and UBS Banks and the University of New South Wales.
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