Tolarno Galleries: Contemporary art gallery in Melbourne, Australia

August

True to Life

Huntley is a tactile, process-driven artist, always drawing on a well of intuition. The act of artistic creation is a birth of sorts, and the motif of chrysalis that drives this body of work was conceived in the months after the birth of Huntley’s first child. This was followed by a time of nesting, and also of isolation, during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Huntley was interested in the idea of ‘awe-deprivation’ – the traps of solipsistic thought that can afflict people who are estranged from nature. To find yourself in a cloud on a mountain, to study a butterfly in a field, is humbling and awe-inspiring – it broadens the psychic perspective and reminds us that we are entangled in the flow and patterns of nature. Huntley’s gift is his intuitive wielding of materials to marry content with form; to transform the earthly, primordial medium of clay into something airborne and free. Being present and porous to the radiant joy of nature is a remedy. Materialising this wonder into being is an exercise at the heart of the notion of creation.

Huntley’s gift is his intuitive wielding of materials to marry content with form;
to transform the earthly, primordial medium of clay into something airborne and free.

View installation images

March

Without Within

A new collection of paintings and sculptures.

Read an interview with Brendan Huntley in Artist Profile. Listen to Brendan Huntley interviewed on 3RRR (go to 01:03:00 to hear the interview during the Maps program with Fee B-Squared).

Image: Brendan Huntley Untitled (moth) 2020, oil pastel, dry pastel, oil and graphite on archival paper, 61.5 x 42 cm (framed)

September

Sky Light Mind

Brendan Huntley’s new body of work, Sky Light Mind, is strongly influenced by, as Huntley puts it “the natural light and crazy vibrant colours of the West Coast” he experienced while based in San Francisco on a residency in 2017.

“I see these works as a meditational expedition,” he says. “A journey, a trek… with paint, clay, glaze, glass, collage, and whatever other materials get sucked into the creative vortex.”

Read the exhibition essay by Danae Valenza or the media release.

Image: Brendan Huntley Untitled (Fade Away and Radiate) 2017/2018, oil on linen, 99.5 cm x 147 cm.