Archive
August
Built Form
Gallery 2
Built Form is a love letter to my adoptive home town of Melbourne, in particular the gloriously manic Sydney Road, an area we’ve lived in now for 25 years.
Carpark Column, Melbourne 2024, is a miniature replica of the Y-shaped concrete pillars supporting Peter McIntyre’s architecturally significant 1960s Parkade Carpark, which can be seen – in fact, almost touched – from the windows of Gallery 2.
Image: Peter Atkins, Carpark Column, Melbourne 2024
acrylic on salvaged plywood, 34 x 16 x 17 cm, edition of 3
August
TV Week 1980-1985
A new series of small abstract paintings by Peter Atkins, playing on cultural memories of small screen heroes and villains from the 1980s.
Image: Peter Atkins ‘Why Jack Thompson Posed Nude / Inside Kamahl’s Sydney Mansion’ 2019, acrylic on board, 28 x 21 cm, 51.5 x 41.5 cm framed
Download the TV Week 1980-1985 catalogue essay and full list of works
December
The Passengers
Peter Atkins’ new project is a series of small-scale paintings that relate to his Metro Tunnel public commission entitled RAILway for Melbourne’s City Square, installed along Swanston Street un til October 2019.
The Passengers explores our collective social, cultural and personal narratives through the abstracted, obsolete designs of suburban train tickets issued between 1920 and the late 1980s by distilling and stripping away unnecessary details, focusing instead on the beautiful abstraction underneath. What is revealed is an extremely evocative collection of abstracted forms and colours that represent a complicated and fascinating visual coded language that is particular to Melbourne.
The Passengers continue Peter’s interest in appropriating and deconstructing what he terms readymade abstraction from the real world and amplifying those almost nothing moments…
Pictured: The Passengers 2018 installation view, acrylic on board, 40 x 22 cm each
February