Louise Hearman (Class of 1981)
This exhibition is the first major museum survey of Australian painter Louise Hearman, year group 1981, featuring painting and drawings from across her more than 25-year practice.
The Melbourne-based artist is best known for her dark dream-like paintings where things are never quite as they seem. It is up to us to imagine what is glimmering in the half-light or lurking deep in the shadows, as the artist offers no written clues to the evocative contents of her works, which are nearly always left untitled.
Contemplative and obsessive in her approach, Hearman returns repeatedly to a number of motifs in her work – a child’s radiant face, the back of someone’s head, a glowing orb, a deserted road, an aeroplane gliding through a liquid sky, a phosphorescent sunset, a melancholic cloud, dogs, flowers, birds, cats and, perhaps most bizarrely, rows of shining teeth smiling at us. The luminous subjects of her portraits tend to float in a sea of blackness or abstract fields of colour, while her landscapes are often set at the edges of bush and suburbia, captured at twilight or dawn, their uncertain light spawning otherworldly forms and imbuing them with a supernatural quality.
Curated by Anna Davis
Touring Dates & Locations to view Louise’s work:
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TarraWarra Museum of Art: http://www.twma.com.au/exhibition/louise-hearman/
311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road,Healesville, Victoria, Australia Melway reference 277 B2
February 18 – May 14 2017
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QUT Art Museum: http://www.artmuseum.qut.edu.au/exhibit/2017/louise-hearman.jsp
2 George St, Brisbane City QLD 4000
June 3 2017 – August 6 2017
