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march 6 - march 24

Lost in the Suburbs

Tom  Phillips

Tom Phillips is a figurative artist who deals with social realism in an expressionist style. The heavy, deliberate brushstrokes reinforce the emotive weight of the works; the depiction of usually young males who are battling low self-esteem and self-destructive behaviors.

‘What are you looking at?’ screams menacingly out of every bloodless canvas. Each suburban bulk is determined to create a great distance from the viewer, in order to remain in their existing world; the perfect alien.

The exhibition focuses on people with family histories of unemployment, alcoholism, drug dependency and imprisonment. Within this landscape, a stiff, insular world is revealed; one in which Phillips draws on from first hand experience. 

Tom Phillips is an Adelaide based artist. He has exhibited in New Zealand and Tasmania and extensively in South Australia. This is Phillips’ first solo exhibition in Melbourne.

Connect

Priscilla Kwok

Connect explores the relationship between the traditional notion of the ‘study’ and what is considered as the final outcome. Priscilla Kwok’s water colours on canvas hang as the final outcome to an exploratory process.  

The subject of each image is secondary to the act of image making itself. Banal subject matters such as digital cables from electrical equipment are the basis for her investigation into the act of painting.  Each delicate form that merges and reconnects is the outcome of aesthetic decisions and problem solving akin to unravelling a large knotted bundle of twine. 

Through these watercolour paintings and studies, Priscilla invites the viewer to reconsider the use and meaning of watercolour in contemporary art, as well as to gain another perspective on the practice and process of painting.

Priscilla Kwok is currently completing her MFA at RMIT.

Works on paper    

Marina Campbell

Through works on paper Marina Campbell explores the organisation of form and structure in space. Campbell solves geometric puzzles in the attic to bring the viewer to a momentary revelation where line and memory meet. Works on paper is set in the attic, filled with dusty lines, panes of closed glass and acute angles.

Mixed media such as mono prints, acrylic paint, egg tempera and gouache instinctivly come together in pursuit of that moment of clarity. The brain ticks over Campbell’s architecture of chosen line while thought, time and space quietly merge.

Marina Campbell is an established Melbourne artist and teacher. This is her second solo exhibtion at red gallery.