Gallery 1
25 November - 6 December 2026
Opening Night
27 November | 6 - 8 pm
The exhibition closes at 3 pm on the final day.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Andrew Coldrey is interested in the art of painting itself and the ways the medium can evoke a response beyond explanation. Through composition, colour, and mark-making, paintings can create moments of harmony or tension that resonate long after the subject matter has faded.
Singular pieces of music, literature, film, or art can resonate with us for reasons that are difficult to articulate; they conjure a resonance or affinity that exists beyond language.
To pinpoint how an affinity comes into being is difficult. It often requires more than technical accomplishment or strong intent by the producer.
“Strata” emerges from Coldrey’s desire to explore human connection to cultural material—to recreate opportunities where feeling precedes understanding. Traditional layers of place, and form are removed to leave the art alone.
Each painting in the series is a document of the expressive potential of paint itself: how colour, surface, gesture, and form can come together to become more than their parts as layers are added and removed.
If Coldrey’s work causes the viewer to pause, reflect, and take a second look, he will consider it a success.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Andrew Coldrey is a Naarm (Melbourne) -based artist whose practice is grounded in a lifelong engagement with art as a collector, student and painter. He is interested in the enduring role of visual art as a uniquely human form of expression and in painting's ability to communicate experiences that exist beyond language.
Drawing inspiration from personal photography, sketching, as well as the poetic visual language of filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Coldrey uses landscape as a starting point for exploration rather than depiction. His paintings inhabit the space between observation, memory and imagination.
His current body of work consists of small-format paintings developed quickly and intuitively to retain spontaneity and energy. Beginning with acrylic underpainting and completed with layers of oil paint, the works explore the interaction between structure and freedom, seeking to evoke a sense of beauty, presence and contemplation.