Leave No Shadow | Solo Presentation at Brunswick Street Gallery | Melbourne
Excerpt from the catalogue: “Riverside landscapes, lush overgrowth and undisturbed natural settings provide the backdrop for Leave No Shadow, Amy Wright’s second exhibition with Brunswick Street Gallery.
Thickets of wild flora, often mislabelled as overgrown, appear abandoned or suggest an atmosphere of neglect–however it is in these pockets of exuberant natural growth where an order exists unaffected by human interaction and is in turn given an opportunity to thrive.
With a respect for place, standing back and watching on, these works are composed of many fragments and memories following periods of contemplation and close observation of the river’s edge. Piecing these back together in her studio, Wright works to harness these moments in quick sequence around the studio – following a similarly forward action, as if viewing in real time the movement along the river bank during a mornings’ walk – each work is an amalgamation of various memories that together reconstruct the landscape along the river’s edge.
The works are playfully nostalgic in their palettes, with a jostling of white washed pastels and saturated colour. These pieces evoke the feelings of recollection typical to memory; where some areas are muted and foggy, others are crisp with intention and surety. Memory has translated the warmth of morning sunlight through iridescent yellows and the stillness of dawn imbued through mauves and blues.
In this exhibition, Wright suggests that to see the truth of a landscape, you need to stand back and allow the landscape to come to you, to allow its elements to reveal themselves to you through a sensory experience.
Observe, and leave no shadow.
