Matthew Allen
MAR 20 - APR 06, 2024

REQUEST CATALOGUE;

"and lightness only where heaviness follows"
Exhibition

There is a generous wealth of words to borrow from when it comes to discussing the work of artist Matthew Allen. Many essays and intelligently composed pieces of writing which serve to celebrate and dissect a phenomenal practice which has garnered both critical and commercial acclaim. We too could discuss the cerebral, almost transcendental qualities of his hand-polished graphite panels and painted colour fields; the way they appear to project and store light, movement and energy, absorbing audiences with the concept of their material subjectivity and innate notions of transference. They are truly refined contemporary works deserving of such intellectual investigation.

However, in coming to our craggly vault here on Gertrude Street, what truly excites us about these works is how they draw us in as objects of desire, projecting satisfying gradients of temperature and tone, bewitching us with their suggested tactility like a moth to flame. Almost greedily, we display them here as treasures in our cave, obsessed with their forms and the real sense of life and ‘feeling’ they capture within the space as well as the flickering, bristling environment swirling just beyond our threshold. We revel in the opportunity to position Matthew’s work beyond the clean sanctity of a white-walled institution, recognising in their materiality and in his meticulous process intriguing narratives of tension and echoes of our own love of grit, earthiness and discordance.

Photography by;
Annika Kafcaloudis