09.07.24 - 10.08.24

david thomas: the passing of days and nights

Simply put the exhibition is diverse/complex and requires slow viewing. I see it as a journey through various aspects of life, celebrating the intimate and the grand.

THE PASSING OF DAYS AND NIGHTS has a contemplative function.

THE PASSING OF DAYS AND NIGHTS is a COMPOSITE exhibition of abstract paintings, photopaintings, titles, photography, and structures.

THE PASSING OF DAYS AND NIGHTS presents new works that explore the perception of time, space, complexity, impermanence, memory, and feeling.

My PAINTINGS are mainly from the ongoing “Gently Painted Series”.

They are complex in a simple sort of way. They manifest the factual reality of the painting’s materiality, temporality and form. Colour evokes a sense of boundless time/space/ energy. They reveal the sensibility /sensation of human touch in time via surface/facture and celebrate the INTERIOR non-material world of feeling/spirit / thought.

My PHOTOGRAPHY reveals its own material realities (physical, digital, mechanistic). It records the specific, the details of the EXTERNAL everyday world. it activates memory, sentiment, at times reflecting the absurd, the sometimes beautiful, and the sometimes bitter-sweet world of PAST EVENTS.

My use of TITLES is POETIC creating entry points into the work. The titles can be literal, conceptual, humorous, ironic, paradoxical, deeply felt. They act as triggers for recovering content.

The JUXTAPOSITION of the various elements/durations in the exhibition creates COMPOSITE RELATIONSHIPS (at times surprising) between language, form, media, and content… at times simple, at times complex like the world itself.

David Thomas

David Thomas Biography:

David Thomas was born in Belfast N. Ireland. He studied at Melbourne, Monash, and RMIT Universities. He lives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, Australia. His work explores the contemplative function painting, photopainting, and installation, in particular, how new iterations of the monochrome tradition and the composite can explore the perception of time, space, complexity and impermanence. He holds a PhD from RMIT University where he is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Art. He occasionally curates and writes on contemporary Eastern and Western art.

His work is held in numerous private and public collections in Australia and overseas including: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Australia. Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia. Heide Museum of Modern Art. Melbourne, Australia. RMIT University, Melbourne. Australia. Cripp’s Collection, Australia and UK., Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia. Ballarat Art Gallery Victoria, Australia. Chartwell Collection, NZ Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand/Aotearoa. Lowenstein Collection, Melbourne, Australia. Canterbury University, Christchurch, NZ /Aotearoa. Lim Lip Museum, Gong Ju, South Korea.Theodor F. Leifeld Stiftung, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany. Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany, The Frederick Collection, Germany, Justin Art House Museum, Melbourne.

He is represented by: Block Projects Melbourne, Australia, Minus Space, New York, USA and raum 2810, Bonn, Germany.