GROUP.

Zoë MacDonell, Tony Mighell & Dianne Gall

9 November — 26 November 2022

GROUP. brings the work of four contemporary artists to our Chippendale gallery with each body of work unique in theme and methodology. The unifying element of this exhibition is the fastidious attention to the surface quality of each artist’s work. Throughout, there is an obsessive search for perfection in the way the works visually resonate with their audience. Each body of work stands as its own titled exhibition within the gallery space.

The artists have for years pushed the boundaries of their practise—colour, form and medium are pursued to the fullest. Dianne Gall’s luminous, hauntingly beautiful portraits play with the reflective qualities of colour and light; elements picked up by the abstractions of Tony Mighell’s deeply layered paintings. Mighell’s shimmering forms are a lens to the ethereal, silk collage and paint works by Zoë MacDonell that seek to explore visually intangible themes of space and time. (POB) Peta O’Brien’s (SEE PROJECT SPACE EXHIBITION) hand-built scultural vessels in the project space are at once primal and exquisitely delicate, touching on human sensuality and frailty.

DIANNE GALL
FOREVER NOW

A dream to colour your mind forever.

You will never really know what is happening in these paintings, these are images of lost dreamers caught in time, they have a presence in a captured moment without a prologue or an epilogue. You become the voyeur of a momentary solitary reflection.

This noir of the 21st century utilises saturated colour in a painted imaginarium where beauty lives unashamed, cinemagraphic desires, vignettes of isolation existing without a before or an after. They are there to be played out in your mind in every detailed nuance.

These mysterious images might be small in scale but command attention and envelope the viewer in. Visual devices like Bokeh lights evoke a sense of hope we might find in the warm air of a summers night, or the contemplation of rain tapping at the glass between us and the outside world.

You are now free to imagine and create stories, to dream meaning.

ZOE MACDONELL
VIBRATIONS

We are surrounded by rhythms in nature—the kinetic cycles both seen and unseen—have a profound effect on our existence as a species. From the change in the seasons and the ebb and flow of the ocean tides to the belief systems that mankind has worshipped. As a species, we have become more and more rational—science continually probes the intangible. The concepts of time and space are dimensions that can be measured in differing ways over history. These indomitable dimensions that exist, remain difficult to articulate in a visual sense. We exist in them, yet tend to not acknowledge the constant effect they have on us. 

Zoe MacDonell’s art practice is concerned with what we cannot see. Her work—from the free-flowing forms, is juxtaposed with shimmering amorphous masses. Patterns reference the frequencies of our emotional states. Whilst the work appears initially as an abstraction, it is in many ways representational of a literal world. 

Throughout history, from the West to the East, it has been a concern of artists and philosophers. The sand painting of First Nations peoples from Australia to the Americas explored free-flowing totemic representations to explain their existence in a world with no kept time or formal scientific rationale. The painting of Wassily Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock thrives on this principle- artists pushing aesthetic boundaries to represent which is not visually manifested into a set dictated form. 

Contextually, MacDonell’s work sits within this paradigm. Her practice incorporates delicate shards of collage, painting and drawing stratified in silk.  Beautiful and ethereal—the imagery is suggestive of energy systems within our bodies, the landscape, and the broader macrocosm that we exist in. Interpretations of reality have been influenced by the rhythms of music and the natural world—the precision of her practice is almost surgical in nature—yet the openness of her aesthetic exploration allows us to expand the borders of our own imagination. 

 

TONY MIGHELL
COUNTERPOINT

In the artist’s words:

I’m looking for an abstract image that is recognisable; that is somehow as real to the eye and mind as any representational image. A lot of time painting is fumbling in the dark—trying different strategies, exploring different visual ideas—until the picture kicks in and directs its own path to completion.

A key strategy and familiar trope in abstract painting is the overlay of marks, the constant making and cancelling; this allows the painting to remain open, avoiding the picture ‘stalling’ through an over-defining of shape, symbol, and image. In these paintings I am using an alternative mark in successive layers; it functions like the use of counterpoint in music.

\ Exhibition featured works

Tony Mighell

Canning

2022 \ Oil on linen on board, framed \ 52 x 40.5cm

Tony Mighell

Circuit

2022 \ Oil on board, framed \ 122 x 80cm

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint 1

2022 \ Acrylic on linen, framed \ 153 x 137.5cm

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint 2

2022 \ Oil and acrylic on linen, framed \ 153 x 137.5cm

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint 3

2022 \ Oil on board, framed \ 122 x 109cm

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint 4

2022 \ Oil on board, framed \ 135 x 122cm

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint: Hoop strain

2022 \ Oil on board, framed \ 136 x 122cm

SOLD

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint: city

2022 \ Oil on linen, framed \ 152 x 137.5cm

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint: silence

2022 \ Oil on board, framed \ 122 x 109cm

Tony Mighell

Counterpoint: space

2022 \ Oil on linen, framed \ 153 x 137.5cm

SOlD

Tony Mighell

Dance

2022 \ Oil on board, framed \ 135 x 122cm

SOLD

Tony Mighell

Diffund 1

2022 \ Oil on cardboard, framed \ 61.5 x 50.5cm

Tony Mighell

Diffund 2

2022 \ Oil on linen on board, framed \ 53.5 x 41

Tony Mighell

Diffund 3

2022 \ Oil on linen on board, framed \ 45 x 37cm

Tony Mighell

Effuge

2022 \ Oil on linen on board, framed \ 52 x 40.5cm

SOLD

Dianne Gall

Lipstick Vixen

2022 \ Oil on linen on panel, framed \ 30 x 40cm unframed size

SOLD

Dianne Gall

Lucky

2022 \ Oil on linen, framed \ 51 x 51cm unframed size

SOLD

Dianne Gall

Nothing's gonna hurt you baby

2022 \ Oil on linen on panel, framed \ 57 x 57cm unframed size

Tony Mighell

Puntur

2022 \ Oil on linen, framed \ 68 x 56cm

Dianne Gall

Stardust

2022 \ Oil on linen on panel, framed \ 30 x 40cm unframed size

SOLD

Dianne Gall

The future is not ours

2022 \ Oil on linen, framed \ 51 x 76cm unframed size

SOLD

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 1

2022 \ Silk and paper \ 107 x 77cm, framed

SOLD

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 2

2022 \ Silk and paper \ 71 x 103cm, unframed

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 3

2022 \ Silk and paper \ 71 x 100cm, unframed

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 4

2022 \ Silk, paper and colour pencil \ 107 x 77cm, framed

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 5

2022 \ Silk and paper \ 107 x 77cm, framed

SOLD

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 6

2022 \ Silk and paper \ 107 x 77cm, framed

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 7

2022 \ Silk and paper \ 107 x 77cm, framed

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations 8

2022 \ Silk and paper, paint \ 103 x 71cm, unframed

SOLD

Zoë MacDonell

Vibrations INSTALLATION PHOTO

\ Other exhibitions

Hubert Pareroultja

"When the rain tumbles down in july"

21 March — 6 April 2024

PEOPLE,

Group Exhibition

29 February — 16 March 2024

Jonathan Dalton

MELBOURNE ART FAIR

22 February — 25 February 2024

Contact Us

to find out more about GROUP..

12 - 14 Meagher Street Chippendale, NSW 2008
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday, 9.00am - 5.30pm Saturday, 11am - 4pm Closed Public Holidays (and Easter Saturday)