the calculation (FLUX)
Manning Regional Art Gallery, NSW
18 May – 1 July 2023
Embodying both the technical and aesthetic virtue of modernist painting and the inspired innovation of the contemporary era, Laura Matthews’s vibrant scenes are unbound by art historical limitations. After all, art history itself is a funny concept, for it gives us the notion that human creativity moves in clearly defined trends within explicit time periods. But art, like history itself, is never simply a record of dates, names, and places. Painting, in particular, does not bend to fashions and trends for very long. In truth, storied painters like Matthews are recognised as such because of their understanding of their craft’s constant state of change. In Flux, Matthews has created works that take us as viewers to the precipice of not only art’s daring new horizons, but to our own personal moments of risk. Don’t simply look at the surface, these paintings say, jump right in with wild abandon.
Reminiscent of the revolutionary Fauves and Post-Impressionists of early 20th Century France, Matthews’s new paintings exemplify her uniquely wily approach to the technical, impressionistic masterclass she has honed over her decades-long, continent-spanning career. Her trademark style of lively brush strokes and strident colours stem from her elite training at the distinguished Slade School of Fine Art at University College, London. While her inheritance of impasto, figurative abstraction is suggestive of other great British modernists like Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, Matthews has continuously superseded genre and style with intimate symbolism and the introduction of contemporary elements such as spray paints, stenciling, and now resin. The interplay of contrast, colour, and form complements the many juxtapositions in her own career and life experiences. Matthews left Britain for Australia in 2002, immediately thrusting herself out of familiarity into both literal and figurative new territory. Incorporating elements from British and Australian landscapes, personal experiences, and classical mythologies, Matthews’s paintings have captured the essence of self-investigation and reawakening.
Unique to the paintings in this collection is the new inclusion of resin pouring. For Matthews, the resin that coats and encases the thick layers of oil paint serves as a liminal space between intention and action. This new element changes the gruff, impasto texture of her paintings into something more sensational. A man jumps to catch a train. A woman leaps off a cliffside into the sea. Unclothed bodies frolic in untamed nature. Young people, skin bared, run toward something, somewhere, turning their backs on fear and embracing the unpredictability of the future. The resin therefore also serves as a symbolic bonding agent, linking these seemingly disparate scenes by materialising the apprehension that precedes adventure and asking us to see past it. Matthews’s moments are a patchwork of heroes’ journeys, each subject shedding their reservations and following their bliss into uncharted territory.
Water plays an important role in this collection as well. Many of Matthews’s subjects walk under waterfalls and dive deep into the ocean. This parallels the composition of her work as well. We are greeted by a shimmering resin surface, Matthews beckoning us at first to reflect on our own experiences. Yet there is more beneath the surface and Matthews is inviting us to explore the unknown depths. The variety of striking blues, aquas, and natural greens conjure mythic associations with renewal and replenishment. Matthews aquatic symbolism therefore serves as a reminder, not only of painting’s fluid nature, but of life’s ever-changing flow. For Matthews, to paint is to reacquaint ourselves with our personal agency. Her scenes giving form to our human need to immerse ourselves in self-discovery and emerge refreshed.
In this impressive survey of works, Laura Matthews has ultimately generated a stunning metanarrative about embracing change and overcoming that which with which we hold ourselves back. With each brushstroke, Matthews defies cultural inertia and typecasting. Flux is not simply a set of paintings, but a manifesto of intrepid optimism. Like her subjects, Laura Matthews is not afraid to venture past stale familiarity and into the unknown, and neither should you be.
Gregory Uzelac, 2023
