The Artist
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Mark Galea
Ready to become something, 2021
plywood, gesso
239.00 x 50.00 x 51.00
Provenance:
Exhibited:
Mark Galea: Groundwork, Norla Dome, The Mission to Seafarers, Docklands, Melbourne, 29 March - 1 April, 2022
Literature & references:
Kelly Gellatly, Mark Galea: Groundwork, exhibition catalogue, Bambra Press, Melbourne, 2022, illus p 3.
Note:
The artist’s most recent series of sculpture follows many years of exploration of the grid and the cube, including notably via the children’s educational toy Cuisinere Rods. This series began from a study of the mineral Pyrite, also known as ‘Fool’s Gold’, which naturally grows in perfect cube shapes. In her catalogue essay for the exhibition Groundwork, Kelly Gellatly described the sculptures as “precariously balanced to the point of impossibility” and goes on to observe that they:
“speak of the connection between works and the transformation and shifts that happen across them, in the making; embracing experimentation, chance and play. Whether table-top size or far grander in their proportions, these works seem to stretch and reach, sway, and shimmy. When scaled up, they lean in as if to overhear or join a conversation, encroaching on our personal space and demanding bodily engagement. They seem to insist that we join their dance. Yet while it is natural to anthropomorphise these forms, their cuboid articulations seem far more mechanical or robot-like than human. They are certainly not threatening, but the space between the viewer and the works is, as a result, a place of implied or anticipated movement, and one where our equilibrium is unsettled.” (Gellatly, op. cit. p 9)
Further works by the Artist
Tolerating heat yet resenting disturbance
Mark Galea
2005
acrylic on MDF panels, 66.00 x 66.00
SOLD
Since its establishment in 1984, the Charles Nodrum Gallery’s exhibition program embraces a diversity of media and styles - from painting, sculpture & works on paper to graphics and photography; from figurative, geometric, gestural, surrealist & social comment to installation & conceptually based work.