Rose Nolan and Gordon Walters

Combining two distinct voices whose engagement with the legacy of Modernism sees both crossovers and counterpoints. This exhibition of the acclaimed Australian artist Rose Nolan and Aotearoa’s formidable son of Minimalist Abstraction Gordon Walters is the first major presentation of each artist in Sydney in some years, and their first time showing together.

Both known for their characteristically selective palette, each artist has explored and expanded the discourse in the Pacific region on form, space, and reduction. Nolan with her ever expanding repertoire, incorporating the formal and linguistic qualities of words, using language to transform space, be it architectural or confined to a hand-crafted object. While for Walters, the later part of his career saw him butting up rigid elemental forms against one another within the defined confines of the canvas, powerfully claiming their place with a delicacy of vision achieved with structural shifts.

Utilising their own takes on language, Nolan the literal (albeit stretched, squashed and reduced), and Walters’ mise en abyme of transparencies, stripes, spirals and numerous other forms combine into its own unique abstract language. This exhibition explores geometry, abstraction, structural shifts, and both the elemental and conceptual sides of art making to touch on ideas of culture, language, and narrative.