WAS Gallery resident potter, Gary McPhedran, has left the clay to dry for a while and has produced a collection of drawings and paintings for his solo exhibition called Some Men. The images he draws are similar to those he paints on his pottery, friezes of figures, overlapped figures, upside down and often even difficult to identify.
“These images began as an exploration of pattern and mark making on my ceramic work. The figures are simplified, overlapped, inverted, with a play of positive and negative. Often with a nod to the Italian “Futurists”, Analytical Cubism or Queenslander Ian Fairweather.
While the compositions are contained, we get a sense that the figures continue in either direction much like a detail of a Grecian frieze, the Bayeux Tapestry, or the repetitive sounds of Phillip Glass’ music but in this case it’s figures, repeated and repeated and repeated.
From the secure base of a common format, (often a square and figures mostly of a similar size) the variation and irregularity in pattern happens in the line, colour, shape and tone. The figures themselves become almost irrelevant. The colours and combinations are reflective of individuals, places, and people but they are quite personal and mostly irrelevant to the designs.”
