Sydney, 10 Jul 2018 — 29 Jul 2018
I was lucky enough to paint with Fred, he was a dear, sweet, intelligent painter and became a friend. I am grateful for the knowledge and passion for painting that he shared. His delight in setting up a dinner party and watching the dynamics as personalities entwined and layers of conversation and collusion were created. It's a delight to see his work being celebrated again and in the beautiful gallery space of Australian Galleries.
Australian Galleries and Annette Larkin present a solo exhibition of works by the late Fred Cress, marking what would have been the artist’s 80th birthday. Staged with the assistance of Cress’ family, the show features key pieces from the artist’s archives – previously reserved for his private collection – tracing his oeuvre from 1965 – 2009. It visualises the stylistic shifts propelling his artistic evolution, including his move away from abstraction in the mid-1980s with the introduction of recognisable objects figurative forms.
To begin with, Fred’s characters behave as though they were in private, not public, and oblivious to us the observers – or voyeurs as are some of Fred’s characters themselves. This makes us aware of the fact that we are looking at a painting, not real life. This defamiliarising device is often amplified by the use of an interrupting element – a repoussoir device – which interrupts our view of the main event, prompting us to look more critically at it. At the same time, Fred frequently has a kind of vortical perspective which pulls us down into the picture making us feel as though we were a part of the scene depicted, only to be pulled back to the surface again by Fred’s painterly treatment of the surface. He is constantly drawing attention to painterly contrivance. Powerful perspectival composition is balanced by the strong rhythms across the surface driven by the deeply modelled figures. Just like any good abstractionist, colour areas are coordinated across the surface of the painting to create a unity of the picture plane, often with light coming from several sources rather than just the one as in traditional figurative painting.
To begin with, Fred’s characters behave as though they were in private, not public, and oblivious to us the observers – or voyeurs as are some of Fred’s characters themselves. This makes us aware of the fact that we are looking at a painting, not real life. This defamiliarising device is often amplified by the use of an interrupting element – a repoussoir device – which interrupts our view of the main event, prompting us to look more critically at it. At the same time, Fred frequently has a kind of vortical perspective which pulls us down into the picture making us feel as though we were a part of the scene depicted, only to be pulled back to the surface again by Fred’s painterly treatment of the surface. He is constantly drawing attention to painterly contrivance. Powerful perspectival composition is balanced by the strong rhythms across the surface driven by the deeply modelled figures. Just like any good abstractionist, colour areas are coordinated across the surface of the painting to create a unity of the picture plane, often with light coming from several sources rather than just the one as in traditional figurative painting.
