At a distance: Terra Australis

At a distance: Terra Australis presents Randal Arvilla’s latest encaustic painting work.

This body of work entails energetic, intense colour and intuitive mark making where painting meets drawing, meets painting.  These small format art works are a visual account inspired by Arvilla’s travels throughout Australia’s Red Center, the Great Barrier Reef, his walks and hikes through trails, gorges, visits to cattle stations, chasms, gaps and National Parks experiencing great adventures, conversations with first-nations tourism colleagues, adventurous international visitors and locals, amidst colourful land and sea in high heat conditions and even encountering several fires enveloping the landscape along the way. 

This is a series of 19 small format encaustic paintings on board developed slowly through time, as Arvilla puzzled together these explorations of the past three summers in order to develop the pieces. As he works in his studio, his gestural techniques and memories take over from the seminal moments captured in the thousands of photos he takes along the way, or even articulated in conversations with the students in his workshop classes.

Arvilla’s artworks deal with themes of fragility of nature, cultural identity, memory and loss, intending to suggest a sense of place and belonging. “It is my hope that Australians and worldwide audiences experience a sense of déjà vu through these expressive abstract landscape interpretations and personal experiences of mine or that you, as the audience, may feel a desire to visit this beautiful land after the pandemic lockdown is lifted. Thus the name of this show, “At a distance: Terra Australis”, says Arvilla.

“At a distance: Terra Australis” reminds us of the vulnerability of nature and of humankind, when suddenly an already fragile world becomes further separated, by disease, economic crisis, isolation and physical distancing.