Model pictures
22 Feb 2011 — 14 May 2011
James Lynch, Amanda Marburg, Rob McHaffie, Moya McKenna
Curator: Bala Starr
This exhibition takes as its focus the work of four highly regarded young painters: James Lynch, Amanda Marburg, Rob McHaffie and Moya McKenna. Model pictures tracks these artists’ approaches to modelling the world around us, which have contributed to a new direction in contemporary painting in Melbourne over the last decade.
The exhibition examines the historical significance of their initiatives as well as each artist’s unique and different working methods. The artists use a range of media, including a constructed tabletop tableaux, plasticine models, mannequins and studio still life. Lynch, Marburg, McHaffie, and McKenna—who all graduated from the VCA between 1996 and 2002—utilise painting as a diagnostic tool. They experiment with their immediate environment and with ideas of scale and pictorial space, analysing the character of painting and the problem of its ‘autonomy’.