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Tony Twigg
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6 – 29 May 2006,
presented by Galleria Duemila. per.fo.ra.tion n. - a hole or series of holes made in something, or punched into a piece of paper Tony Twigg gives us paintings for this, his fifth exhibition with Galleria Duemila. Painted in Malaysia, where Tony has spent the last year as a resident artist at the home of Malaysia’s prominent architect, Hijjas Kasturi, these works have taken a new path. Their slick modern forms have an affinity with interior architecture and are a counterpoint to the spontaneous structures of Filipino barong barong that have inspired Tony’s sculptures over the past decade. Tony has been interested in space for as long as he can remember. Most recently, he has been looking at the illusion of space created when a picture is sliced into vertical fragments, suggesting corridors running back into a work. Like ‘perforations’, these pockets of space punch through the artwork, creating eddies of interest that have moved these new works towards contemporary design, as his timber constructions make their way on to canvas. “I find the sensation of space physically exciting. I’ve come to realise that the way we perceive space governs our proximity to the objects we encounter. You and I might see U-shaped canyons when we walk through the city, but a town planner or crane driver would see it differently. The idea of stacking space, and how that establishes illusionistic depth without referencing perspective, I think, is essentially ‘Asian’. This is where my work is heading.” - Tony Twigg In Malaysia, Tony worked with discarded “fish boxes” found at the kampong pasaraya (village supermarket). Their simple geometry recalls the intuitive creativity of Filipino objects, prompting the new paintings and constructions to embrace a more formal abstraction - a kind of retro-modernist pastiche that speaks about the elements of an artwork, such as line, composition, space and repetition. “The Malaysian mark, for me, was the fish box. I started working with the ‘physical’ line of the object rather than its inspiration. The major impact was the surface and the simplicity of the form.” - Tony Twigg These paintings are about the placement of objects – behind, in front, at the side. Like Tony’s timber constructions, they have an Asian sensibility, but they also have the resolved complexity of ‘east meets west’. They signpost a much broader cognisance of a modernist aesthetic that moves beyond merely responding to shifting locations. Moving between Sydney, Manila, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur has allowed that broadening view of an Asian aesthetic. Twigg’s work is becoming increasingly stylised easily moving between wood, canvas and metal. This exhibition, “perforations” is a punctuation mark, just as the line holes across a page, propose a break with the past, and these new works are an entry point to an exciting new direction in the art of Tony Twigg. Tony Twigg has produced over 35 solo exhibitions as well as installation, performance and film works. He received a Master of Visual Arts from the Sydney College of Advanced Education in 1985. He has shown in Australia, America, Italy, New Zealand, China, Malaysia, Singapore and The Philippines, and his films have been shown at the Cannes Film Festival, Edinburgh, ARCO, Cork and Paris. In 1995 Twigg began dividing his time between Sydney, Australia and The Philippines and he spent 2005 on residency at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia. Twigg is represented in major collections in Australia and Manila including the National Gallery of Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Ateneo Museum, Manila. For more contact the gallery duemila@mydestiny.net.
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