Standing in front of a landscape gives you a good indication of where you are. Standing in front of a landscape painting is an instruction on where you are not. If the work was created plein air, the artist had both feet in both fields. The expanse and its mimeographed reduction. One is transported as an object. The other is transported in a neurological suitcase. As the viewer you are transported to where someone else was. For this circle to complete itself, you will be required to conclude that where Peter Hudson was is where you now find yourself. A painting grafts memory onto two dimensional skin. It is a memory, but has no memory of itself.

This exhibition of Peter Hudson’s recent work is partly a product of his Central Australian residency at Haasts Bluff in the Northern Territory in July this year. Many artists have (and will continue) to throw a visual net over ‘the outback’ in an attempt to bring it indoors. Pulling a longer thread, Peter’s recent work also forms a simple testament, a coagulation of blind purpose, built from the profound but incomprehensibly dumb beauty of his residency on earth. The paint glistens as does the surface of the eye. Given that the moon can manipulate oceans, the artist’s imagination is an easier target for this orbiting, celestial conscience. It speaks to our feet in the language of gravity. Gravity also allows the painting to hang on a wall. If you swap places with the painting in front of you – you might see what you are looking at. In acknowledging the sophistication of how art is produced, you must also recognise that memory is the first gallery in any life. Inside its recall you permit any image to focus or dissolve via energy drawn from the temperature of blood. You witness second hand what the artist saw in the first place.

Click here to find out more about the exhibiting artist.

Peter Hudson

BORN 1950 Townsville, Australia STUDIES 1972-75 Queensland College of Art, Brisbane 1976-80 Jewellery Apprenticeship, Brisbane ARTIST STATEMENT Since the late 90s most of my paintings and drawings have been about … read more →