Angela Brennan

Forms of Life

Tuesday 5 Sep 2017 to Sunday 25 Feb 2018


Ian Potter Museum of Art, Parkville

Melbourne painter, Angela Brennan looks to the University of Melbourne’s collection of Greek and Cypriot artefact for inspiration for this exhibition. Work was commissioned body of work, I presume by the Potter. 

I have always admired Brennan's fluent use of colour seen in her painting practice for many decades. In Forms of Life, her skill at making colour pop and sing continues across hand made ceramic forms, text and printed textiles. 

Brennan has transcribed and reinterpreted antiquities (kylix, amphora or lekythos) and pattern (line, cheque), represented in the University's collection and on display alongside Brennan's contemporary work.  

The power of these vessels can be found in Brennan careful balance of seemingly haphazard pattern application and making. This is not unsophisticated making. The naivety of each form calls to question what it is that makes the form a success. It the the translation of the key design elements that are a continuum in ceramic history. Brennan says that she seeks to
'allow the viewer to encounter the temporary instability of the artefact and to recognise how the artefact resists periodisation'.  

Brennan's use of text is fresh and places the artist within the exhibition. Again, the quality of the text is personal and unsophisticated in its application while referring to quoting philosophical thinking.

The addition of textiles is curious, lessening the impact of the ceramics.