Futures

Opening Celebrations: Saturday 15th April, 4-6pm

Please email info@futuresgallery.com.au for a catalogue

FUTURES is thrilled to present an exhibition entitled DOG Paintings and Candles by Nicholas Currie, his first presentation with the gallery.

This suite of new paintings are bold abstract reckonings of body and place, conceived through a mixed Indigenous Australian and European perspective. Currie eschews the brush for an immediate mode of mark making. Swaths of spray-paint are layered with thick paint spread with fingers, referencing reflections of light on water. In select works, the artist’s handprints create punctum.

Currie views these works as emotions, histories, and actions with an undercurrent of kindness – the acronym DOG means ‘do only good’. His art and curatorial practice spring from themes of men's mental health, Indigenous bodies, culture, identity and joy in humour. But back to what these paintings do – there’s physicality in the paint application and this action and material agency is transferred to the viewer with the mixed effect of a muscular lyrical impact and a warm hug; textural dexterity, wetness and swathes of colour are primed for immersion. Rich purple, green, yellows and blues have elemental connection to land and sea.

Nicholas Currie is an emerging artist, curator and descendent of the Mununjali clan of Yugambeh people of Brisbane and Beaudesert. Currie grew up on Larrakia Country in the Northern Territory before moving down to Wurundjeri. He works predominantly in performance art, installation and painting and recently graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Art) at the Victorian College of the Arts. Select group exhibitions include I don't know how to swim, Kings Artist Run, Melbourne, 2022; Un-sports-man-like, Blak Dot Gallery, Melbourne, 2021. Select group exhibitions include KHS, Koorie Heritage Trust art show, Melbourne, 2022, ERINYS, Margaret Laurence Gallery, 2021.