Past exhibitions

Presented in the Gallery’s entrance court alongside Nike Savvas’s newly commissioned work Rally 2014, Forcefields brings together 11 vibrant abstract paintings from the Art Gallery of NSW collection.

No single style, place or moment connects the paintings on show. The artists are Polish, Australian, British and American; some are old and some are young; many, but not all, are women. All of them, however, use abstraction as a way to endow the art of painting with special energy – to make the flat static surface of the canvas feel vibrant, active, alive. Addressing themselves to what artist Bridget Riley calls ‘the eye’s mind’, these paintings are forcefields designed to draw us in and keep us looking for a long time.

Forcefields includes works by Riley as well as David Aspden, Debra Dawes, James Doolin, Lesley Dumbrell, Helen Eager, Melinda Harper, Hilarie Mais, Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski, Robert Owen and Gemma Smith.

Part of Contemporary at the Gallery 2014