MELBOURNE.- Afterimage features a stunning array of small paintings, each meticulously arranged to create a vibrant cosmos of colour and creativity, inviting viewers to explore the connection of individual works.
The exhibition is a bold move by Maguire, who is renowned for super-sized floral imagery often pulled from art history.
These new, chromatically charged works exploit the visual phenomenon of an afterimage and will linger in the visitor’s eye – and mind – long after they have viewed the show.
Some of the paintings depict star-laden skies framed by shape-shifting cypress trees.
These serene nocturnes were inspired by the night sky at Mondenard in southern France, where Maguire spends part of each year.
The area is renowned for having the least light pollution of anywhere in France and visitors are frequently awestruck by the celestial light show.
“We have big, beautiful night skies and big old cypresses too,” says Maguire. “There’s not much to do in the evenings around those parts, so we’re often looking up at the stars.”
Several paintings are informed by Maguire’s Dice Abstracts prints, exhibited at Tolarno in 2019 and 2023.
They are also based on 18 charcoal drawings of simple geometric motifs: points, lines, bands and squares. Some are dark on light; others light on dark.
Maguire rolls dice to select three of the 18 available motifs to reproduce in paint. Another roll determines the colour of each motif – yellow, magenta or cyan – and a third roll, orientation: horizontal or vertical.
As with the nightscapes, these images are painted in acrylic – a first for Maguire, who has worked in oil over his 40-year career. “I have to work quickly because acrylic dries faster and also reacts in ways I can’t anticipate,” he says.
The results are cosmological, metaphysical and downright retinal. We see phosphorescent glows, translucent auras and atomized fields of energy. Maguire’s dexterity in coaxing so much visual interest from three simple pigments is astonishing.
Several works nod to Maguire’s landmark series of paintings, Canal 1992, exhibited at Chisenhale Gallery, London that year, and at the Art Gallery of New South Wales the following year.
A short residency undertaken last year at the Sidney Nolan Trust near Presteigne, on the England-Wales border, proved to be the catalyst for a change in practice.
“I only had two weeks, and I wanted to work small anyway,” says Maguire. “Oil paint wasn’t going to dry in that time, so I thought, why not try mucking around with acrylic?”
He began experimenting with acrylic on paper and was pleasantly surprised. “They were glow-y and bright and the intensity of colour was amazing.”
“These new paintings have a brightness, clarity and intensity of colour I couldn’t achieve in oil paint,” says Maguire. “Acrylic is pure and clear, whereas oil paint always has a slight yellowish cast.”
A set of Tim Maguire’s luminous ‘Trees and Snow’ prints from 2008, are included in Wonderstruck at QAGOMA, opening on the same day as Afterimage in Melbourne.
