The French phrase trompe l’oeil literally translates to ’trick the eye’ and, over the years, this kind of painting has come to seem a bit kitsch. It brings to mind dodgy murals in old-school pizza parlours or backpackers recreating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on the footpath in chalk for a few coins in a hat. But Lisa Sullivan, curator of the group show Tricking the eye: contemporary trompe l’oeil, saw potential in this historical style and is determined to point out that the genre also has a 21st-century edge.
“Extending the boundaries of the genre was definitely my intention.” With this in mind, in addition to paintings that ’trick the eye’, she has also included less conventional interpretations of trompe l’oeil, such as video, photography and sculpture.
Tricking the eye: contemporary trompe l’oeil includes paintings by Chris Bond, Gregory Hodge, Jan Murray, John R Neeson, Tully Moore and Colleen Ahern; sculpture by Georgina Cue, Sam Jinks and Ricky Swallow; video by Daniel Crooks; and Anne Zahalka’s photographs. What links their diverse work is that you can expect the unexpected: they render the familiar strange. “I think the uncanny plays an important role in trompe l’oeil works,” says Sullivan. “I like the idea of the ’unexpected’ or ’mysterious’ that many of these works present.”
Trompe l’oeil artworks are a visual game. What is real and what is an illusion? The playful deception in Tricking the eye: contemporary trompe l’oeil is an invitation to gallery visitors to get up close and solve them.
Tricking the eye: contemporary trompe l’oeil
Geelong Gallery
26 November – 12 February 2017.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
First Nations artist Reko Rennie possesses the gift of creating memorable images that are simultaneously puzzling, intriguing and entertaining.
