1717 Painting/not painting

Seventeen artists display works in which they explore the traditional notions of painting in this latest exhibition at Galerie Pompom. The scope of the brief allows for a diverse range of interpretations, with pieces ranging in scale, materials, style, presentation and content.

The vividly coloured, cartoon-like Bossy Bottom by Matthew Harris features a hot pink nude on all fours atop a bright yellow tiger-skin rug. Then there is Belem Lett’s Hollow Earth with undefined but suggestive shapes that may be a garden and gate or a uterus. Neil Haddon’s We’ll Bring Our Own Trees depicts a Adam and Eve as classical figures in an abstract Garden of Eden. The mixture of styles subtly hinted at underscore Haddon’s theme of migration, displacement, incongruity.

Nuha Saad presents a curious installation comprising three oriental style stools with bold coloured satin cushion tops and an equally bold trio of splayed curved table legs.

Hole In Paradise by Kevin Chin is a large oil on linen with a realistic image of a disrupted idyllic location. Yellowing palm trees rise above a narrow tarred road on which are stray dogs, a heavily laden old truck, discarded waste.

Tara Marynowsky has assembled a collection of old Victorian era photographs featuring mothers with child and entitled The Hidden Mother. The babies in the photos are obscured by draping cloths that are bulged to suggest the shape of a child but imply they are deliberately hidden.

This is a mere sampling of the range of works on display at this unassuming gallery in Chippendale.

Until Dec 17. Galerie Pompom, 2/27-39 Abercrombie St, Chippendale. FREE. Info: www.galeriepompom.com

By Rita Bratovich.