THE DISTANT EDGE

Leah Teschendorff
John Teschendorff

May 3rd – 25th, 2024

Leah Teschendorff

Equanimity.

This is what the grids, this is what the colours bring me.

The ability to maintain a deep sensation of inner calmness, stillness and even-mindedness when dire external circumstances threaten to over whelm. As forests burn, ancient trees are felled, genocidal wars rage and the world around us fractures and shifts to the right, how do we make sense of it all?

Lately, the joy and simplicity of making and looking at art has become for me a coping mechanism, a meditational process. My work shown here in The Distant Edge, an exhibition with my father John, continues with the grid as the central motif: the rhythm of grids and the distillation of complex ideas and powerful feelings. Intuitive use of colour, the texture sensations of paper, leather, linen, pigments and other re-purposed materials. Our work is connected not just chromatically, but clearly through a shared philosophical view of the universe, one where justice, truth, and human rights are sacrosanct.

John Teschendorff

For over four decades John Teschendorff’s History of Ideas Project has maintained an abstract focus on the metaphorical potential of material, form, and colour. He organises these elements into structured responses to real life issues and historical contexts. While he rarely names events, many works compassionately address the politics of the refugee and mass migration.

In this Melbourne exhibition, the vibrant lines emerging from a blue/black darkness hint at the potential for resilient threads of optimism, which might be found on pathways through landscape zones of despair and conflict. The uniform continuity of Teschendorff’s lines infer an extension beyond the canvas, as though these routes are part of a larger prevailing network of movement amidst challenges, tethered to history through the perpetuation of ideas.

Isobel Wise

Associate Curator / Art Gallery of Western Australia