Melbourne Art Fair
Lachlan Stonehouse
Booth L2
February 20-23rd, 2025
Five Walls Gallery is thrilled to announce our participation in the Melbourne Art Fair from February 20–23, 2025. For our second entry, we will present a solo exhibition by Melbourne-based, Tasmanian-born artist Lachlan Stonehouse. If you are attending the MAF we invite you to visit us at booth L2. To register your interest in our MAF preview catalogue please follow the link below or contact the gallery on +61 3 90436704 \ email info@fivewalls.com.au
Lachlan Stonehouse (b. 1999, Scottsdale, Tasmania) is an emerging artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, and collage, exploring themes of recurrence, pattern-making, and surface manipulation. Deeply engaged with the legacies of Modernism, Minimalism, and Post-Minimalism, his work navigates the intersection between structure and spontaneity.
At the core of Stonehouse’s practice is an inquiry into the fundamental elements of painting, particularly its structural supports—most notably, the woven grid, which he careful and meticulously constructs by hand. This recurring motif serves as both a stabilising force and an optical challenge, generating rhythms that can appear almost mechanical. While his work adheres to a systematic approach, it also embraces play and unpredictability, disrupting the rigidity of the grid and modernist aesthetics. His process incorporates both fabricated and hand-constructed techniques, allowing imperfections to emerge within a controlled framework.
Stonehouse’s work presented at the Melbourne Art Fair utilises oil and linen adhered to wooden panels, deconstructing the formalities of geometric abstraction and modernist painting. His handmade, subtly irregular grids establish a sense of rhythm, evoking how we experience the world through bold patterns and vibrant colour. These structured surfaces are often disrupted by cutouts, unevenly layered oil paint, and overlapping linen strips, transforming the act of painting into one of endurance and repetition. While his compositions appear restrained, gestural elements naturally unfold through the iterative process, creating an ongoing cycle of pattern, rhythm, and reduction.
Stonehouse holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. He presented his debut solo exhibition at Five Walls Gallery in April 2024, followed by a two-person presentation at Sydney Contemporary alongside Emma Langridge in September 2024. His work has been exhibited across Melbourne at spaces including Caves ARI, Blindside ARI, Oigall Projects, George Paton Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Photography, and Arts Projects Australia, as well as in Tasmania at Sawtooth ARI and Poimena Gallery.
His accolades include the George Paton Gallery Artist’s Residency Award (2021) and the Vice Chancellor’s Award of Excellence (2024). His work is held in collections including Macquarie Group (NSW), Leeuwin Estate (WA), Justin Art House Museum (VIC), Winton Group (QLD), UMSU (VIC), the University of Melbourne, and private collections across Australia and New Zealand.
