[April 6 – 23 ]
This recent body of works by Donna Comfort fuses monochrome and polychrome models of non-objective abstract painting. Yet despite the relative stability of the internal forms, and the uniformity of a square format canvas, deliberate contradictions in colour arrangement and sequencing reveal the work to also be in a state of continual transformation. One painting acts as the starting point for the next and through adherence to this simplest of studio methodologies a kind of self-perpetuating machine is created. The resulting paintings are anything but machine-like in appearance. Residual pencil lines trace the path of the artist’s hand; decisions made and unmade. Finally, any supposed formal closure in the work is belied by the chosen colours drawn from Comfort’s ongoing photographic documentation of the industrial and hyper-urban environments of Melbourne’s South East.
