'Everything at Once' is an exhibition of painting and sculpture held at the Yarrila Arts and Museum in Coffs Harbour on the NSW north coast.
It included 23 works from my 'Nothing To Say Here' series, as well as 5 gouaches, 12 small cube sculptures and a large cube work called ZigZag.
The name for the exhibition came from my wanting to show all of my remaining 'Nothing To Say Here' paintings all at once. These works had been exhibited previously, sometimes as single works or small groups, as well as in major exhibitions in Sydney (Between Boredom and Confusion) and Melbourne (Nothing To Say Here). I wanted to present all of the paintings as one work, everything at once. I had done a similar hanging in 2005 with crocheted works (Cohesion:Construction) and wanted to see how it would work with paintings.
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| Everything At Once, oil on canvas on board, 23 pieces, dimensions variable, 2018-2024 |
The arrangement of the paintings were determined solely by their size. The larger paintings in the centre with the smaller ones arranged so that there were no gaps. When putting together the catalogue, I needed a system to be able to identify the separate paintings. I drew up a plan and numbered the paintings from left to right and top to bottom. The title of each work is the quote that the painting is created from. When I started sorting the titles I noticed that they were creating a piece of writing. Without having to rearrange anything, the list of titles created an introduction, body and conclusion of an "Accidental Essay".
Three new gouache paintings were also in the exhibition. These new works are again based on text, but in this series I created shapes for each letter, with each word consisting of the layering of the letter shapes within one square. Each painting is an 8 x 8 grid with the text coming from song lyrics.
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| Not Dark Yet, gouache on paper, 55cm x 50cm, 2026 |
The exhibition also included two framed 'Nothing To Say Here' gouaches (Art Is Everything You Don't Have To Do-Brian Eno, 2016 and The Art Of Simplicity Is A Puzzle Of Complexity-Douglas Norton, 2017)
Finally, there were 12 small cube sculptures on 2 shelves.
Cube Sculpture #1 - #12, timber, paper, PVA glue, various dimensions, 2025 - 2-26
