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Art, Life, Love, Death, Immortality, and a Respectable Haircut…
25 July, 2017 - 5 August, 2017
![Rehgan De Mather, [DIOS] Mother is God, 2017, acrylic, spray enamel and tin heart on canvas, 1400 x 1400mm](https://fortyfivedownstairs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dios_webhero.jpg)
Rehgan De Mather
25 July-5 August 2017
hours:
Tuesday – Friday 11am to 5pm,
Saturday 12pm to 4pm
admission: Free
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
![Rehgan De Mather, [DIOS] Mother is God, 2017, acrylic, spray enamel and tin heart on canvas, 1400 x 1400mm](https://fortyfivedownstairs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dios_webhero.jpg.webp)
After a four-month residency at fortyfivedownstairs, Rehgan De Mather presents Art, Life, Love, Death, Immortality, and a Respectable Haircut…, an exhibition inspired by his travels through Mexico and South America.
The colourful and celebratory Day of the Dead and Carnival specifically inform this new series of paintings and objects. As well, the impact of major life milestones such as marriage and parenthood lend to the underlying humour and honesty of the exhibition.
Art, Life, Love, Death, Immortality, and a Respectable Haircut… investigates notions of morality through the metaphor of movement, both in travel and through life. Employing a creative process that shifts between chaos and order, a process itself that mirrors life and death; a balancing act between the desire to cram as much into life and art as possible, and the inevitable editing that results in measuring what is actually possible. The exhibition presents a colourful and exciting collection of collages, constructions and paintings.
With numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as being selected as a finalist in many high-profile awards, Rehgan De Mather has quickly established himself as an artist to watch.
Since completing his BVA at Monash University Gippsland in 2001, De Mather has held 24 solo exhibitions and been involved in over 30 group exhibitions throughout Australia.
He has been selected three times as a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Agendo Art Award, and Arc Yinnar Drawing Prize; twice in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize, Black Swan Prize for Portraiture, Mount Eyre Art Prize, Prometheus Visual Arts Award, Lethbridge 10,000 Small Scale Art Award, and John Leslie Art Prize, as well as being a finalist in the Araluen Art Prize, City of Whyalla Art Prize, Stanthorpe Arts Festival, Cambridge Studio Gallery Portrait Prize, Clayton Utz Art Award and the 6th P.A.F International Drawing Biennale.
He was a semi-finalist in the arts category of the Young Australian of the Year Awards, and a recipient of a Regional Arts Development Grant through Arts Victoria. He was awarded a yearlong residency at Appleton Street Studios in 2011 courtesy of the Sandra Bardas Studio Grant, was selected as the 2013 RAW Melbourne Visual Artist of the Year, and was recently awarded the 2017 residency and exhibition at fortyfivedownstairs.
De Mather was born in Adelaide, grew up in Sale, and currently lives and works in Melbourne.