Melbourne has been the inspiration for eight of Arthur Ted Powell’s solo exhibitions between 2010-2018. He has painted Melbourne and its environs at night (Rivers of Light 2010), as a topographical map (Mapping Melbourne 2011), a geographic coordinate (145 Degrees East 2012), an historic grid (GRID 2014), a state of mind (Melbourne on my Mind 2014) and from an imagined Astral Plane (2015). The exhibition Eureka! (2016) served as a visual metaphor for the immoderate ambitions of Melbourne’s architects, designers and city planners to see the city grow and prosper.

The title of this latest exhibition, Mighty Melbourne (2018) is a nod to Melbourne’s vainglorious rise as a global city, a vast living organism pulsating with human energy. Powell continues to take an abstract approach in reimagining the city from vantage point above, this time along a stretch of the Yarra River. From an imaginary birds-eye view Melbourne’s footprint appears smaller, and abstract patterns emerge that are not evident at street level.

On paper and canvas, Powell attempts to capture in real time what is here today and will be gone tomorrow. A moment in time when the last vestiges of Mighty Melbourne (as it was once coined in the nineteenth century) are rapidly vanishing beneath shiny glass towers, and once recognisable landmarks are sliding into illegibility, reclothed in bright new cladding. The almost one million people present in the city on any given day [1] lost in the blue darkness of shadow cast long against towering walls and onto pavements below.

[1] City of Melbourne, Daily Population Estimates and Forecasts, 2017