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Mighty Melbourne

8 May, 2018 - 19 May, 2018

Arthur Ted Powell, Midnight Melbourne

ARTHUR TED POWELL

Mighty Melbourne

8 – 19 May 2018

hours:
Tuesday – Friday 11am to 5pm,
Saturday 12pm to 4pm
admission: Free

…a nod to Melbourne’s vainglorious rise as a global city…

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

Arthur Ted Powell is a British-born contemporary landscape/cityscape artist, printmaker, urban sketcher and advertising art director living in Melbourne, Australia. He studied Fine Art and Advertising Design at Ealing College of Art and St Martin’s School of Art in London, under influential abstract artists, including Roy Ascott, Anthony Benjamin and Bernhard Cohen, before embarking on a career in advertising. For many years he worked full-time as an art director and creative director in some of the world’s largest advertising agencies in Australia, New Zealand,Taiwan, USA, UK and Thailand, and won numerous international awards for his work. Powell returned to Australia in 2004 to embark on a full-time career as a painter and printmaker. He works from a studio at Gasworks Arts Park, Albert Park.

MIGHTY MELBOURNE

Artist Talk with Arthur Ted Powell
Saturday 12 May, 2pm
fortyfivedownstairs

FREE EVENT

Details

Start:
8 May, 2018
End:
19 May, 2018
Event Category:
Event Tags:
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Venue

fortyfivedownstairs gallery
45 Flinders Lane
Melbourne, Victoria 3000 Australia
+ Google Map
Phone
03 9662 9966
View Venue Website

Other

Artist
Arthur Ted Powell
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