Mathew Lynn - an overview 2022
This is a standalone un-linked page not in my website navigation menu - so whilst you can access my live website here as well, you will need to come back to this link if you get lost!
The following is an overview of my current and recent contemporary works and exhibitions, how this relates and influences the evolution of my contemporary portraits - particularly the Archibald Prize - and further, how this influences my long-term goal of establishing a career and unique vision in contemporary figuration and depictions of place, most recently with explorations of the Pacific and seascape.
As my bio says here, I’m primarily known as a realist portrait painter having been a finalist in the Archibald Prize eighteen times, and I’ve worked more or less exclusively on public and private portrait commissions since 1997. In recent years I’ve been making a transition into contemporary painting working with Nanda\Hobbs Sydney from 2019, but it is really a process of coming back to my original love of more expressive figuration from my early days in art school, and the work I did immediately after that which was not always as strictly representational, and how this was combined with my music career at the time, including studying traditional Dagomba drum music in Northern Ghana in my early 20s.
Whilst I continue to paint portrait commissions, which I believe in absolutely as a genre, and as a vehicle and particular calling I have, my long-term goal is now to develop and expand what I started in my early days of art, and to find a unique voice in contemporary art, exploring my relationship with the things that are dear to me.
One key area broadly speaking is my interest in the zone where Black (African and diaspora) and White cultures mingle. In some way or another energetically this informs all the work I do, though it’s not necessarily always explicit. For example, my 2021 Archibald portrait Apprentice – self-portrait with Papa K (aka I do see colour) very specifically refers to this zone, in this case not as an outsider, but being actively part of a community in which I am embraced, and what this feels like. This is the opposite of ‘exotic’, which is an easy assumption some people make about this work. Sometimes there is also a feeling of not quite fitting in anywhere completely, something that I also want to explore in relation to this mingling, a kind of ‘cleft habitus’ as its sometimes referred.
My recent exhibition Pacific Infinite explores this less explicitly. Rather, it is like transferring the energy, colour and backdrop from that portrait onto themes of the Pacific Ocean and saltwater life, something also very close to my heart.
My finalist for this year’s Archibald Prize Yaka moto, Magic Pierre is a key breakthrough where I’ve managed to free myself of the strict observational realism that 25 years of portrait painting will imbue on someone! It is a very special work for me, inspired by my sitter who is also my favourite artist in this country, Pierre Mukeba.
Looking ahead, this is the main thing I am trying to achieve - contemporary figuration that is not always representational, and explorations of place which may have no figurative elements at all. I see a number of interrelated facets that collect these underlying themes and energies together as a whole.
Three important recent portraits:
These help to explain and inform the current evolution in my contemporary work. After eighteen finals, I tend to use the Archibald Prize now as a place for experimentation, and it has always been the place where I paint exactly who and what I want to paint. As mentioned, this year’s entry is a real breakthrough.
Crow (Maddy Madden) - Archibald Prize Finalist 2019
Apprentice – self-portrait with Papa K (aka I do see colour) - Archibald Prize Finalist 2021
Yaka moto, Magic Pierre - Archibald Prize Finalist 2022
The three important exhibitions from 2019 onwards:
The Image Gallery Pages associated with each particular exhibition page are very large and may take a while to load, but I’ve done it like this so it is more convenient by having all images and details in one place! Please let me know if you are having problems as I have another solution ready.
note: I’ve updated the Pacific Infinite Gallery Page so it uses links to individual galleries of each work instead.
Coogee Is Everywhere - Nanda\Hobbs Sydney, 2019
The first exhibition, and an ambitious and larger scale catch-all for various things I was exploring. Coogee the place is a central part of my life and is where my partner Faith Agugu lives, she is also featured in several of the works. I used Coogee as a jumping off point to think about ideas of structures in society as they are reflected in this place dear to me. How the surf club represents a particular history focussing on essentially White Australian culture, and how I could look at certain dominant paradigms and upend them somewhat asking different questions of a place, of alternative histories and critique. Nevertheless, surf club culture was an intrinsic and loved part of my childhood, and a fundamental part of my family life with many fond and formative memories, so I have a complex and nuanced relationship with that.
At the same time, Black music (African and diaspora) was the loved ‘high culture’ of my upbringing, going back to my very earliest childhood memories - I still have the original vinyl of Black Orpheus that was played to me from whenever it is we acquire these first memories! So there is a complex interrelationship even in aspects of my own upbringing, and growing up in a society with its particular amnesia about its origins. This is one reason why Indigenous subjects have always been so important to me in my portraiture, which can be found in the portrait sections of my website.
In Coogee Is Everywhere, I am not only introducing these elements, but also making reference to physical aspects of the place, its sandstone, its cliffs, the beach and the water - and also Coogee physical culture. Here I am also starting to explore intense experience through heightened colour and passages of abstraction.
I see all these elements as interrelated, but also standing alone in their own right as parallel intentions. They are things I think about, but not necessarily in every work or body of works, an important distinction I want to make.
The Silver Expanse - Nanda\Hobbs Sydney, 2020
This was a smaller focus show, mostly pretty monochrome, exploring silver oil paint as a connective tissue throughout all the works, and focussing on my partner Faith Agugu and our shared love of ocean swimming, and again Coogee. Meditation has always been an important thing to me, and I was drawing this connective tissue together also as a way of referencing the meditative state that I experience.
It is a very representational show, but I was using that in this case as a binding element for the works. The work ‘Dream’ is where I make reference and point to my overall direction by bringing in colour back in and a sense of abstraction, not to mention overlaid realities and dimensions.
Pacific Infinite - Day Gallery Blackheath, 2022
As mentioned above, Pacific Infinite was a way of exploring the breakthrough in my 2021 Archibald double portrait by simply taking the figure completely out of those places, and transferring this to a focus on Pacific Ocean life. There is most obviously a priority made with intense use of colour and powerful compositional structures in the works. Something also very important to me in these works was the use of a variety of marks and paint thicknesses - some areas are very thick, some very sketchy and transparent. This is about exploring the changing dynamics of surface and finding solutions for a wide range of these dynamics in one work, this is a very important aspect to where I’m heading and approaches when I reintroduce the figure in place.
As mentioned in the notes on the exhibition cover page, colour and forms themselves and their pure resonance are a parallel and distinct intention, apart from the conventional subject matter. This is also an important part of my trajectory where I see possibilities for bodies of work being largely or even possibly purely abstract, and it is a fundamental reason why there was a non-representational breakthrough in my Archibald entry of this year, Yaka moto, Magic Pierre.
To a certain extent there are also obvious Pop Cultural references, references to surf culture and so on, but not really as a celebration or critique of ‘surf kitsch’, rather as a jumping off point to explore colour and the pure forms within what is at times very familiar.
Here is a link to a gallery of images shot in my studio from September 2021 to April 2022.
Final Notes
My main intention here is to give an integrated overview of where I’m trying to head. There is at times quite a diversity in my work, but I do have a plan, plus a recognition of the building blocks required. I anticipate continuing my exploration of the Pacific and place, and not necessarily with strong and extreme colour. There will be a reintroduction now of figurative works and elements with exploration of my themes and interests in society, most likely in stand-alone collections of work. Themes mentioned such as race, connectiveness and structures, music, dance, physical culture and so on - as well as the continuing exploration of Pacific seascape and place.
My Instagram account (link below) is the best way to see what I’m up day to day.
Mathew Lynn, May 2022