“Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious”.

Joan D. Vinge

 

Little Birds is a new series of portraits by Sydney based New Zealand artist Matt Palmer. This series is a return to Palmer's exploration of portraiture, last explored in a series named “Antiportraits” exhibited in 2007. The old becomes new as Matt Palmer literally brings the past and the present day together. The new becomes old. A blur of past and the present, triggering memories and existing relationships. Exploring the feelings we have with established and more recognisable images, the faces are cast from personal friends and family of the artist, which consciously brings a personal element to what is an archetypal subject. Even though the layers of flowers and insects hark back to the pre-Raphaelite artists like Rossetti and Millais, there is also a thread that seems more influenced by modern photography and artists like Mark Ryden.

 

“The images are about the freedom of youth and the innocence of childhood”. The layers of paint and the more modern photographic quality combine to play around with that line between the past and the present”

Matt Palmer 2015

 

Little Birds in store at Published Art from Thurday  26th Feb 6pm. Join us  for the launch. RSVP here.