gemma lynch-memory

9606
gemma lynch-memory
selected works from the last decade

Bibliography
1992 - Bachelor of Visual Arts (Painting Major) University of New England
1994 - Master of Art Admin - University of New South Wales
1995/6 - Traveled to Africa, Egypt, U.K., Europe, U.S.A
1996 - 'Testimony' ARDT Gallery - Sydney
1997 - 'Postcards' Lyall Burton Gallery - Melbourne
1998 - 'Search for Meaning' Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery - Sydney
1998 - 'Journey' Greenaway Gallery - Melbourne
1999 - 'Duality' Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery - Sydney
2000 - 'Little Kingdom' Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery - Sydney
2001 - 'Waiting for Rain' Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery - Sydney
2002 - 'Earthworks' Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery - Sydney
2002 - 'Urban Paddocks' Chifley Plaza - Sydney
2003 - 'Brand New Day' Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery - Sydney
2003 - Sydney Art Fair
2003 - 'Daylight' Chifley Plaza - Sydney
2004 - Melbourne Art Fair
2004 - 'Under a Sunlit Sky' Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery - Sydney
2004 - Sydney Art Fair
2004 - 'East to West' Gullotti Galleries - Perth
2004 - Finalist - Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize
2005 - 'Travelling Without Moving' Gullotti Galleries - Perth
2005 - Sydney Art Fair
2005 - 'Landmarks' Libby Edwards Galleries - Melbourne
2006 - 'Terra Firma' Libby Edwards Galleries - Sydney
2006 - Melbourne Art Fair
2006 - Sydney Art Fair
2006 - 'Incandescent' Libby Edwards Galleries - Brisbane
2006 - 'Off The Map' Gullottti Galleries - Perth
The artwork contained in this publication is held in both private and corporate collections throught Australia, America and Europe.
Contributors, acknowledgments and special thanks to: Terry Memory, Sandra Lynch, Libby and Katie Edwards, Paul Gullotti, Natasha Wilde, Amelia Douglas, Trevor Harvey
Steve Constantinidis (Chapman and Bailey), Graham Baring (GB Photography), Neale Robinson (International Art Services), Jonny Felbel - (X-press Graph-X)
and Brad Purvis (Art Wise Investments).
www.gemmalynch-memory.com

'Little Mining Town' Installation Gullotti Galleries - Perth 2006
gemma lynch-memory
selected works from the last decade
1996-2006
Foreword
Gemma Lynch-Memory's paintings are
widely celebrated for their unique
engagement with the Australian
landscape; a project underscored by a
keen sensitivity toward both the land's
materiality and its emotive capacity. This
publication tracks the development of
Lynch-Memory's practice from 1996 to
2006, a period that saw the artist rocket
to national recognition whilst continuing
to tease apart her formal and conceptual
fascination with the complexities of
identity, space and placement.
From fragile works on paper to bold
panel installations, Lynch-Memory
consistently anchors her landscapes with
recourse to the personal. The link
between land and self owes much to
biography. Lynch-Memory's formative
years were spent in country New South
Wales. Under the influence of dizzy
skyscapes and expansive horizons, her
most immediate reference points were
the tropes of rural Australia: fences,
paddocks, stockyards, gates, shacks and
waterholes. During the course of the last
decade, Lynch-Memory has developed a
highly individual iconographic system for
the organisation of these 'landmarks'. At
times she gestures toward only the
barest indication of forms (gates are
abstracted into cartographic symbols).
Elsewhere, she deploys figuration to
render specific features recognisable (the
texture of a tin roof, a scratch of scrub in
a parched field).
After graduating with a Masters degree
from the University of New South Wales
in 1994, Lynch-Memory held her debut
solo exhibition at ARDT Gallery in
Sydney. Entitled Testimony, the exhibition
featured nearly a hundred works,
predominantly on paper. Although the
series bore witness to the burgeoning of
Lynch-Memory's signature style,
landscape was surprisingly absent.
Rather, the tenor of Testimony was one
of soft melancholia. Awash with dark
abstractions and deep hues, these small
compositions were arranged in discreet
grid formations against the gallery walls.
Works such as Now and Big Picture Little
Picture appeared poised to manage
emotion through the imposition of
geometry - smudges of black oil and
charcoal inscribing concealed
relationships.
Testimony's weighty introspection was
abandoned in subsequent exhibitions. In
1998, Lynch-Memory turned instead to
her experiences of travel, drawing from
memories of journeys through Africa,
Egypt, America, Europe and the UK to
produce works such as Journey (1998)
and Melting the Iron (1998). Now painted
predominantly on canvas, the high key
palette of these new pieces relished in
the play of pastel across light structures.
A similar chromatic levity was evident in
her 1999 exhibition Duality, wherein the
spiritual iconography of Angels and
Guardians (1999) was tempered with
painterly streaks of raw umber and rose.
The trajectory of this stylistic progression
culminated in 2000 with the opening of
her exhibition Little Kingdom. An
autobiographical celebration of
childhood, Little Kingdom adapted the
light palette of Search for Meaning and
applied it to spacious, quietly nostalgic
rural scenes. It was at this time that the
compositional strategy so prevalent in
her most recent work first became visible
- space is segmented into sections and
held together by strong, horizontal colour
chords. Carrying tinges of both Rothko
and Kandinsky's investigations into
spirituality, colour and psychology, these
works fed directly into Lynch-Memory's
subsequent exhibitions of 2001. It was at
this time she produced the first of her
tripartite landscapes, fashioning space
into a three-part harmony and introducing
the horizon line as a central motif.
Formal innovations were matched with a
shift in the process of production. In
2003, Lynch-Memory began to integrate
her canvases with works painted directly
on wooden board, building up the
surfaces with thick impastos and
luxurious swathes of paint. In addition to
brushes and palette knives, she also
began to shape her surfaces using power
sanders - smoothing the layers before
adhering organic materials such as sand
and gravel. The physical, tactile traces of
her artistic process were not only evident
on the surfaces of the works, but
extended outward to inform her exhibition
strategies. After adopting diptych and
tryptich formats, Lynch-Memory settled
upon her own system for multi-panel
display. The Little Mining Town
installation at Gullotti Galleries in 2006
elegantly exemplified this approach.
Here, the viewer was encouraged to
consider their physical movement
through the gallery as part of the work
itself, linking separate panels as space
was traversed.
Over the last three years, Lynch-Memory
has gradually replaced the softer hues of
her earlier works with the fiery reds,
shimmering yellows and deep, cool blues
synonymous with her practice today. Red
Rock Paddock No. 4, (2006), is one of
Lynch-Memory’s largest works to date.
Spanning an impressive two and a half
meters, the painting resonates with a
chorus of luminosity, gritty textures dance
across the terrain. Reminiscent of
Anselm Kiefer’s stratified palimpsests,
Red Rock Paddock No. 4 tests the limits
and possibilities of both mark making,
and making one’s mark. This project
entails an acknowledgement of the
proximity between territory and language,
a relation made explicit by Lynch-
Memory’s return to text in recent
exhibitions.
Although inscriptions have featured
throughout Lynch-Memory’s oeuvre,
during the past year their appearance
has been enriched. In works such as
Ignite (2006) and Submerge No.1&2
(2006), textual inscriptions are employed
to initiate a literal dialogue between
landscape and identity. Scratched across
the surfaces are tiny fragments of
sentences that trail like flight paths above
the land, a reminder of the necessity for
dialogue in the search for equilibrium. As
one of Lynch-Memory’s current dealers
Libby Edwards has noted; “there is a
serenity about the works, a spiritual
quality that is emphasised by their almost
perfect balance.”
Amelia Douglas
Amelia Douglas is a Melbourne-based curator and
writer. She is currently completing her PhD at the
Department of Art History, University of Melbourne.

gemma lynch-memory page 2
'Now' No.1,2,3 & 4
Oil and Mixed Media on Paper
51x38cm
1996
'Testimony' Exhibition - Sydney

'Big Picture, Little Picture' No.1 - 8
Oil and Mixed Media on Paper
46x38cm
1996
'Testimony' Exhibition - Sydney
gemma lynch-memory page 3

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'Journey' No.1,2,3 & 4
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
61x46cm
1997
'Journey' Exhibition - Melbourne

'Melting The Iron'
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
94x78cm
1998
'Search For Meaning' Exhibition - Sydney
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'Mecca'
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
94x78cm
1998
'Search For Meaning' Exhibition - Sydney

'Angels and Guardians'
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
135x105cm
1999
'Duality' Exhibition - Sydney
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'Little Kingdom'
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
120x155cm
2000
'Little Kingdom' Exhibition - Sydney

'Mirage'
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
120x155cm
2001
'Waiting For Rain' Exhibition - Sydney
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'Paddocks on Sunday'
Oil and Mixed on Canvas
150x120cm
2002
'Earthworks' Exhibition - Sydney

'Dusty Dwelling'
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
120x100cm
2003
'Under a Sunlit Sky' Exhibition - Sydney
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'Mining Town' No.2
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
120x100cm
2004
'East To West' Exhibition - Perth

'Red Rock Paddock' No.5,6,7 & 8
Oil and Mixed Media on Board
90x75cm
2005
'Landmarks' Exhibition - Melbourne
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'Submerge' No.1 & 2
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
150x120cm
2006
'Terra Firma' Exhibition - Sydney

'Ignite'
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
120x180cm
2006
'Incandescent' Exhibition - Brisbane
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'Red Rock Paddock' No.4
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
170x250cm
2006
'Incandescent' Exhibition - Brisbane

Produced and Published by
the ARTiSON group
For more information visit
www.gemmalynch-memory.com
or email
info@gemmalynch-memory.com
ISBN 0-646-46311-X
c Copyright - All rights reserved 2006
All rights to the images contain herein remain with the
artist and cannot be reproduced in any way without
expressed written permission.
RRP $24.95 AUS/NZ