Autumn Leaves, 2025
Oil on canvas, 115 x 140cm
Squeegee, 2025
Oil on canvas, 115 x 140cm
Paisley
Oil on canvas, 115 x 140cm
Still life, 2025
Oil on canvas, 115 x 140cm
Against nature, 2025
Kinwashi, autumn leaves, polystyrene, dimensions variable
SensibilityOlivia Wood 30/08/2025 - 13/09/2025
'Happiness is a beautiful fruit that tastes of cruelty' - Agnès Varda. Lately, happy to see:
spirit.
Sensitivity, sensibility, specificity, sentimentality, softness, shrewdness, sincerity,
I (enviously) begrudge abstract forms.
Abstraction, ambiguity, apathy, ambivalence, abbreviation, accidie, agreeability, allusion.
Illusion, indifference, impertinence, insinuation, implication.
Dysregulation takes a more familiar formlessness, one which is incomplete and moving. I'm at a bar in Fitzroy, and a drunk friend exclaims 'I don't dream!', glum with glee. We don't dream. We don't get embarrassed. We have good taste.
Dreaming is a form of fiction and feeling. Literature's heightened sensitivity to the microscopic detail marks its difference from the casual inattentiveness that defines the detritus of everyday life.
Cynicism and solemnity change form, prodding at our fear of missing the point. The paintings' subject provides us a fraction of fiction. Equally crucial to this fiction is what is obscured. The inexpressible.
Livin' in the sweet promise of the future, our innocence and experience. Pessimistic thoughts, optimistic actions. L'avenir.
Agnes Delany