Landscapes for uncertain times
1 – 19 July 2025
Landscapes for uncertain times
Opening Night
Tuesday 1 July 20 25 6pm – 8pm
28 Derby Street Collingwood VIC 3066
Meet the Artist
Saturday 5 July 2pm
Exhibition Dates
Tuesday 1 July – Saturday 19 July 2025
Open 7 days 10am – 6pm T 03 9417 2422
melbourne@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au
“On a recent warm Thursday morning in April artist Thornton Walker arrived by electric bike at his Richmond studio. He was meeting his former gallery director Guy Abrahams to look at his latest series of paintings and watercolours which will be exhibited at Australian Galleries in July. Walker wore his Greek fisherman’s cap and painting clothes, covered in the strokes and smudges of paint that had come too close. Walker’s studio is in an old saw tooth roofed factory that was once part of Abrahams’ gallery. They regularly meet to drink tea and chat about films, books, Bob Dylan, and the state of the world. Today they’d arranged to talk about Walker’s art.
Walker was born in New Zealand before moving to Australia with his family in 1965 when he was 12 years old. “As I get older, those early days in New Zealand have come to mean a lot more to me.” He pulls out a painting, The guardian and the wood pigeon, and hangs it on a couple of the nails that are hammered grid like into the white bagged brick wall.
“Recently I’ve been reminiscing about those early years in Auckland and in particular, a bush-reserve near my home, called Dingle Dell. I often went there with my dog to explore the narrow tracks that networked the reserve under its dark canopy. In my memory it was a mysterious place and seemed to be inhabited by spirits.” An iridescent blue bird, a Kererū, flies out of the top of the painting, while a brooding carved Tiki-like figure stands guard over the forest below.
Nevertheless, Walker says his paintings “are not specific places, they might start off describing a hill in Tasmania or a recollected landscape in New Zealand, but during the painting process these specific references become more unclear; my interest is much more in eliciting a feeling, a fantastical, dream like world.”
Walker hangs two other paintings, Rākanui and The thicket was murmuring, on the concrete nails protruding from the paint spattered wall. “I’ve been reading quite a lot of Murakami recently. He often has two worlds that exist beside each other that the main protagonist is able to travel between… one of them is the world we know, and the other, subliminal one is magical. I share his curiosity for that world.”
Abrahams has known Walker since he first showed at his mother’s gallery back in 1987. Walker exhibited there many times over the next 21 years, and the two of them became good friends, holidaying together on yachts in the South Pacific or in remote stone villas on lesser-known Greek islands.
“That two worlds notion is something you’ve tackled in your work for a long time” says Abrahams, “even going back to your famous bowl paintings, where the bowl is a quite palpable physical object existing in a space which has an unknown, even chaotic quality.”
Walker pauses, thinks… “These are idealised landscapes, like stage sets, stylised– they’re as much about the composition and the quality of the paint surface as they are about the landscape.”
Abrahams offers to help hang some other paintings, but Walker is already taking them from the wall and picking up two others from a stack facing another wall. He doesn’t want too many works on display at once. This isn’t an exhibition viewing – Walker is carefully curating the number and sequence in which he reveals the paintings, displaying each work in turn with an unspoken invitation to contemplation.
Walker hangs Allegory, the scent of plum and Orchard with ladder and steps back, moving between tables laden with paints, brushes, palette knives, a large mirror propped on an easel (so he can view the composition of works back to
front) and a small desk on which books, a notebook and various jottings sit beside a mug of tea.
“Allegory, the scent of plum…The thing that I find so exciting about the process of painting is what can evolve. The challenge is to get past the familiar… past this point one starts working in the complete unknown, the possibilities are infinite… I’m never sure where the paintings will lead me and at times it feels as though I don’t play a part in their creation.”
Walker hangs another painting, The shifting world, a saga, and takes several steps back. “This painting evolved slowly as I worked on it. The boat, the mosaic like patterning and the indefinite horizon line were introduced as the painting unfolded, the finished work bears little resemblance to how it looked in the beginning.”
“I’m conscious that the real creative process often starts when I hit a roadblock, when I’m struggling with what to do next. Then, in the struggle to resolve things, other directions open up. I’ve found that when I just paint what I know, or what I have conceived … it risks merely becoming an illustration. Being able to let the painting lead as it’s unfolding, for me, is the most exciting aspect of making art”.
A scruffy dog roams into the studio and sniffs around. Woody is an occasional visitor, not that interested in the artworks, but keen to see whether there’s any uneaten biscuits or other treats lying around.
Winding up their meeting Abrahams poses a final question. “We’re living in a crazy time… does what’s going on in the world have some influence on the subject or the feeling of your work?”
Walker sighs quietly, smiles, and then responds. “This is my retreat from the crazy world, it’s my salvation, I’ve always wanted to paint beautiful paintings, but beautiful
paintings are deceptively difficult to pull off because it requires one to transcend what we know, in order to achieve that depth…the struggle in the studio to produce a painting that has that quality, is what keeps me going and enables me to live with the craziness out there.”
The next week Walker travels to his studio retreat in Tasmania to finish the final paintings for his exhibition. After a few days he sends Abrahams a text message with the exhibition title:
‘Landscapes for uncertain times.’
Guy Abrahams, May 2025
The origin of music 2025 oil on canvas 110 x 95 cm
Naoshima, II 2024 watercolour and ink on paper 26 x 24.5 cm
Orchard with ladder 2024 watercolour and ink on paper 46.5 x 42 cm
Rambutan orchard, Malaysia 2025 watercolour and ink on paper 51 x 45.5 cm
The Inland Sea, two chairs 2024 watercolour and ink on paper 51 x 41.5 cm
