TIM MAGUIRE | SMALL WORLDS | 28 MAY - 21 JUNE 2020

TIM MAGUIRE Small Worlds

28 May - 21 June 2020

© Martin Browne Contemporary © All images copyright Tim Maguire This catalogue is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

COMPILER: Ally Russell-Floyd PHOTOGRAPHER: Jenni Carter COLOUR SEPARATIONS: Spitting Image, Sydney Cover Image: Untitled 20200302, 2020, oil on canvas, 183 x 183 cm (detail)

MARTIN BROWNE CONTEMPORARY 15 HAMPDEN STREET PADDINGTON NSW 2021 TEL: 02 9331 7997 FAX: 02 9331 7050 info@martinbrownecontemporary.com www.martinbrownecontemporary.com GALLERY HOURS: TUESDAY - SUNDAY 10:30AM - 6PM

LIST OF WORKS

Untitled 20200401, 2020, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm (opposite) Untitled 20200201, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 137 cm Untitled 20200304, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 137 cm Untitled 20200301, 2020, oil on canvas, 160 x 233 cm Untitled 20200403, 2020, oil on canvas, 202 x 192 cm Untitled 20191101, 2019, oil on canvas, 162 x 364 cm (diptych) Untitled 20200203, 2020, oil on canvas, 162 x 182 cm Untitled 20200202, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 396 cm (diptych) Untitled 20200204, 2020, oil on canvas, 182 x 162 cm Untitled 20200402, 2020, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm Untitled 20200303, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 137 cm Untitled 20200102, 2020, oil on canvas, 132 x 122 cm Untitled 20200302, 2020, oil on canvas, 183 x 183 cm

Small Worlds 17th Century Dutch floral still-life paintings often fulfilled a moral function. Whilst evidently painted as a celebration of beauty and of the richness of the natural world (and indeed the wealth of the painting’s owner), they generally had included in their compositions specific elements which served as memento mori (reminders of death). The very early floral studies were sometimes painted onto the back of portraits as an injunction against vanity, to remind the sitter that while their image may endure, their health and beauty was subject to the immutable laws of nature and would wither away. Flowers, beautiful yet only briefly blooming, were symbolic reminders of the fleetingness of perfection, the fragility of beauty, and the brevity of worldly existence. Alongside the fallen petals, these paintings often included other symbols of transformation, decay and the passage of time – skulls, butterflies, burnt-down candles, timepieces, and insects alighting on rotting fruit.

I first started using these Dutch floral still-lifes as subject matter for my paintings in the early 1990s.

I enjoyed the detachment and freedom that came from working from found imagery. The meticulously painted, densely packed compositions offered a wealth of possible compositions for me to plunder. And when I stopped to reflect on the subject matter, the inbuilt metaphors chimed with my preoccupations with mortality. I was nearing the same age at which my father had suddenly died. And my young son was same age I was when I lost my father.

In those days the only imagery I could access was low-resolution. My reference materials were muddy reproductions in books, or the occasional blurry postcard collected in a museum. By the time I had “zoomed in” on the photo, and found a composition in it, the source image was in some cases reduced to a few square centimetres – which I then blew up a thousand-fold, on to canvases of up to 2 x 6 metres.

This cropping and enlarging reduced the botanical details to simple shapes and colours, and I sometimes had no idea which part of which plant the areas of my paintings represented. This obscuring of the subject matter led to abstraction, which was enhanced by my use of large brushes, with gestural brushstrokes broken down further by solvent splashed and dragged across the still wet paint surface.

Eventually my work evolved away from those historical sources, but last year I was reminded of the old subject matter and I began looking again at it, literally in a new light. Now, with images of paintings made freely available online by museums and auction houses, the source imagery is far easier to come by, and the quality is greatly enhanced. And many of these old paintings have been recently cleaned, with the varnish removed and the original colours restored. Now all the details in those painstakingly paint ed originals are on display, down to the tiny water droplets on the leaves. And amongst them, in clear view, are the little creatures that inhabit these elaborately invented arrangements.

By the 17th Century, interest in scientific classification was growing. Many intellectuals’ homes had their wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities, including display cases of pinned insects. Religious concerns were giving way to science, typified by two notable still-life painters: Maria Van Oosterwijck, daughter of a Dutch Reformed minister, and a generation later, Rachel Ruysch, daughter of a botanist and anatomist.

Both painted formal flower bouquets, botanically accurate and sometimes teeming with insect life. (Olivia Carlson has counted 19 moths, ants, bees and beetles in Ruysch’s Flowers in a Glass Vase, 1704). In a curious blend of naturalism and artifice, Ruysch sometimes placed her floral arrangements on a forest floor. As did other 18th Century artists, she painted woodland scenes, in which lizards and toads cavort with dragonflies and moths in dark fantasias of creepy-crawliness. In these paintings plants grow wildly, and the only reference to an ordering human influence is the occasional stone wall, tumbled down, and overgrown with vines. These images of unhindered nature seem to depict on the one hand a paradise before The Fall, (or a fearful depiction of civilisation succumbing to nature running riot.

I started the first of the paintings in this show in September 2019 – a large diptych based on a detail of a painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem, with small insects crawling over the stems and blooms of bursting roses and ranunculi. I felt a new resonance between the morality tales of the original painting and the current threats to our natural world – the loss of habitat to human activity, global temperatures rising, oceans under threat, and species declining and disappearing.

By the end of the last year, vast bushfires were rampant throughout Australia. In the dark glow of these horrific fires, the moral function of those still-life paintings – reminders at once of the marvellous and fragile beauty of the natural world, and of the temporality of our place in it – seemed even more relevant.

And while I didn’t share the original artists’ religious convictions, through the act of recreating some of their lovingly painted flowers, I could share in their sense of wonder at the precious diversity of life.

It seemed now, as we saw around us the terrifying impact of human activity on the natural world, that reminders of the dangers of human hubris were even more necessary.

Then the year turned and the novel coronavirus came on the scene. A new vision appeared; of humans, not as rampaging giants crushing nature underfoot, but something more primal, humans as vulnerable organisms, subject to the vagaries of chance infection and the relentless computations of epidemiology.

With everything under threat from COVID-19 – our lifestyles, our livelihoods, and even our lives – I felt a new affinity with those little creatures in the Old Master paintings who, having crept out from the fog of the past, are now clearly exposed.

Tim Maguire

Untitled 20200201, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 137 cm (detail)

Untitled 20200201, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 137 cm

Untitled 20200304, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 137 cm

Untitled 20200301, 2020, oil on canvas, 160 x 233 cm

Untitled 20200403, 2020, oil on canvas, 202 x 192 cm

Untitled 20191101, 2019, oil on canvas, 162 x 364 cm (diptych)

Untitled 20200203, 2020, oil on canvas, 162 x 182 cm

Untitled 20200202, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 396 cm (diptych)

Untitled 20200204, 2020, oil on canvas, 182 x 162 cm

Untitled 20200402, 2020, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm

Untitled 20200303, 2020, oil on canvas, 153 x 137 cm

Untitled 20200102, 2020, oil on canvas, 132 x 122 cm

Untitled 20200302, 2020, oil on canvas, 183 x 183 cm

TIM MAGUIRE 1958 Born in Chertsey, United Kingdom 1959 Immigrated to Australia Lives and works in France, the United Kingdom and Australia since 1992 SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2019 Dice Abstracts, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 2018 Reflective, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney 2018 Everything Changes: Tim Maguire 2002 - 2017, Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle 2017 Tim Maguire, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Sydney 2017 The Floating World, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 2016 Transient, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney 2015 Photosynthesis, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 2015 New Prints, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne 2014 Near and Far, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney 2014 Tim Maguire: The Douglas Kagi Gift, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville 2013 A Device for Viewing the Landscape, installation commissioned by Allens Linklaters, Deutsche Bank Building, Sydney 2012 Time and Nature, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney 2012 Tim Maguire, 19 View Street, Tolarno Galleries in association with The Swansea Gallery, Perth 2012 Tolarno Galleries at Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne 2011 Other Light, Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich 2011 Tim Maguire, Von Lintel Gallery, New York 2011 Light Fall 2011, The Australian Club, Melbourne 2011 Light Works, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney 2010 Light and Water, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 2010 Light and Water, Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney 2009 Refractions, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland 2009 Light Fall, Von Lintel Gallery, New York 2008 Tim Maguire, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 2008 Tim Maguire, Galerie Couvrat Desvergnes, Paris 2008 Snow, Water and Flowers, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 2007 Tim Maguire, Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich 2007 Tim Maguire, Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney 2007 Tim Maguire, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 2007 Tim Maguire, Von Lintel Gallery, New York 2006 Tim Maguire, Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney 2006 Digital Prints, Bathurst Fossil and Mineral Museum, New South Wales

AWARDS 1993 Moët & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship 1989 Dobell Prize for Drawing, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 1986 Hugh Williamson Award (Best Male Emerging Artist), Ballarat, Victoria 1985 Jury Prize, Third International Drawing Triennale, Nuremberg 1984 Peter Brown Memorial Scholarship, Australia Council 1981 The Rural Bank Painting Prize

SELECTED PUBLIC AND CORPORATE COLLECTIONS Academisch Ziekenhuis, Leiden Allens Linklaters, Sydney, London and New York ANZ Bank, Melbourne Artbank, Australia Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Australian Club, Melbourne Australian Club, Sydney Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Victoria Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria British Museum, London Credit Suisse, Australia Darwin College of Advanced Education, Darwin Deakin University, Melbourne Derwent Collection, Tasmania Deutsche Bank, London Fidelity Corporate Art Collection, London, UK Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria Griffith Artworks, Brisbane Hamilton Art Gallery, Victoria JMH Bank, Frankfurt Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg Macquarie Group, Syndey Melbourne Club, Melbourne McClelland Gallery & Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, Victoria Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart National Gallery of Australia, Canberra National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Newcastle Art Gallery, New South Wales 2018 All we can’t see, Yellow House Gallery, Sydney Orange Regional Gallery, New South Wales 2018 Couplings, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra 2016 Flora Australis, Bega Regional Gallery, New South Wales Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville 2016 Digital Generation- Artist from the Digital Generation, Tonbridge School, Philip Morris Arts Grant Collection, Tonbridge UK National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2015 De La Pierre a l’Ecran- Franck Bordas, Centre de la Gravure et de l”Image Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Imprimée, La Louviere, Belgium Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane 2015 Light Play : Ideas, Optics and Atmosphere, Siemens AG SFS, Munich University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane Tamar Collection, Tasmania 2015 Botanica, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney Tarra Warra Museum of Art, Victoria, Australia 2012 All the Flowers, Benalla Art Gallery, Benalla Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 2012 Hot town, summer in the city…, Galerie Andreas Binder, Münich The New Art Gallery Walsall 2012 MONOuno Exhbition, Albury Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales University of Melbourne, Melbourne 2012 Estampes Numériques, Galerine Catherine Putman, Paris University of Sydney, Sydney 2011 Boundary Line, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville University of Launceston, Tasmania 2011 New Psychedelia, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane Zurich Insurance, Zurich