That Howling Infinite: Barry McGlashan

31 May - 22 June 2013
Overview

The possibilities of a blank, white canvas are endless. Then one idea,

one big-bang moment, a lot of activity and energy and the basic

elements of the work emerge, the journey begins. The rest is just time

and subtle change: you have to lose ideas you love along the way but

others emerge and steer you in a new direction. Ideas only come when

you’re approaching the edge of things and as an artist you then have

the liberty to make sense of them in any way you choose. Stories often

unfold in many directions all at once, creating a thread that runs through

several different pictures; they might even reveal hidden meanings that

can be explored or tucked away and left hidden. Always, you try and

keep a constant state of wonder and the feeling of some new discovery.

 

There is no real beginning or end to the work; it’s just a continuing

journey. You rely on a deep well of ideas to take you further on, closer to

the edge of the world, through the maelstrom and what Herman Melville

described as ‘that howling infinite’. The paintings imagine those

journeys where humanity is pitted against the great forces of nature:

travellers trying to make sense of what lies ahead, the prospector looking

for fortune, the naturalist on a distant shore or the Bounty’s mutineers

escaping to the edge of the earth in their search for paradise. For all

of them, for all of us, the marvel is the view into infinity which these

journeys afford, the universe glimpsed through a break in the clouds

or the chance encounter with a comet’s endless voyage; or through

those internal journeys: secrets decoded in a mathematician’s scribbled

formulae or an artist sitting in contented solitude trying to draw the

perfect circle.

B arry McGlashan, 2013

Works