Marioni and MacPherson feature at UQ Art Museum

An exhibition featuring artworks by American Joseph Marioni and Australian Robert MacPherson is showing at The University of Queensland Art Museum.

UQ Art Museum Director Dr Campbell Gray said New York-based Joseph Marioni and Brisbane-based Robert MacPherson had achieved wide recognition for their work that takes as its starting point the minimal art of the mid-twentieth century.

“Joseph Marioni is a painter who has returned a seductive materiality to the monochrome, while Robert MacPherson has pared painting back to its component parts – surface, paint, brush, and the action of the artist’s body,” Dr Gray said.

UQ Associate Professor and Reader in Art History Rex Butler was invited by the UQ Art Museum to curate the exhibition.

“Rex has teased out how these artists, working on either side of the globe, are seemingly aligned in their purpose, and yet in many ways are philosophically opposed,” Dr Gray said.

MacPherson’s works in the exhibition were made between 1976 and 1977, and were executed by following a pre-determined procedure or process.

Marioni’s works are from 2000 and 2013.

Associate Professor Butler said Marioni’s monochromes appeared to have been driven by process but he carefully crafted his materials and process to transmit light and a concern for the immaterial.

“Joseph Marioni makes his work by running successive layers of differently coloured paint down the canvas, subtly redirecting the paint each time before it reaches the bottom,” he said.

“MacPherson’s early work was about the ‘rules’ that the American art critic Clement Greenberg supposedly put forward for making modernist painting: flatness, self-reflexivity, an emphasis on the medium.

“His works of the late 1970s followed procedure: in Hand Ritual (Ricochet Group), MacPherson crushed charcoal on paper with a hammer and in the Scale from the Tool series he recorded the different ways that paint might be applied by a paintbrush in a single vertical stroke of paint.

“But MacPherson makes clear the impossibility of ever following such rules to produce a successful work of art – at some point, in even their most diligent application, something arises that cannot be explained by these rules or that goes beyond the artist’s control.”

The exhibition will continue at UQ Art Museum until 23 June and is accompanied by a publication entitled Marioni/MacPherson.

Public program
An evening with Robert MacPherson
Wednesday, 1 May 6pm

Robert MacPherson will be joined by curator Rex Butler and UQ Art Museum Associate Director (Curatorial) Michele Helmrich.

RSVP: 07 3365 3046; artmuseum@uq.edu.au

Media:UQ Art Museum Digital Communications Officer Sebastian Moody (Note: Monday to Thursday only), 07 3346 8761 or 0419 789 006 or s.moody@uq.edu.au or UQ Art Museum Associate Director (Curatorial) Michele Helmrich, +61 7 3346 8759/0418 754 983, m.helmrich@uq.edu.au.

Images for download are available in this document http://www.artmuseum.uq.edu.au//docs/Marioni-MacPherson-Media-Image-Downloads.pdf

More information: http://www.artmuseum.uq.edu.au/marioni-macpherson