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Colour SensationThe Works of Melinda Harper

When
27 June – 25 October 2015
Location
Heide Galleries
Admission

Free with Museum Pass

Free entry

Curator/s
Sue Cramer

Colour and optical vibrancy animate Melbourne artist Melinda Harper’s remarkable oeuvre of abstract works developed over three decades. While Harper is best known as a painter, this survey reveals a surprising diversity of practice in its inclusion of drawings, collages, screenprints, experimental photographs, painted objects and exquisite handmade embroideries.

“Her work is absorbing, at once simple and bamboozling, rough and meticulous, humble and grandiose.”
Robert Nelson, The Age

Colour Sensation: The Works of Melinda Harper
Photograph: Christian Capurro

Colour Sensation: The Works of Melinda Harper
Photograph: Christian Capurro

Colour Sensation: The Works of Melinda Harper
Photograph: Christian Capurro

Colour Sensation: The Works of Melinda Harper
Photograph: Christian Capurro

Melinda Harper
Untitled (Zig Zag)
2012
screenprint, 81 x 121 cm
81 x 121 cm
Courtesy of the artist and NKN Gallery, Melbourne

Melinda Harper
Untitled (Zig Zag)
2012
screenprint, 81 x 121 cm
81 x 121 cm
Courtesy of the artist and NKN Gallery, Melbourne

Melinda Harper
Untitled
2000
oil on canvas
183 x 152.3 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the National Gallery of Victoria Foundation by Robert Gould, Founder Benefactor, 2004

Melinda Harper
Untitled
2000
oil on canvas
183 x 152.3 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the National Gallery of Victoria Foundation by Robert Gould, Founder Benefactor, 2004

Colour Sensation: The Works of Melinda Harper
Photograph: Christian Capurro

Colour Sensation: The Works of Melinda Harper
Photograph: Christian Capurro

Harper’s first exhibition was in 1987 at Pinacotheca in Melbourne and she was a leading member of the Store 5 artists’ group in Melbourne (1989–1993). Initially small in scale and simple in composition—as much due to economical as aesthetic considerations—her paintings have since increased in size and become more complex. Among those included in this survey are pared-back Constructivist paintings on wood from the late 1980s, mid-1990s works inspired by the decorative elements of Persian miniature painting, and recent large canvases which provide stunning new geometric and colour variations on her characteristic abstract themes.

Typically in Harper’s works, forms similar in type—blocks, stripes, circles, triangles or variants of these—are amassed together in striking compositions of seemingly endless variety, from the harmonious to the cacophonous. Harper builds upon early twentieth century abstraction and later generations of modernists—her intimate embroideries and screenprinted fabrics (produced with fellow artist Kerrie Poliness) paying particular homage to modernist women artists. Her investigations of colour and form are also intensely felt, visual responses to lived experience, embodying in her words ‘the act of looking, the obvious, the precise and the precious.’

In the News

Extraordinary Routines with Melinda Harper
Extraordinary Routines, September 14 2015

Melinda Harper at Heide: Colour therapy creates patchwork of cool
The Age, Spectrum, September 28 2015

Melinda Harper
Melissa Pesa, Artist Profile, September 29 2015

Colour Sensation
Bryan Spier, Imprint, October 7 2015

This 91-page, full colour catalogue makes a great companion to the exhibition. Edited by Sue Cramer.
Essays contributions by Sue Cramer, Dr Anthony White, Rebecca Mayo and Judith Pascal

Published in 2015 by Heide Museum of Modern Art
ISBN: 9781921330421 (paperback)
$29.95

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