Meg Gallagher Paints Textural Landscapes On Denim Offcuts in Her New Exhibition
Meg Gallagher’s inventive background is on the earth of vogue working for manufacturers corresponding to Camilla and Marc, Perception, and Ksubi.
When visiting denim factories for work, she found the quantity of denim offcuts going to waste, so she requested to take some dwelling. Little did Meg know, this is able to encourage the start of her high quality artwork observe.
‘I began to make use of denim as a substitute of a standard canvas… It was clear to me that this was completely going to be my materials of alternative,’ she says. ‘I translated the whole lot I knew about denim, textiles and color into creating artwork.’
To at the present time, Meg creates her work on denim offcuts. ‘I simply use regardless of the manufacturing facility has laying round of their “waste,” she says. ‘This implies I can’t order the precise colors that I need, however that’s the enjoyment of it. I’ll get a gorgeous wealthy blue that washes to inexperienced shades at some point and the following offcut shall be an ecru denim. This course of retains me on my toes, and I adore it.’
Her inventive course of begins with a clear, clean denim offcut that’s manipulated (dyed, bleached and washed) to create natural textures. The denim is then stretched and stapled onto big plywood panels that Meg slathers with thick layers of acrylic. ‘I proceed to soak the work in washed out dyes or wipe on powdered pigments with a cotton fabric,’ Meg says. ‘It’s a steady loop of controlling the chaos.’ Every work takes anyplace from three weeks to 3 months to complete.
Meg’s new present No Place Like House opens right now at Totem Street Gallery in Paddington, Sydney. The exhibition title refers to Ōtepoti/Dunedin the place the artist grew up and not too long ago returned to after years residing in Australia. ‘I really feel essentially the most impressed right here… Rising up in New Zealand meant my love for nature was inherent, so coming dwelling after years residing overseas and being close to these landscapes that I relate to a lot simply felt proper to my soul.’
No Place Like House contains eight unique artworks impressed by the sensation of nature. Meg explains, ‘Though I really like utilizing the curving traces and intense textures of landscapes, I by no means paint [literal] blue skies and inexperienced grass. I’m at all times making an attempt to color the temper that nature provides off, not a mirror picture of it.’
Works seize the colors and textures surrounding Ōtepoti/Dunedin—its coastlines, rolling hills, and mountain ridges. ‘It’s much less about one explicit place and extra of an exploration of what dwelling means inside. After all, there are references to particular locations, however it’s a collective sentiment—to seek out grounding and readability in nature.’
No Place Like House
Opening Thursday 23 February, 6-8pm
Totem Street Gallery
3/188 Oxford St, Paddington, NSW
totemroad.com
