Kylie Elkington

Catalogue essay: Exhibition: Terrain 15th Nov - 2nd Dec 2007

Kylie Elkington has so much wisdom to share that it seems unfair of her to have held much of it back until now, except among connoisseurs.

This exhibition represents a solidifying of her idiosyncratic means of manipulating oil paint to exploit its translucent qualities to convey landscapes in a constant state of formation and dissolution. Although based on actual sights from plane windows more often than not, Elkington’s landscapes are not real, but conversely they are every bit as real and intimately known as the landscapes that various artists genuinely understand and have made their own. Colin McCahon’s love of New Zealand’s Otago region, Rosalie Gascoigne’s capacity to depict the Monaro country with weathered industrial off-casts and Sidney Nolan’s tenacity to have others come to grips with the Australia he saw are blended in Elkington’s endeavours.

The fluid, gestural and tranquil movements that characterize Elkington’s oil on panels subtly embed time into her landscapes, equivalent to the time it takes a viewer to submit to the beauty of their understatement or indeed the timelessness of the ancient land to which they relate.

Dr Richard Dunlop

CV

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