Experience the joy of colour and movement in Ash Keating’s new painting installation at Bunjil Place Gallery this summer. 

The way colour and form can play with space and viewer perceptions is at the heart of Ash Keating’s latest exhibition PRESSURE. Presented as one work in nine parts, PRESSURE is a sequence of large-scale paintings that encompass the viewer in a field of shifting colour and gesture.   

Drawing on the tradition of action painting, that welcomes spontaneity and improvisation, Keating has refined a distinct methodology of intuitive actions and mark making using varying propulsion and gravity-based techniques. Looking back to the raw energy of his site-specific outdoor paintings of the early 2000s, Keating has approached PRESSURE as a testing ground – a new body of work created as a celebration of experimentation, that draws upon 20 years of practice and the memories deeply held in body and mind. 

Complemented by a cinematic film tracing the mesmerizing details of artist and paint in motion during the making process, PRESSURE is an invitation to audiences to slow down and immerse in an environment designed for respite and reflection.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ash Keating works within an expanded contemporary field, through painting, performance, sculpture, video and intervention. Keating’s large outdoor murals, created with paint-filled fire extinguishers, can be found across Melbourne. 

Keating has exhibited extensively in galleries and created numerous large-scale, site-responsive art projects in Australia and internationally since 2004. He has undertaken numerous painting commissions in public spaces, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013), the Adelaide Festival Centre (2015), Sydney’s Domain (2018), Museum Langmatt, Baden, Switzerland (2023) 

His works are held in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne and Artbank, Melbourne and Sydney. 

_{Header and central images: Ash Keating, PRESSURE, 2023 (studio process detail). Photos: Michael Pham}