light and memory: new paintings
james riches
In Light and Memory: New Paintings, we present a very special and much anticipated collection of 16 new paintings from Brunswick Street Gallery represented artist James Riches.
What makes Riches’ work so compelling is not just his skill in capturing the physical characteristics of suburban Melbourne but his ability to convey emotion through that landscape. Where many might overlook the mundane details of urban life, Riches brings them to the forefront with tenderness and depth, revealing not just the buildings, trees, or streets but the emotional essence of the places themselves. In turn, Riches’ paintings evoke that quiet, sometimes melancholic, and nostalgic connection we all have with the places we inhabit.
These works are more than simply representations of suburban life; they are an exploration of our emotional resonance of these spaces, capturing the mood and the stillness of moments that are easily lost in the rush of daily life.
This collection will be on display in our Ground Floor Gallery from 5–8 December 2024.
exhibition collection
Drawing has always been a primary interest of James Riches’. Completing his Bachelor of Fine Art (majoring in drawing) at RMIT in 2008, this has taken him down various paths exploring illustration, observational drawing and conceptual ideas of a contemporary drawing practice. His long held interest in the tradition of oil painting now forms the focus of his current art practice.
There has been continuity through these explorations of a somewhat dark, vaguely idyllic notion of landscape in suburbia. These environments are rarely unmarked by human presence or behavior. The idea of a park, a footbridge, the walk home through an industrial estate, may have composed his life to some extent – and consequently the content for making art.
Riches’ paintings have been developed from photographic reference and drawing material collected over the past decade and backyard observations. A complex garden view of rambling foliage and sheds is suggested in paint by a darkened abstract foreground and dramatic late afternoon skies, carried further by the possibility of what lies beyond. Never painted from direct observation; imagination and time turn these fleeting lightscapes into compositional studies.
James Riches is represented by Brunswick Street Gallery.
