Southern Nights
Otto Macpherson
9–26 May 2024
Southern Nights is a collection of experimental paintings, sculptures and a plein air drawing produced by Otto Macpherson during and shortly after his time in Tasmania. From December 2023 to March 2024, he undertook two Artist in Residence programs at Q Bank Gallery in Queenstown and The Pickers Hut @ Glaziers Bay in Cradoc.
Amidst Australia’s housing crisis, this body of work explores themes of home, housing, the rising cost of living and sustainability. Experimenting with abstract expressionism and surrealism, he reflects on previous houses and expresses his personal experiences and concerns with the housing crisis while investigating the separation and detachment from the natural environment. Coinciding themes explored include time, aging, memory, cycles and patterns and strange new places.
Moving house has been a constant occurrence in Macpherson’s life, finding himself in-between housing, he contemplates finding a new home in Tasmania. Painting on recycled household surfaces such as cupboard doors, tables and building materials and mixing natural and building materials, through impressions or application, he aims to incorporate his immediate surroundings into the artworks. Colours, symbols and abstract forms are influenced by Tasmanian landscapes, imagination and in response to music, sound and emotion.
Please join us for a drink to celebrate the opening of Southern Nights on Friday 10 May (6–8PM).
Otto Macpherson, born 1993, is a multidisciplinary visual artist from Victoria, Australia. His practice focusses on his immediate surroundings, both natural environments and interiors which at times blend together within the works to form intuitive, lyrical & expressive, semi-abstract and surreal compositions.
His upbringing in rural Victoria and his work in conservation & land management have influenced a key theme within his practice, being; to work in harmony with the environment rather than against it. This ethos embodies his practice as Macpherson brings his environment into the work through various methods, such as; leaf pressings, frottage, collage, using found materials for mark making and working directly onto found objects, highlighting a focus on recycling & sustainability.
Experimentation and exploration of colour, shape, form, symbolism and mark making are at the forefront of Macpherson’s practice as he aims to express and evoke emotion, sound, patterns, rhythm and movement.
Common themes explored within his work include; identity, place, home, ecosystems & organisms, cosmology, time, personal expression and music/sound.
