At the heart of Richard Elderton’s paintings over the past three years has been his engagement with the very nature and reality of painting as an experience about subject and materials.  The notion of “landscape” is scrutinised, outwardly seemingly familiar and knowable, Elderton’s paintings on first encounter, reassure our expectations, yet inevitably they unsettle such assumption.   Indeed, he comments that it is ‘as if the surface of the painting is one and the same as the represented reality.’ 

For his current exhibition, 無常 (mujō), the use of Kanji (Chinese characters) further broadens his subjects in time and place, shifting perspectives and questioning historical and cultural connections, and unanticipated disconnections.

Richard Elderton, 無常 (mujō), City Art Depot, 96 Disraeli St, Sydenham 18 July – 7 August.   IMAGE: Richard Elderton, Float Rocks, oil on canvas, 122 x 122cm, oil on canvas