PRESS RELEASE
DOUBLE RAINBOW - MATTHEW HINDLEY
Jun 10 – Aug 10, 2021
MATTHEW HINDLEY
DOUBLE RAINBOW
10 June 2021 - 10 August 2021
‘The rainbow is the ultimate expression of the infinite possibilities of colour; to the artist it’s the basis of the colour palette itself. The dispersal of white light into its component colours offers a kind of unlocking, a window into a miraculous world.’ - Matthew Hindley
Matthew Hindley’s 2021 solo exhibition Double Rainbow formally marks a firm break between his familiar figuration and a new, radiant abstraction. This transition offers joy and transformation in an altered world. In Double Rainbow, Hindley engages the versatile technicalities of abstraction, pushing every centimetre of his surfaces towards illuminating the full spectrum of this language.
Hindley relishes wrestling with the unknowable, unmappable pathways of abstraction, whilst relying on the raw building blocks that make up a painting: line, colour, and form. He explores each of these formal aspects, developing a diverse range of applications while still allowing paint to be paint.
This is with the aim of forming layered, energetic compositions, which arrive as a captured moment in time. Without the commitment to the explicit narrative found in figurative paintings, Hindley surrenders freedom of interpretation to the audience.
Arrangements seem vast yet immersive, engaging the viewer while still imagining freedom of movement beyond the works’ edges. Compositions escape their usual containment of the canvas, evoking a continued conversation that disrupts their visual finiteness. The extension of the work onto the frame expands the sphere of painting towards a sculptural space.
A dynamic use of hues investigates colour-theory which expresses in the work as its most natural progression, the rainbow. The return to the rainbow as a symbol of optimism in the collective unconscious is also considered in Hindley’s articulation of it. Hindley’s ongoing engagement with the poetic and the scientific in the natural world is highlighted by the rainbow as a symbol of this supposed dichotomy.
The Greek Goddess of the rainbow is Iris - which is also the part of the eye that both expresses the eye colour of the individual, and controls the amount of light that enters the pupil - the iris is central to the act of seeing.
While the abstract paintings open up the audience’s field of response, the inclusion of the electronic painting inserts an interactive realm of vision and experience – a typical feature of Hindley’s multimedia projects, such as Speak naturally and continuously, installed on the façade of the Iziko SA National Gallery. A play on the prismatic process controls the optical functioning of the electronic work, and is referenced in the rainbow painting sets, which also alludes to the splitting of light into colour.
Double Rainbow is a celebration of formal aspects of abstract painting while also revealing the capability of Hindley’s adaptive and transformative oeuvre.
