The evolution of Helen Redmond’s painting has traced the arc of light through spaces that have become increasingly minimal. 

Her recent paintings strip away figurative detail to fathom the subtle tactility of concrete and stone. Inspired by Brutalist architecture and the solitude of liminal space, her intricate layered surfaces invite contemplation.

One of the very few Australian painters to push solid mass and mythical interiors into abstract composition, Redmond generates quiet intensity. Like the silent hum of an unseen machine, each work has its own subliminal charge. Ventilated by the moving play of light, this series goes deeper into the poetics of space, both man-made and ephemeral:

“I deliberately limited the palette of this exhibition and, in a sense, light is the only real colour in this work. The rest of the tonality is quite geological and subterranean: moss, stone and cement. When light enters shadow there is no more room for darkness. Like sound entering silence, the space is altered. These works are more open structurally and more direct psychologically. The structural discipline of my earlier work served a direct homage to the architects I loved. The new meditations upon dark spaces are more ambiguous, and perhaps even more personal.”

The measure of light, like the measure of time, speaks of the unseen. In both the sense of something peripheral or abandoned once we leave a place or turn a corner into another chamber.

These paintings present that rare sense of holding time while also creating a fresh sense of apprehension. Like those moments when we notice dust particles dancing in the light, or the square of a window serving as a sun-dial, the stillness becomes a central living experience.

Where so many paintings are about action, these works are about the immutable and sensate – the emotion that flows like a tank-stream beneath our frantic pace. Here is a melancholy and complex beauty, where the artist presents a wholly invented yet quite complete terrain. Each work is like a vessel, holding the archaic and the post-industrial in one seamless whole.