Nick Ashby Exhibits #Places

Nick Asby's new exhibition of recent paintings opens at Wooloongabba Art Gallery on Wednesday night 2 March, 2016 from 6-8pm.

"The paintings in this exhibition trace my experiences and interests over the last few years" Ashby states.  "A common thread in these works is the use of the camera as a way of framing experience, both my own and that of others. This project began as a re presentation of the photographic archive of my mothers uncle, Harold Silverstone.  Harold was an idealist and an academic whose radical political views made his working life in New Zealand difficult and led to him accepting a position at the University of Queensland in the 1960's. He passed away when I was young so I don't remember him but as I grew up his wife was my only relative in Brisbane and we frequently made the trip to Kedron to visit Aunty Madge. Many years later I inherited Harold's slides and they delivered something of a surprise to me.  Viewing them provided a way of imagining a Brisbane I didn't really know and of a way to look beyond it.

At the time I started using Harold's photographs I had an interest in challenging myself with a different approach to subject choice. By inhabiting someone else's images I felt free to make my own associations through the process of painting. My own travels began to coincide with Harold's. I began to take my own photographs with his point of view in mind, using my Father's old Pentax and shooting on slide film. Painting in this work has been a way of using photography's ablity to record an experience that is fleeting and add something else to it."

The exhibition continues until 12 March.