Exhibition: Magma : Gamma, Andy Pye

“Southern Grampians - Gariwerd, Dunkeld. The gravity of the mountain Wurgarri. She attracts the light, she absorbs it, emits when she wants.

In the 2004th year AD she lit up - the crevasse from the southwestern standpoint facing east. A man that knows me and her- he told me it will take another 2 millennia for her to light up like that again. I was there that day, down and out. The crevasse, dozens of meters wide and perhaps hundreds deep, hadn’t seen light until then. When the light went into her, it glowed a pumping neon green off her mosses, untouched by light, or any soul, since the common era began. The ‘bryophyta populi’ canal is seared in my cortex.”

- Andy Pye

Working amongst the life, sound, movement and ‘solitary’ landscape of the Australian bush, painter Andy Pye chooses a scene of the Australian condition and captures it at face value. Drawing inspiration from myths and layered histories of the area, Pye is drawn to the volcanic nature of the landscape, bodies of water, and the connections between rock, light and magnetism. Each work is a window in to a realm removed from the day-to-day experience of our lives. Filled with vibrancy and movement, yet mystery lurks in the shadows.

Magma : Gamma showcases Pye’s idiosyncratic approach to landscape painting. Brushstrokes are carefully placed, and yet somehow effortlessly capture the movement and transience of the light on a moss-covered rock or peeling bark of a eucalyptus trunk. Pye describes the emus which populate much of this series as ‘wandering in’ as if of their own accord, outside of his plans for the painting.

To those accustomed with the region, Pye’s landmarks will be familiar - Mt Abrupt, Mt Sturgeon, the various waterways and dolines are all there - yet something about them is heightened. The spiritualism of the area, central to the creation stories of the Jadawadjali and Djab Wurrung people who have had an association with the area traditionally known as Gariwerd for more than 30,000 years, permeates the scenes.

Pye has a natural ability to choose a scene of the Australian bush and capture it, continuing the work of the pioneer Australian Modernists, paying homage to their motif and legacy. He works out of his bush studio near Eldorado in northern Victoria, where he paints en plein air, capturing the native bushland.

Pye has exhibited widely in a number of Victorian galleries and his works are held in private and corporate collections in Australia, the USA, Canada, France and the United Kingdom.