28 November - 20 December, 2023
Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present Holdings 2023, a group exhibition of selected works celebrating the exhibiting artists of 2023. We welcome you to our gallery stockroom for viewing.
Exhibiting Artists:
Andrew Browne
Angela Brennan
Dadang Christanto
David Fenoglio
Ian Friend
Jacinta Giles
Jonathan Kopinski
Joseph Daws
Kellie O’Dempsey
Miles Hall
Natalie Lavelle
Simon Degroot
5 - 23 September, 2023
In these works, I am interested in amplifying hand-drawn gestural marks and minor details. Like tending to a garden or keeping a visual journal, the paintings are a space for thinking. Each mark operates as both a reference to the tactile movements of a finger across a touch screen as well as to the history of gestural abstraction.
The colourful touches are like an enlarged dissemblant tending, which is simultaneously automatic and considered. The painted monochrome foliage supports these gestures while also suggesting that this cropped image is only a fragment of something much larger and ongoing in my practice. Imagery of fast-growing rhizomatic plants, which are often used in spaces for domestic screening, alludes to our combined search for a private locus amoenus, a ‘pleasant place’.
When resemblance meets the abstract in this shallow pictorial space there is a conflation of marks and a layering of interactions. This body of work captures sectioned moments of abbreviated gestures. — Simon Degroot, 2023
Exhibiting artist Simon Degroot joined Alain Guillemain in the space to explore the theme of ‘Gestural marks as being' in Abbreviated Gestures (5 - 23 September).
28 September - 15 October, 2022
“In Simultaneous Disguise, all the works reveal evidence of their history through close examination of the painted surface. I’m fascinated by the possibilities of a flat surface. How can we use layering to better understand ideas of concealing and revealing? What happens when the most visible, anterior, or frontal form is hiding something that is behind? What does this tell us about visibility and appearances? How can painting help us understand more about the politics of seeing versus not seeing?”
— Simon Degroot
Studio photo by Charlie Hillhouse.
In our latest From the Studio interview, Jan Manton Gallery visited Simon Degroot’s studio to learn more about the references, influences, and layers embedded within the artists’ paintings for his new exhibition Simultaneous Disguise.
24 March - 18 April 2021
Jan Manton Gallery is proud to present Brisbane based artist Simon Degroot in the exhibition Transfer Echo showing from 24 March - 18 April 2021. The exhibition features paintings exploring the expanded interaction and interconnections through the use of Degroot's iconic abstract forms.
Transfer Echo investigates transient and layered abstract shapes which are quintessential to Degoot's practice. Each artwork within the show reveals the nature of these playful forms as they are recontextualised through various applications, colours and materials.
Degroot elaborates on the relationships contained within his series, stating: "This process of mediation and transfer between artworks highlights their formal relationship. Each material manifestation creates a new relationship where meaning is created in the space between works. Through these relationships I can connect with other visual ecologies to create new meaning."
Degroot completed his postgraduate studies at the Queensland College of Art where he was awarded his PhD in 2017 with an exhibition titled, Familiar Beyond Recognition: Translation in Contemporary Abstraction. Degroot has also completed a range of works for entities such as The City of South Perth, Bundaberg Regional Galleries, Queensland Rail, Cairns Regional Council, Brisbane City Council and The Brisbane Hilton.
Opening event photography: Cian Sanders.
