Current Exhibition
Commonality
Group exhibition at Gallery M
287 Diagonal Rd, Oaklands Park SA 5046
March 22 - April 26, 2025
Max Ballard, Brenton Drechsler, Hamish Fleming, Emma Neill, Billy Oakley, Lucinda Penn.
“The longer we listen to one another – with real attention – the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.” feminist activist, Barbara Deming
This exhibition was born from a shared sense of isolation while practicing as emerging artists. Through coming together and comparing our different experiences over the last two years, we have recognised some common threads and a thirst for collaboration.
Our innate compulsions to paint and how this frames the way we look at the world around us is a realisation which we have to taken back into our studio practices. This has deepened our sense of interconnectedness, setting the foundation for our collaborative paintings in pairs.
Past Exhibitions
Lived-in
Solo exhibition at Off The Kerb
66B Johnston St, Collingwood VIC 3066
June 13 - 28, 2024
HOME INSPECTION
Solo exhibition at Collective Haunt
68 The Parade, Norwood SA 5067
March 28 - April 27, 2024
After setting out to create a body of work exploring the theme of connection to particular places, I decided to narrow my focus to a single location, the sharehouse in which I have lived and worked for the past two years. Restricted only to paintings of my house, I set myself the challenge of seeing this very familiar setting through a new lens, constantly seeking out interesting compositions within the cupboards, walls, doorways, couches and general clutter.
Each painting has been created with two somewhat contradictory goals in mind. First, portraying my relationship with the scene, the familiarity, memories and homeliness that I connect with these settings. Painting each scene motionless and empty of inhabitants, I invite the viewer to draw connections to the familiar places in their own lives and to create their own narratives within the work. The second goal of mine is to look beyond any meaning or ordinariness of my subjects and regard them only as a combination of shapes, lines and textures that I can use to create interesting compositions. While seemingly contradictory, these goals make up two sides of my desire to create work that draws attention to the beauty and interest within the ordinary and the everyday, the things we look at thousands of times without giving them much thought.
Interior Exterior Paint
Solo exhibition at The Wheatsheaf Hotel
September 2022
Interior Exterior Paint consists of a series of paintings depicting spaces and locations inhabited and visited by the artist. With the absence of people within any of the scenes, the paintings share a sense of stillness and tranquility. The subject matter consists mainly of locations the artist has lived, including the house Max grew up in and snapshots of his current and former share houses.
Max’s intention with the works is to capture the feeling of the spaces that have shaped his daily life. Max seeks to portray the subjects with visual accuracy while capturing his familiar and/or nostalgic relationship with the spaces through composition and expressive paint application.
