Gallery 9 is pleased to present the first exhibition in Sydney by Auckland based artist Kirstin Carlin.

Kirstin Carlin's flower paintings occupy large spaces despite their diminutive scale. Always working on small boards cut to equal size, Carlin restricts the scale of her paintings to compress as much spontaneous energy into them as possible. Loose daubs and rapid brushstrokes create vivid impressions of her oral subjects. Flowers dissolve into viscous flurries of paint, becoming almost abstract. Their high-keyed lyricism recalls the Fauvist painters such as Vlaminck, who amplified their subjects by expressively reducing them into composites of marks and at planes of colour.

Flowers appeal to Carlin for their ubiquity in the history of painting. She acknowledges this history in her work and at the same time attempts to subdue it. Describing her painting approach as one of "attack", she renews her subject by deconstructing it, and then by vigorously bringing it back to life.

Kirstin Carlin (b. 1979) lives and works in Auckland. In 2010 she completed a Master of Fine Arts at Glasgow School of Art. Recent exhibitions include Through the Trees, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2017), Pleasure Garden, Melanie Roger Gallery (2017) and Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki (2016). Carlin's work is held in major public and private collections including the James Wallace Arts Trust Collection and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Press release courtesy Gallery 9.