Two Rooms is very pleased to present a new suite of remarkable still life paintings by Jude Rae. As the artist has noted, “the still life studio functions as a laboratory of sorts, a space of stability where light can be controlled, and objects considered in relation to one another in the context of the painting at hand.” We comprehend Rae’s still lifes within the tradition of realism, one characterised by notions of honesty and precision, seen here through the contested prism of Modernism and a more contemporary sensibility. Each painting is a very specific kind of object: each a two-dimensional image depicting three-dimensional space, each also an object with its own specific material character, and existing within a rarefied history of objects. The non-narrative imagery Rae employs allows the attention to dwell on the formal and material aspects of representational painting, encouraging a more reflective and considered approach to the complexities of visual experience. Paintings about painting itself.
Jude Rae (b. 1956, Sydney, Australia) is a Sydney-based artist primarily known for her still life paintings, portraits and architectural interiors. The non-narrative imagery Rae employs allows the viewer's attention to dwell on the formal and material aspects of representational painting, encouraging a reflective and considered approach to the complexities of visual experience. Pulling the viewer into a rich sensate terrain, Rae's still lives invite us into painted environments that appear doubly real, offering what is one of the primary pleasures of representational painting: the play of the material fact of paint itself with recognition as it occurs in the illusion of depiction.
Two Rooms is a contemporary art exhibition venue located in a converted warehouse in Central Auckland, New Zealand. Opened in August 2006, Two Rooms presents a program of residencies and projects by leading International and New Zealand contemporary artists. The building houses two exhibition spaces, the Project Room and the Long Room.
