JULIA TRYBALA

Working in painting and drawing, Trybala centres her work on the complexity and dynamics of human relationships, drawing inspiration from personal experiences, relationships and conversations with friends and family. Her figurative practice maintains an astute dialogue with art history, questioning how feminine bodies have been represented, its tropes, and how these bodies occupy physical space in the art canon and the world. Working with an application of texture and colour that can be hot and grubby or sometimes saccharine sweet, Trybala renders her figures within a lens of intimacy and tenderness to create powerful paintings to explore ongoing notions of nurture, care and desire.

The new suite of works in Metabolism take Edvard Munch’s The Dance of Life (1899) as its starting inspiration, each painting building on its symbolism and narrative complexity which maps out the great valleys of human experience.

Metabolism extends an impulse from Trybala’s previous series of work: placing three figures observing how they relate to one another, how they fall together, and how their gaze directs their emotional intensity. Her figures are expressed on the canvas through recurring articulations of the body: soft and slouching, limbs slung across the frame, their closeness edging claustrophobic.

Colour itself plays a psychological role, becoming a character in the interwoven narratives of each hue. As in Munch’s painting, where colour is a vital aid to the stories of each character, the colours in Trybala’s Metabolism carry the burden of meaning. The emotional temperature of the paintings is guided by varying hues and a limited colour palette, giving each one greater force for its singular presence.

Transforming corporeal forms into a fluid landscape, Trybala’s figures are grounded in something we can touch. They reach for an environment to relate to and rely on. A blooming moon, suspended low, adorns the night sky. These figures are of their world, defined equally by its steadfastness as by its changeability.