Sat 8 JUN 2024 to SUN 4 Aug 2024.
This survey exhibition encompasses Bernard's entire oeuvre, with works ranging from 1973 - now. Within these works Ollis paints the imagined world that he inhabits, almost in secret. A world of fears and psychological threats, of Other Spaces.
Join us for the opening celebration for Snakes and Ladders, and for the artist talk to learn more about his exhibition.
Exhibition Text:
To move cross the checkerboard in the game of life, we must face our fears and be prepared for setbacks.
Born in Bath, England in 1951 Bernard Ollis now lives and works between Sydney and Paris. Ollis is a painter with two distinct themes in his practice – like night and day. Paris streetscapes on one hand contrast with these works in Snakes and Ladders.
The collection of artworks that surround you, act as a mirror to the everyday and all that can happen during a lived life. Through moments of migration, of divorce, of loss and the ‘happier moments’ of a flourishing career, sits the mild discomfort of anticipation of that slide with one roll of the wrong dice.
Ollis’ compositions are dreamlike in the sense that they show and enquiry of perspective from every angle, captured into a single scene. Two perspectives can be witnessed at once, with you as the viewer being left to make your own mind up on the narrative, the victim, the perpetrator, the conjuror, the mask wearer or the muse.
In the collection of over 80 oil pastels hung in salon style, we are transported to a place where the artists palette has also been, to a place of creation and working through one’s inner fears. Many of these have become studies for later works or as tributes to travels and experiences or illusions.
During his career, Ollis has made a significant contribution towards the practice of painting and education in art. Ollis was the director of the National Art School, Sydney for a decade from 1997, and has an accomplished painting practice with over 80 solo exhibitions.
Snakes and Ladders applauds you to find your appreciation for art, as you face your own fears on the stage that is your life, and which only you can judge on your own terms as with l’art pour l’art (for art’s sake).
MAC - website
Museum of Art and Culture (MAC), 1A First Street, Booragul 2284