Quercy Autumn Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Quercy Autumn
Quercy Autumn 2023
Quercy AutumnAdrienne GahaQuercy Autumn
Quercy Autumn2023
oil on linen
168 x 153 cm
SOLD 
Ultramarine Oak Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Ultramarine Oak
Ultramarine Oak 2023
Ultramarine OakAdrienne GahaUltramarine Oak
Ultramarine Oak2023
oil on linen
110 x 100 cm
SOLD 
Sanctuary Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Sanctuary
Sanctuary 2023
SanctuaryAdrienne GahaSanctuary
Sanctuary2023
oil on linen
132 x 103 cm
SOLD 
High Key Worship [after Titian] Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - High Key Worship [after Titian]
High Key Worship [after Titian] 2023
High Key Worship [after Titian]Adrienne GahaHigh Key Worship [after Titian]
High Key Worship [after Titian]2023
oil on linen
132 x 112 cm
$12,000  ENQUIRE
Pink Naiad Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Pink Naiad
Pink Naiad 2023
Pink NaiadAdrienne GahaPink Naiad
Pink Naiad2023
oil on linen
100 x 100 cm
SOLD 
Yellow Satyre Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Yellow Satyre
Yellow Satyre 2023
Yellow SatyreAdrienne GahaYellow Satyre
Yellow Satyre2023
oil on linen
60 x 50 cm
SOLD 
Rough Swing [after Fragonard] Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Rough Swing [after Fragonard]
Rough Swing [after Fragonard] 2023
Rough Swing [after Fragonard]Adrienne GahaRough Swing [after Fragonard]
Rough Swing [after Fragonard]2023
oil on canvas
130 x 100 cm
SOLD 
Pink Tapestry Landscape Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Pink Tapestry Landscape
Pink Tapestry Landscape 2023
Pink Tapestry LandscapeAdrienne GahaPink Tapestry Landscape
Pink Tapestry Landscape2023
oil on linen
76 x 61 cm
SOLD 
Snake Myth Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Snake Myth
Snake Myth 2023
Snake MythAdrienne GahaSnake Myth
Snake Myth2023
oil on linen
60 x 50 cm
SOLD 
Black Swan and Yellow Cherubim Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - Black Swan and Yellow Cherubim
Black Swan and Yellow Cherubim 2023
Black Swan and Yellow CherubimAdrienne GahaBlack Swan and Yellow Cherubim
Black Swan and Yellow Cherubim2023
oil on linen
60 x 60 cm
SOLD 
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' Adrienne Gaha Adrienne Gaha - INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns' 2023
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'Adrienne GahaINSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'
INSTALLATION VIEW 'Two Autumns'2023

Two Autumns

Living between Sydney and South West France for family reasons affords Adrienne Gaha the benefit of avoiding a full winter in either location. “I never have a whole summer, either, but I do have two whole autumns, one here and one in Quercy,” Gaha says of the rural area situated 90km north of Toulouse. “But they are such different worlds and I’m always trying to reconcile them.”

Balancing those two worlds in her mind feeds into her method of art making, which seeks to achieve a harmony between ‘painting as subject’ and ‘painting about paint’.

Often, Gaha will begin a work in Quercy during the French automne, leave it, then bring it back here and finish it in her Rosebery studio over the antipodean autumn. It’s the harvest season, after all, and two autumns provide the Sydney-born artist with a bounty of creative energy and visual food for thought. “I keep returning to the same source images – Titian’s Worship of Venus 1518-19 and Fragonard’s The Swing c.1767-68 are two examples – so it’s like the same ground producing different crops,” she muses.

In her new series of paintings, Two Autumns, Gaha has, on top of Titian and Fragonard, also included motifs and passages drawn from works by Antonie Waterloo, François Boucher and Henry Fuseli, as well as from photos taken by herself and others. Fluently traversing the art-historical traditions of landscape, genre and history painting, Gaha pulls what she needs from each to construct richly hued fever dreams whose multi-layered compositions seem to float before our very eyes.

Partially erased figures glow like revenants. Clouds part, trees close in. Around them, the atmosphere is a heady nebula of striations overlaid with tiny rivulets of dripping colour. “I like my figures to be rubbed out,” Gaha says. “It’s as though they’ve been blasted by light or weather; the environment is stronger than them. But they can be read as ghosts, too. Are they a memory or vestige of something? The ambiguity is quite nice.”

Melding figurative and abstract elements, Gaha complicates the process of visual recognition by manipulating paint in idiosyncratic ways. Gravity is employed in the service of drip work; pigment is mixed with varying amounts of medium to produce a range of glazes, from thin to jelly-like; a panoply of tools enables her to smear and scratch into wet or semi-dry paint. The aim is to effect a dynamic tension between ‘looking through’ and ‘looking at’ by empowering the viewer to hold both approaches in their mind at the same time.

“It’s about letting the paint do something interesting without controlling it too much,” Gaha says, before adding: “Really, in the end, these paintings are all about light, and how light describes the world.”

Tony Magnusson

May 2023

Adrienne Gaha 'Two Autumns'

Adrienne Gaha’s mirage-like dreamscapes are an emotional and intuitive response to the world, constrained by her formal understanding of painting, surface, and form. Working with glazes, she layers and rubs colours into each other in a process of putting on and wiping off, letting the drips of paint and turpentine create interesting details in the surface. While doing so, she allows her mind to wander and contemplate life and the rhythms of the world around her.

Inspiration might come from mysticism, popular culture, politics, or art history, with Gaha often returning to the same source images over and over again - how these images are reinterpreted with each iteration highlights how she herself is changing over time. The combination of the first two colour layers in a painting are considered rather than spontaneous, often conveying a sense of nostalgia.

Gaha appears to work quickly, with many paintings on the go at one time. But integral to this process is a period of separation from the works - physically putting them away until she is ready to resolve them. This period of waiting is as much a part of the process as the physical act of painting.

The result is ethereal works that collapse the socio-political, emotional, and technical into a single space. Like a Troxler’s fade, tangible moments disappear into the background, figuration breaks down into abstraction, and light fades to shadow. Yet despite this elusiveness, an essence stays for the audience to respond to and recast through their own personal narrative.

Adrienne Gaha is a Sydney-born artist now living and working between Australia and Europe. An alum of the Sydney College of the Arts and the National Art School, Sydney, her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia as well as New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. A finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith Painting Award (2015, 2014) and the Geelong Contemporary Painting Prize (2014), her work is held in public, university and private collections through Australia.

Carrie McCarthy 2021

Adrienne Gaha

Born Sydney, Australia Lives and works in Australia and the UK

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023

  • 'Two Autumns', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane

2021

  • 'Verdure', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane

2020

  • 'Arcadia', Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

2018

  • 'Recent Work', Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

2016

  • 'Recent Work', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary at Neon Park, Melbourne
  • 'Snake dance', Greenwood Street Projects, Melbourne

2014

  • 'Vestiges', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Sofitel Melbourne on Collins

2013

  • 'New Paintings', Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney

2009

  • 'Recent works', Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

2006

  • 'London Paintings & Drawings', Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne
  • 'Recent Works (with Brooke Fitzsimmons)', Hewer Street Studios, London

2004

  • 'Recent Works (with Brooke Fitzsimmons)', Hewer Street Studios, London

1999

  • 'Recent Drawings', Mori Gallery, Sydney

1998

  • 'Drawings & Photographs', Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

1994

  • 'Adrienne Gaha', The Merchants House of the National Trust, Sydney

1993

  • 'Recent Work', Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

1990

  • 'A Merchant Sailors Gift', Chameleon, Hobart (Artist in Residence that year)
  • 'The Camels Hump', Mori Gallery, Sydney

1987

  • 'The Crossing', First Draft Gallery, Sydney

1986

  • 'Cockles and Muscles', Mori Gallery, Sydney

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019

  • 'Spring 1883', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Sydney
  • 'Side by Side', 2 person show, Piers Feetham Gallery, London, UK
  • 'Auckland Art Fair', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Auckland, New Zealand

2018

  • 'Couplings', Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney
  • 'All We Can’t See', Yellow House, Sydney
  • 'Condo', Mexico City
  • 'Spring 1883', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne

2017

  • '10', Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney
  • Sydney Contemporary, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney
  • 'Spring 1883', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Sydney

2016

  • 'Spring 1883', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne

2015

  • 'Spring 1883', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Sydney
  • Grace Cossington Smith Painting Award Exhibition

2014

  • 'Spring 1883', Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne
  • Grace Cossington Smith Painting Award Exhibition
  • Geelong Contemporary Painting Prize Exhibition

2002

  • 'Sweet Spot', Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
  • 'Savill Contemporary', Savill Galleries, Melbourne
  • 'The Human Portrayed', Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

2001

  • 'Male Nude: A Private View', Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

1998

  • 'Erotic', Melbourne Fine Art Gallery
  • 'Spring Exhibition', Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne
  • Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne

COLLECTIONS

ArtBank

Art Gallery of Western Australia

Monash University Museum of Art

National Gallery of Victoria

University of Tasmania

Private & Corporate collection in Australia, France, UK & USA

June 4, 2021

ADRIENNE GAHA IN ART COLLECTOR MAGAZINE

Adrienne Gaha is featured in Issue Art Collector issue 94, October to December, 2020.

ADRIENNE GAHA: THROUGH ROSE-COLOURED GLASSES

What drives Adrienne Gaha’s latest work is the myriad different interpretations waiting to be discovered in paint.

Words: Louise Martin-Chew Portrait: Jacquie Manning

READ MORE HERE