BRIDIE GILLMAN'S 'SIGHT LINES' WAS REVIEWED IN ART ALMANAC / NEWS

"For Bridie Gillman’s latest exhibition Sight Lines at Edwina Corlette, Brisbane, the paintings invite a moment of pause. A moment to be in the landscape. Hear the wind and rain. Watch the shadows dance in the foliage. Gillman invited this energy in the repetition of line, form, and colour—translated from the rural typology. Engaging not only the senses we resonate with on an immediate basis (like smell, sight, touch, taste, hear), but also the ones we don’t—memory and emotion—for a tapping into the subconscious.

In her large-scale abstract paintings, Gillman presents her recollections of Bundjalung Country in Northern NSW. The landscape through the Tweed Valley—Brays Creek and Murwillumbah—and her observations of the winding 33km road between the two. One the artist comments is full of lines: ridge lines, fence lines, tree lines, shadow lines, sight lines, tyre lines, dotted lines, and solid lines. These are translated into fresh gestures, textured surfaces, and expressive mark making.

Vast in size at 168 x 213cm, Breathing in a cloud (2024) was one of the first artworks the usually based in Brisbane artist created on her residency in the country. After a time when she was struggling to create in her home studio in the city. Painting in a horse shed in Brays Creek, Gillman observed a sense of working in a micro-climate specific to her location up the mountain. The feeling of being in a cloud with the weather rolling through. The artwork, full of varying shades of grey, buzzing on the canvas, replicates the sense of drizzle and immersion in the elements.

With Gillman’s studio in the heart of Murwillumbah town, she builds on the canvases first worked on in the farm. In Between the lines (2025), 153 x 122cm, the artist has used old pieces of canvas, stitched together for a geometric abstract, in varying shades of green, thick with paint. The viewer may view the artworks as the artist views this rural landscape. Divided, gridded, agricultural, with light peeking through the composition. She comments that each painting starts with a specific memory or observation — holding an initial reference point and isolating the colours. Perhaps the ridge lines or the blues and purples of the eucalyptus mountains.

Paintings like Listening to the grass (2024) and Shifting shapes (2024) are full of dark and textured mark making, quickly worked and full of energy. More so than the artist’s other series of works. Here, the artist reveals her interest in exploring new methodologies of mark-making. What before would be painted out, are now held onto. The artworks reveal the action, the moment of life they are created within, and the moment they set out to capture. Painting, sewing, drawing, and sanding back are all used on the surface. Colour pulled forwards and pulled back, adding depth and that sense of looking through the landscape at the light and shadow that form.

Completely green with darkly worked lines, Listening to the grass evokes being in the landscape during the day. But Shifting shapes represents the isolation of the country at night and the sense you get from being the only person around. Gillman says this work is like night vision; your eyes adjust to the light and the dark. Where things move and push in and out, a vibration. Shapes becoming other. In particular as she notes her isolation in these new places. Away from people. Immersed in the landscape.

Here is where the magic of Sight Lines is revealed as Gillman captures her sense of being light and unburdened, and completely alone, in awe of the environment with time to reflect. We are witness to how art allows for a tapping, an entering, of another realm, where reality and fiction intermingle with memory and emotion."

Written by Emma-Kate Wilson for Art Almanac