How the recent paper works, and bronzes came into being — Louise Forthun, 2022

My art practice has been primarily concerned with the dynamism of architectural space. Created by spraying aerosol paint through handmade paper stencils, the canvasses convey abstract representations of the built environment. Melbourne, the city where I live and other cities I have spent time in, are seen obliquely from above or below. They became subject […]

Solid Air — Giles Fielke, 2022

If we can imagine that the wind, physical and immaterial, lends Louise Forthun’s work an otherwise obscure link to its environment, a number of new observations become possible. That these objects are not simply constructed, or her practice solely occupied with human-made structures, for example. A focus on cities, on views, requires immediacy. We must […]

My Collecting — Leon van Schaik, 2019

“The writer is envious of the painter; he wishes he could make sketches, take notes, but if he does, he is lost” (Michel Proust) In a way Victoria Newhouse has said it all in the title of her book: Art and the Power of Placement. Or rather I could parse this (and its contents) to […]

ZINC — Gerry Bell, 2018

Hero Image: WIRE ASSEMBLAGE (2018) 150 X 116 CM ACRYLIC/LINEN The show comprises seven works in various sizes displayed in the gallery’s main room; all acrylic on linen canvas with the exception of a work on paper. The gallery’s smaller room is devoted to the works of Will Cooke. The show’s title, ‘Zinc’ alludes to […]

ZINC — Steve Cox, 2018

The paintings in Louise Forthun’s exhibition take their inspiration from a large zinc factory in Tasmania. These are industrial works, depicting multi-tiered factory levels, zig-zagging props and struts, pipes, chimneys and scaffolding, which are all placed-down via an arduous process of meticulously-cut stencil layers. There is a sense that, as well as building up the […]

Landscaping — Rosemary Hawker, 2016

Louise Forthun’s paintings and works on paper have always foregrounded the tension between the material and formal properties of image making. Through the uncompromisingly hard-edged, cut line of stencil paired with the fine atomised, close to weightless dots of sprayed paint, they deftly bring together painting and photography; printing and painting; positive and negative; the […]

Glass and Light — Ashley Crawford, 2013

Louise Forthun has always been something of a surveyor, a mapper of strange civilisations, amalgams of major metropolis’ morphed as palimpsests of landmarks, fictional topographies worthy of a Borges novel, detailed, aerial views of non-existent cities yet layered with recognizable landmarks. Forthun has always been fascinated with the architectural and the grid-like patterns that constitute […]

Local Colour — Kevin Murray, 2012

We approach Forthun’s work initially as an architectural plan. The titles instruct us to consider the paintings like maps that might guide us through space. ‘Through the Heads’ directs our eye to the connection between harbour inside and ocean outside. The world laid out on a horizontal pane commands our gaze. Within these plans themselves […]

Into the Light — Corbett Lyon, 2011

Louise Forthun has been painting the city with an uncommon passion and intensity for more than twenty years. Alongside contemporary artists such as Arkley, Morton, Atkins and Wardle, she has found fertile ground for a sustained enquiry into that most ubiquitous manifestation of our urban condition, the contemporary city. It is city as social and […]

Urbania — Rosemary Hawker, 2010

While it has never been possible to separate painting and photography, it is equally true to say they are impossible to combine. This paradox is more apparent now that photography is ubiquitous across the arts. While painting and photography are drawn together by related processes, subjects and compositions, they inevitably spring apart into the irreconcilable […]

PERSPECTIVES