ANYBODY wanting one last glimpse at this year’s John Leslie Art Prize finalists might want to take a peek at another display around the corner.
Concurrently running at the Gippsland Art Gallery is an exhibition by Kevin Chin that asks viewers to consider how we find our place in the world.
Titled Un-Regional, Chin’s exhibition is a series of five landscape paintings with no single source of inspiration.
They are, in the words of the artist, “mixed up from all different places”.
“There’s probably about six different sorts of images in each painting that are taken from my travel photos, and I assemble them together into a single, cohesive painting,” Chin said of his work.
Each artwork is painted with oil onto Italian linen and finished with a series of transparent oil glazes, a process that takes Chin approximately two to three months to complete.
Viewers of the paintings are struck by how the different landscapes seamlessly transition into one another, as well as the use of vibrant pastel colours.
Chin, who has previously been shortlisted for the John Leslie Art Prize, was invited to do a solo exhibition by the gallery’s former curator, Erin Mathews, and has tailored the paintings with the region in-mind.
“When I got asked to do a show at Gippsland, I was thinking about what might be relevant to the local audience,” Chin said.
“I was interested in how… a lot of people have been moving regionally or to rural areas, because they’ve been able to work from home… so the divisions between metropolitan, regional and rural have become a bit blurred.”
Hence Un-Regional, the title of the exhibition.
“I guess that idea lent itself well to the way I paint already, because I’m interest in hybrid ideas of place,” Chin added.
Gallery director Simon Gregg is full of enthusiasm and praise for Chin’s exhibition, believing it encourages viewers to see the everyday world in a completely different way.
“Kevin’s paintings have this gentle surrealism to them,” Gregg said.
“They’re not forceful, they just open up slowly.
“In fact, it’s not until you’ve been looking at them for a bit, you realise there’s parts that are upside down, parts that don’t belong…
“The constructed landscapes, they’re beautifully painted, but they also speak really importantly, I think about Kevin, who was born in Malaysia and came to Australia as a very young child.
“And it’s all about trying to find your place in the world and how you fit in, and what it must be like to be in this alien environment.
“I grew up in Gippsland – I don’t have that experience myself, but I think Kevin talks about that really beautifully.”
Un-Regional is on display at Gippsland Art Gallery until Sunday, November 20.
For more information, visit www.gippslandartgallery.com
