Sometime/Somewhere by Euan Heng at Niagara Galleries.

Scottish-born, Melbourne-based painter and sculptor Euan Heng has revealed a new set of works this month at Niagara Galleries in Richmond. The gallery (with iconic black and white striped Colorbond extension by Edmond and Corrigan) is currently host to Sometime/Somewhere, 21 pieces created this year that continue Euan’s exploration of abstraction in figuration.

Flatness may be the most immediate quality of Euan’s oeuvre—inspired by his fascination with Italian iconography, medieval frescoes, Chinese ancestor portraits, and 16th-century Mughal art. Here, he effortlessly transfers curious and curved characters from a flat canvas to three-dimensional busts in black painted steel, somehow preserving the aesthetically soothing flat plane. Other recurring motifs in Sometime/Somewhere are drawn from the artist’s life and times: the sea, from his early life as a merchant seaman, sharp and geometric trees, and the portrait, stripped bare of many features.

“In this body of new works what is clearly privileged is both the linear and flatness,” Euan explains. “The sculptures, albeit three-dimensional, are also informed by the same intent… Falling somewhere between what is known or possibly felt, but hopefully, transformed by imagination to arrive at a poetic destination.”

The exhibition runs at Niagara Galleries until 28 July 2018.

[Images courtesy of Niagara Galleries.]