Nicole Clift, 2024, Blurring, wool and cotton, photo: Rosina Possingham, courtesy of the artist

Gallery 3

(maelstrom)

Nicole Clift and Nicholas Hanisch

room sheet

(maelstrom) presents new works by South Australian artists Nicholas Hanisch and Nicole Clift. The two bodies of work, oil paintings and hand-woven tapestries, are responses to tangible and intangible manifestations of density, respectively. Nicholas Hanisch’s small oil paintings on canvas and bronze present intense tonal studies of sudden force, such as volcanic eruptions, fireworks, black holes, meteor showers and billowing smoke clouds.

Nicole Clift’s tapestries respond to the invisible, intangible fields that carry chaotic forces, such as gravitational waves, magnetic fields and air currents. These abstract colour fields are punctuated by both ruled and freehand lines – quick drawings translated into the measured pace of weaving.

The artists’ shared fascination with historical and contemporary imagery of chaotic and strange events, including paintings and etchings of meteor showers, volcanic eruptions and electrical storms seemingly stems from their paradoxically human scale and treatment. The meteor’s delicate light trails; the lava eruption frozen in mid-air, fountain-like. It is this shift in scales, from the planetary to the human that interests the artists, and the possibility of capturing a glimmer of concentrated force for future contemplation.