Kate Wallace, View from an aeroplane window #2, 2020
Kate Wallace is a painter working with urban environments and experiences of place. Her upcoming show at LON Gallery, running from September 21 – October 15, explores the relationship between views and memory. This upcoming body of work draws from her “own experience of place and time” and “continues investigations relating to memory, isolation, escapism and the construction of the past through painting.” It is her first solo exhibition with LON Gallery after showing with them at Spring 1883 in 2021.
It builds upon evocative works such as On The Inside (2021), an oil painting of a plane window showcasing a blue and cloudy sky. This is a familiar scene of travel that has become oddly nostalgic since the outbreak of Covid-19. On The Inside comments on memory by relying on context with subtlety, for we know that Wallace is remembering a scene from the past, since the work was painted during Australia’s border closure, rather than the present. She frames these moments as “views into places once lived in or passed through, details or fragments of a memory” and explains that she has “been looking at ideas of absence and change and how this can be relayed through devices such as scale and repetition.”
Next year is a pivotal time for Wallace, who is undertaking several important opportunities in her career. This includes her first institutional show at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and a residency at NARS Foundation in New York. Most recently, Deakin University acquired her works for their public collection.