ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present, Afterglow, the latest body of paintings by leading Australian artist, ROBERT OWEN. These visually-arresting works continue the artist’s exploration of the perceptual and emotional effects of light, colour, and space.
Guided by curiosity and wonder, Robert Owen’s knowledge of colour is profound. In colour he nds harmony and melody, using chromatic combinations to achieve sensations that pulsate from the walls like sound waves or musical nuances. Afterglow at ARC ONE Gallery stems from one of Owen’s diary drawings executed while living on the Greek island of Hydra in the early 1960s. On the island, Owen witnessed an eclipse of the sun: an experience that has informed the artist’s enduring interest in the transcendent capacity of space, light, and colour.
Owen’s formative research and experiences of Constructivism and De Stijl are apparent in Afterglow where succinct geometric forms, vertical stripes, and squares of strong colour evoke the physical and metaphysical. Owen’s diary drawing from 1964, vibrant with its rework composition, perfectly encapsulates a synthetic moment and the relationship between time and progress. Describing the image, Owen draws on the paradox articulated by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in his book, Intuition of the Instant, which posits life as an enduring string of moments that are in nite. It is this ash of illumination, combined with his poetic experiences on Hydra, from which Owen’s continued interest in the perceptual and emotional effects of space, light, and colour has materialised.
Robert Owen is an internationally recognised and award-winning artist with a sustained practice of more than ve decades. Working in painting, sculpture, installation, and photography, he has received widespread acclaim for his work, including major public commissions such as such as Webb Bridge, Docklands (in collaboration with Denton Corker Marshall), and the Craigieburn Bypass, Melbourne (in collaboration with Architects Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Tonkin Zulaikha Greer). He represented Australia at the 38th Venice Biennale in 1978, and in 2003 he received the Australia Council Visual Arts/ Crafts Emeritus Award for a lifelong service to the visual arts. He is represented in public and private collections throughout Australia and internationally.
