A platform for abstraction

On the corner of Adderley and Dudley streets is a large commercial development that is so new, businesses have yet to move in.

The pandemic delayed the opening of the West End Precinct even though spaces were already leased out.

The complex was meant to open in November and you still can’t get a serve of sushi, a bowl of pasta, a haircut or a hotel bed for the night. 

But you can visit a very compelling exhibition of abstract art, the Biennial of Women Abstract Artists at West End Art Space. It is their inaugural exhibition.

Good art has a habit of invading empty spaces and making itself visible without too much of a fuss.

The gallery moved in early to keep up with their exhibition schedule because they didn’t want to disappoint artists.

There is a good deal of altruism about abstraction because of its historical connection with freedom of thought. Liberating ideas often run through the art world ahead of everywhere else. 

Lorri Whiting’s collaged paper on canvas Untitled 1970, for example, demonstrates the freeing effect for artists of escaping the tyranny of a horizon or vanishing point in their paintings.

Wilma Tabacco’s Madder Lake 2019, a cool abstraction with sections of linen attached to board, is very much about the surface.

There’s a great twirl of material in Maddy Gunn’s The Unconscious Oxford Dictionary 2019, and an amusingly regal pose in Caroline Phillip’s Totem.

Abstraction is a secret, poetic movement amongst all the business and opinions of everyday life with artists taking care to avoid obvious meanings.

Kate Hendry’s Window Series 2021 creates context for her colour pencil shapes out of lines ruled in graphite. This work is beautifully clean and graphic, simulating texture and context for a provocation. 

Gallery director Anna Priffti did a call-out for the exhibition and received 130 applications. 

“Some are pioneers of abstract art,” she said, citing names such as Dumbrill, Tabacco and Whiting. “Irene Barbaris worked in the studio of Sol de Witt when she was making St Matthew’s Passion.”

Genealogies are significant in art with influences traced and connections made.

“I just love abstract art,” Priffti said. “It’s such an important movement. It shouldn’t get lost.”

She persevered with the show and put it on even though other businesses are not moving into the complex until April.

“When COVID hit, it stopped everything. I knew I wanted to persist. We’ll present this show every two years. The idea is to have a platform for abstraction.”

Biennial of Women Abstract Artists, West End Art Space, 112 Adderley St, West Melbourne, until February 28 •