Peter Quinn
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion. Let the artist be truly taciturn – Paul Klee
Peter Quinn has lived and worked in Darwin in the Northern Territory for 30 years. Through his work in television as a cameraman, editor and producer, Quinn has traveled extensively across the Territory through a landscape that is his inspiration. Quinn’s works are playful on the surface, mosaics of weathered and cast off materials that are reconstituted as distilled fragments and glimpses of the vast Territory landscape.
“The place I live survives under a blow torch sun. Sometimes it’s rough and ready - enduring, hardened and toughened by time - but in passing moments that take you unawares, it’s dazzling and luminous. You can never take it for granted – its extremes never fail to startle. It’s been my home for thirty years.”
Quinn works in both 2D and 3D, using materials with great affection that the elements have scarred and aged. Most of Quinn’s works are made from discarded and damaged signs.
“I have no objection to normal art paints but I do relish an industrial finish. The materials I love come with a certain patina, an embedded history, even a pre-agreed meaning. All these things I bend to my will, toss in the air and reinvent.”
During the nineties Quinn exhibited furniture and sculpture made from found materials and welded steel. His joint exhibition at RAFT Art Space in Darwin in 2004 represented a shift to working in 2D, constructing patterns from scraps of a found language on signs.
“The surface of my work is frequently reflective and dynamic. Just as the sun transforms what we see in the course of a day the surfaces of my work are protean, responding to the shifting light.
Not surprisingly given his time in the Northern Territory, Quinn’s motifs echo aspects of the great Indigenous art movement. The formative and enduring influences, however, were forged in the western art world’s modernism, most notably the Bauhaus and especially Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian and Marcel Duchamp.
“I was born in the fifties and I embraced with enthusiasm and without irony the concept of ‘comfortable modern living’ based on good design, optimism and great art.
Quinn was born in 1954 and graduated from the University of Melbourne with a degree in mathematics.
Quinn's show All Shot Up is showing until the 1st of November 2009 at Michael Reid at Murrurundi
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion. Let the artist be truly taciturn – Paul Klee
Peter Quinn has lived and worked in Darwin in the Northern Territory for 30 years. Through his work in television as a cameraman, editor and producer, Quinn has traveled extensively across the Territory through a landscape that is his inspiration. Quinn’s works are playful on the surface, mosaics of weathered and cast off materials that are reconstituted as distilled fragments and glimpses of the vast Territory landscape.
“The place I live survives under a blow torch sun. Sometimes it’s rough and ready - enduring, hardened and toughened by time - but in passing moments that take you unawares, it’s dazzling and luminous. You can never take it for granted – its extremes never fail to startle. It’s been my home for thirty years.”
Quinn works in both 2D and 3D, using materials with great affection that the elements have scarred and aged. Most of Quinn’s works are made from discarded and damaged signs.
“I have no objection to normal art paints but I do relish an industrial finish. The materials I love come with a certain patina, an embedded history, even a pre-agreed meaning. All these things I bend to my will, toss in the air and reinvent.”
During the nineties Quinn exhibited furniture and sculpture made from found materials and welded steel. His joint exhibition at RAFT Art Space in Darwin in 2004 represented a shift to working in 2D, constructing patterns from scraps of a found language on signs.
“The surface of my work is frequently reflective and dynamic. Just as the sun transforms what we see in the course of a day the surfaces of my work are protean, responding to the shifting light.
Not surprisingly given his time in the Northern Territory, Quinn’s motifs echo aspects of the great Indigenous art movement. The formative and enduring influences, however, were forged in the western art world’s modernism, most notably the Bauhaus and especially Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian and Marcel Duchamp.
“I was born in the fifties and I embraced with enthusiasm and without irony the concept of ‘comfortable modern living’ based on good design, optimism and great art.
Quinn was born in 1954 and graduated from the University of Melbourne with a degree in mathematics.
Quinn's show All Shot Up is showing until the 1st of November 2009 at Michael Reid at Murrurundi
