Untitled 99U44, 1999
oil on polyester canvas
220.0
x 180.0
cm
signed, dated and titled (on the reverse)
Provenance
Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999
Exhibited
Tim Maguire, John Curtin University Gallery, Perth, Western Australia
'At first glance Tim Maguire’s recent ‘abstract’ paintings resemble photographs. There is little evidence of human creation or even mediation: no
recognizable trace of the artist’s hand; no reference to the world negotiated daily by the naked eye. Numbered and dated, and of varying dimensions, the patterns could belong to something infinitesimally small – an object seen through an electron microscope perhaps – or equally, something awesomely vast, like a distant galaxy viewed through a powerful telescope. One has the sense of looking at, or rather through, air, water, fire, porous earth, corroded metal, or an infinity of stars. By way of a meaningful frame of reference, one might speak of ‘elemental’ or ‘galactic’ landscapes – although land is already too familiar and solid a term. ‘Spacescape’ is perhaps more appropriate, in its suggestion both of unbounded depth and cosmic indifference.
These are not places a viewer might confidently examine or comfortably inhabit. They prompt an awareness of one’s limits: spatial, bodily, conceptual, existential. At this level – at once macroscopic and microscopic – there is no longer any distinction between animate and inanimate; organic and inorganic. There is a touch, here, of the abstract sublime: sublime in the sense of the implacable forces and raw stuff of nature.' (S Biernoff, Tim Maguire, April 1999, John Curtin Gallery exhibition catalogue, unpaginated)
Image courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne