Melbourne-based visual artist Ash Keating creates larger-than-life site-specific murals with paint-filled fire extinguishers.
Titled Duality, Keating’s latest works are a series of textural paintings which need to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.
“Following a year of creative experimentation and marking a transition in technique, Keating’s new works have been built with many layers of color and textural materials. Their surfaces hold an intense depth and richness, giving the series a meditative quality that invites slow and reflective viewing.” – Linden New Art Gallery
We caught up with the experimental Australian artist to talk about the making of his most recent exhibition.
“My painting practice is predominantly abstract gravity-fed compositions.”
“On large exterior walls I use acrylic house-paints and water applied with fire extinguishers, and within the studio working on linen, I use a spray gun, atomizing premium artist paints and water. However, in 2020 I decided to use the strange year and lockdowns as an opportunity to experiment with textures and mark-making, which I had long been hoping to find time to explore.”
“Most of my work is immersive, subtle, and shifts as you move in and around it.”
“For these new works, I embedded peculiar materials into paints and binders such as perlite, vermiculite, mica flakes, and two different sized reflective glass beads, the type used on roads and road signs. The inspiration to use these materials in my own unique way came from a research trip to New York in late 2018. I visited exhibitions by Jack Whitten at The Met Breuer and Mary Course at The Whitney Museum and was so inspired by both artists’ works I told myself that I needed to incorporate texture into future works of my own.
Making the works with glass beads was wild, as I thickened paint with them and both flung and dropped dollops onto the canvas, then I threw clean beads at the wet areas so as the outer edge would reflect the colors from underneath.”
Duality is on show at the Linden New Art Gallery in Melbourne until May 16th, 2021.
