Safe Travels (2011), acrylic on fabricated steel, 2000 x 4500mm
Nick Devlin's TwoThousandAndEleven runs until December 17
Review from the Saturday Age (10/12/11) Life&Style, page 7
"Although the paintings behind Richard Lewer's striking new exhibition, Safe Travels, are rich in texture and detail, they also possess an astute sense of economy. Painted in the wake of a road trip from Melbourne to Coober Pedy and Alice Springs, these stark acrylic-on-fabricated-steel works use the rusting surface of the metal as a key facet of their colouration, texture and compositional sensibilities (pictured). Lewer's road trip doesn't fit the free-and-easy archetype; the roads he travels are littered with the signatures of weather-beaten infrastructural, economic and social decay. A mother and child huddle together, faceless and inscrutable against a sea of red earth; creepy figures forage amid roadside refuse; a kangaroo carcass bakes in the desert sun. The figures and landscapes are somehow alien, removed from our grasp. It feels like a huge step for Lewer. While his wonky explorations of criminal activity, urban legend and moral impropriety have often been littered with humour and witty text, he achieves something far subtler and more evocative here. Among the blank faces, the dust and detritus, these works render the Australian interior as a site laid to waste."
Dan Rule
Copyright © 2011 Fairfax Media
Review from the Saturday Age (10/12/11) Life&Style, page 7
"Although the paintings behind Richard Lewer's striking new exhibition, Safe Travels, are rich in texture and detail, they also possess an astute sense of economy. Painted in the wake of a road trip from Melbourne to Coober Pedy and Alice Springs, these stark acrylic-on-fabricated-steel works use the rusting surface of the metal as a key facet of their colouration, texture and compositional sensibilities (pictured). Lewer's road trip doesn't fit the free-and-easy archetype; the roads he travels are littered with the signatures of weather-beaten infrastructural, economic and social decay. A mother and child huddle together, faceless and inscrutable against a sea of red earth; creepy figures forage amid roadside refuse; a kangaroo carcass bakes in the desert sun. The figures and landscapes are somehow alien, removed from our grasp. It feels like a huge step for Lewer. While his wonky explorations of criminal activity, urban legend and moral impropriety have often been littered with humour and witty text, he achieves something far subtler and more evocative here. Among the blank faces, the dust and detritus, these works render the Australian interior as a site laid to waste."
Dan Rule
Copyright © 2011 Fairfax Media
