Paddington’s built environment is contextual to the site’s topography; it isn’t restrained by the gridded streets which create straight lines through undulating landscapes. The suburbs playful spatial arrangement is both scattered and lined with human scale settlement, most notably 19th century terrace housing.
REALM is not an attempt to recreate a reality grounded in traditional representations of the built environment, instead through these works, I am encouraging the viewer to reconsider how shape creates form, light creates shadow and perspective creates experience.
Through my exploration of site, the urban realm is altered and redefined, with physical and visual aspects working together to capture the unique narrative of each piece.
Across this series of paintings, I hope I can co-exist with the viewer in a shared, fleeting moment, where multiple realities combine through abstraction to create a sensorial experience. When viewed through my lens, these shared realms are redefined in ways that don’t follow the rules of physics. Instead, I hope my works reflect a deep contemplation of shadow and form and an ability to transfigure reality.
REALM exists at the intersection of abstraction and realism, it’s subtle, constrained and highly selective. Singular elements are layered, revisited, redefined and finally, completed over months of continuous practice. With each layer, by intention is that both me, the artist, and viewer are further absorbed into a world which isn’t perfect, or even real, but sensorial, meditative, and dreamlike.
My passions combine in this unique body of work, a marriage of physical and metaphysical realities through colour exploration. From the reality experienced during my field work, to the new reality imagined in each considered iteration of the works, a journey is made into a new realm.
– Justin Scivetti
