One for sorrow, two for joy

Despard Gallery, Hobart

18 September – 12 October 2024

One for sorrow, two for joy

In her fourth solo exhibition with Despard Gallery, Chew presents a new body of paintings which map an ongoing exploration into our understanding of dwellings, both as a physical structure as well as a symbol of sanctuary.  This includes an expanded definition of home within contemporary culture, representing both a space of certainty, central to our sense of place, as well as a space of precarity, shaping social structures and fuelling political division.  

Various dwellings incorporated within Chew’s paintings include domestic houses, tents, caravans, fishing huts and children’s cubby houses.  Seen as either temporary or permanent, each one represents a different part of our relationship to home, including a space of nurture and security, but also fragility and displacement. Compositions are collaged together from found and sourced imagery, repurposing existing symbols to construct a new story.  Through the act of painting, Chew then embarks on a process of creative repair, imbuing a new sense of value and care.  Contrasting bright colour, painterly gesture and seemingly preliminary line work, the surface of each work sits in delicate balance, simultaneously uniting a sense of vulnerability and sadness, with renewed hope and optimism. 

The title of the exhibition refers to the content of the work which is an ongoing reflection on the current state of things – personally, locally, and globally. Themes of uncertainty, displacement, loss, and damage are presented in the works alongside a persistent hopefulness, playfulness, affection, and memories of more stable times – sorrow and joy. As much as painting is and should be about many things (autobiographical, political, social) it is always and ultimately about the act of painting. A continuum of decisions, the mixing of colours, the brush marks and gestures; a repetition of form and structure looping circular like the verses of a poem.

– Jo Chew