Join the opening celebration this Friday evening, 6 to 8 pm at 107/109 Rupert St, Collingwood.
Seth Birchall, The Moon Under Water
Sullivan+Strumpf Melbourne is excited to present the latest body of work from acclaimed Sydney painter Seth Birchall. A series of 14 extraordinary paintings, each intimate and deeply personal, The Moon Under Water casts shimmering reflections across gently shifting waters, that draw us into moments of tranquillity.
“Armourless and unmoored, Birchall’s paintings are precarious yet bold refusals of absolutes, reborn with every new meeting. Does it matter if we’ve been to this painted place before? Not really. Like a moon under water, it’s somewhere in us regardless.” – Emma Finneran
The title of Birchall’s latest exhibition is taken from a 1946 George Orwell article in which the author writes about his favourite pub, the Moon Under Water, recalling in detail the elements that make it the ideal watering hole. The draught stout on tap, open fires, cheap meals, the garden, and lack of radio.
At the end of his recollection, Orwell reveals that this place, of which he has written so fondly and extensively, is in fact pure fabrication. An amalgamation of elements and ideas, sourced from ten or so different pubs he has visited, Orwell’s The Moon Under Waterexists solely as words on a page in a story.
Like Orwell, Birchall draws on diverse sources for each of his paintings, conjuring meditative worlds that pulse with colour and life via a synthesis of pictorial ideals. Working simultaneously across paintings – often ten or more at a time, his dreamlike scenes come to life in the layering of brushstrokes.
Presented collectively, Birchall’s works interact with each other, infused with a common language that speaks to the wider tradition of art history, and that is immediately identifiable from one series to the next.
Birchall wants us to feel almost helpless in the face of the sublime, powerless against nature’s displaced energy. His paradisiacal, Eden-like vignettes, a nod to global concern around the conservation of our natural environment.
Seth Birchall was born in New Jersey in 1979 and emigrated to Australia in 1987. He is of dual Australian and American nationalities and currently lives between Sydney and Bali, Indonesia.
Seth Birchall: The Moon Under Water launches at Sullivan+Strumpf Melbourne, 107/109 Rupert St, Collingwood Thursday May 18 to Saturday June 10, 2023.
IMAGE CREDITS –
Seth Birchall, Memory Leaves Trails, Patterns, Edges, Walls, Bottoms and Chasms, 2023, oil on canvas, 153 x 244 cm. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf. Photo, Jessica Maurer.
Seth Birchall, A Moon Under Water, 2023, oil on canvas, 183 x 153 cm. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf. Photo, Jessica Maurer.
Seth Birchall, Japanese Garden Painting III, 2023, oil on canvas, 30.5 x 30.5 cm. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf. Photo, Jessica Maurer.
Seth Birchall, Concerns About Liquidity (My), 2023, oil on canvas, 153 x 122 cm. Photo Jessica Mauer. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf. Photo, Jessica Maurer.
Seth Birchall, Studio portrait. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf. Photo, Jessica Maurer.
Seth Birchall, Japanese Garden Painting II, 2023, oil on canvas, 40.5 x 30.5 cm. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf. Photo, Jessica Maurer.
Seth Birchall, The Setting Sun Talks, 2023, oil on canvas, 183 x 153 cm. Photo Jessica Mauer. Image courtesy of the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf.
