A tall painter
Liang Luscombe
Curated by Isabelle Sully in collaboration with Simon McGlinn
August 6 – November 4, 2016
Salon at Heidelberg Artists Trail
Yarra Flats Park, The Blvd
Ivanhoe East 3079
Victoria, Australia
Melway 32 B6
Situated alongside the Yarra Flats component of the Heidelberg Artist Trail, Melbourne-based artist Liang Luscombe presents a series of outdoor paintings, which speak to the historical narrative that has been built around the looming figures of the Heidelberg School of the 1890s. Collaging and contrasting newspaper cartoons, exhibition invitations and photographs of the Melbourne that these artists inhabited, Luscombe contemplates the lineage and myth-making surrounding painters such as Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and Fredrick McCubbin in relation to conceptions of the figure conducting plein air. In this way, A tall painter not only sits alongside but also speaks alongside the Heidelberg Artist Trail—a walking trail that physicalises the chronology of the Heidelberg School through its bordering landscape—reactivating it as a place to reflect on questions surrounding the construction of cultural histories in Heidelberg; and in Australian painting more broadly.
Beginning in August 2015, with the first exhibition in a criminal barrister’s chambers in Melbourne’s CBD, Salon is a roaming curatorial project by Simon McGlinn and Isabelle Sully that organises exhibitions in various non-gallery locations. It is primarily interested in extending the possibilities of artworks through locating them within the binary of art and non-art audiences.
View publication and list of works here