Past Exhibition Steven Harvey: Unrendered Room

This survey opens with a selection of Steven Harvey’s Coastal Walk series from 2002, paintings that seem to codify space, light and the spirit of place into gridded abstract patchworks. With consistent thrift, Harvey’s work has continued to translate complex evocations into deceptively simple formulations.

Steven Harvey writes: “I savour solitude, especially when I find myself enveloped by the great, vast landscape of this country.”

“Because painting, to me, is an adventurous and intuitive practice, using paint as an illusory device to form recognisable imagery seems to be a contradiction, which serves only to distract my sense of process.”

“Rigorously I investigate the sculptural qualities of oil paint. Pigment is sanded and ground into the bedrock of accumulated surfaces where reservoirs of colour shift and evolve. The composition ultimately reveals itself when a persistent form claims the final space.”

“The result of this particular layering process is that the paintings redefine themselves as objects and, for me, the object moves closer to the curiously beautiful, yet uncompromising essence of nature.”