Matt Coyle, Take Me Back To Sleep, 2016, Felt-tip pen, coloured pencil, gouache on paper, 52 x 70cms
OPENING NIGHT: FRIDAY 7 OCTOBER, 6-8PM
EXHIBITION: 7 OCTOBER – 5 NOVEMBER 2016
Hyperreal Illustrations Explore the Earthly and the Uncanny
With an almost draughtsman-like meticulousness, artist Matt Coyle produces hyperreal drawings that excavate the boundaries of the dream-state and the real.
Presenting astonishingly detailed investigations of the suburban and the everyday, Coyle infuses his works with elements of the uncanny. Exploring the symbolic potential of soil and earth, Coyle suggests something ominous about what can be revealed by digging through the surface.
Citing stillness and contemplation as central to his creative process Coyle states: ‘Looking out of the kitchen window every day, imagining miniature worlds in the foliage and beneath the rock walls, ideas for making artworks slowly emerge. There is time to contemplate… A pumpkin slowly rots and collapses around a garden gnome. Lemons ripen above a pile of splintered timber. I’m keeping an eye on these glacial transformations.’
Marking the artist’s return to exploring the full expanse of the page, the works in Coyle’s new show at Anna Pappas Gallery imbue the everyday with eerie, symbolic power. The presence of colour in Coyle’s new works emphasise characters, dwellings, and growth; central representations of Coyle’s focus on personal, domestic and ultimately human experience.
Matt Coyle was born in 1971, and grew up in Canberra. After a short stint at art school in Sydney, Coyle turned his attention to drawing and has been working within this medium ever since. Exhibiting regularly in Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney, Coyle has appeared in group shows internationally including the Hong Kong Art Fair and the Korean International Art Fair. He has work in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Gallery of Modern Art/Queensland Art Gallery and has had numerous commissions including a suite of drawings for Art and Australia. Coyle has two published graphic novels “Worry Doll”, Dover Publications, 2016 and “Registry of Death”, Kitchen Sink Press 1996. He lives and works in Hobart, Tasmania.