WANDERLUST: WORK FROM RECENT TRAVELS

An MPRG exhibition

21 July – 17 September 2017

Wendy Sharpe is one of Australia’s most accomplished painters. Her love for travel started in her twenties when she first won a scholarship to Europe. Since then, travel has been an integral part of her life and art. This is an exhibition of work from travels and residencies over the last ten years in Italy, France, Egypt, India, the Middle East, Morocco, Antarctica, Mexico and Spain. Sharpe spends part of every year in an apartment studio in Paris.

Most of the works are gouache and pastel which were made overseas directly from the subject or straight after the experience, often in a makeshift studio in a hotel or apartment. The oil paintings, made later back in Australia, are a distillation of the experience, developed mostly from memory and drawings. They move beyond the observational into a more involved and complex narrative.

Among the works on paper are views from an attic apartment overlooking the terracotta roofs and ancient towers of Florence, from the Aurora Australis icebreaker on a scientific voyage to Antarctica and from a camel market in Egypt.

Wendy Sharpe Drawing in Florence with Purple Top 2008 gouache
Courtesy of the artist