Rebekah Stuart, Dreaming in Reverse, 2104

Melbourne artist Rebekah Stuart is showing a series of large and impressive landscapes at the Colour Factory Gallery. These images evoke the Romantic landscape paintings of the early 19th century by Turner and Constable, but made in Australia.

The exhibition is titled Pictures of Elision, a word that hints at the mythical paradise of Elysium, but actually means a verbal contraction or omission. This must refer to her method. Stuart’s landscapes don’t exist as places, they are digitally combined from images of different locations, ‘contracted’ into one. Despite the painterly aesthetic they are quite photographic. Up close the digital noise is clearly visible and organic, and the overlapping fragments from different image files float in and out of view.

She doesn’t pretend they are paintings, but they come as close as I’ve ever seen to the technique of a painter.

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