When two directions become all directions

RESEARCH BACKGROUND Thomas explores issues of time and transience through painting, photography and installation work. The work is informed by research on the history of monochrome from a Non-Objective painting perspective, and Western and Eastern abstract art movements that examine simplicity and emptiness rather than cultural binaries. An integral part of the process was an investigation of colour as code and sensation that is both reflexive and unorthodox. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION The work addresses ideas of the real and transitory. Through the use of colour, scale, size, gesture and touch the viewer can recognise how experience and content changes over time and is an opportunity for reflective engagement. It combined and juxtaposed monochrome painting with photography to create composites that create new combinations of indexical and iconic visual codes. The work disrupts any singular reading, questioning the pure materiality of the European tradition that prompts new ways of thinking about the world we live in. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE The work is a contemporary example of abstract painting and contributes to the reinvigoration of this medium employing new processes and techniques. The work was part of Melbourne Now exhibition at the NGV that featured contemporary art and design in Melbourne. At the end of 2014 the work included over 850,000 visitors and resulted in two major hardcopy NGV publications, including essays by Maggie Finch, the curator of photography at the NGV.