Sydney Light
Showing: June 21 - July 14 2007
The places and situations that I represent in these paintings are the ordinary scenes that I see as I go about my life in and around the Sydney area. I observe them from moving cars or by foot. A place or a thing that is unremarkable at one time of the day can be transformed into something with profound importance for me a few hours later and all that has changed is the light and the way it causes me to see and feel about it. I feel that when such a moment arrives it has the potential to take us into something that we may experience collectively not just witness individually. In this sense it is a Romantic sensibility that determines the work.
Sometimes I see poetry and significance in the theatricality of street lights and other forms of artificial lighting picking objects out in a dark street. Sometimes it’s a big late afternoon sky with dark silhouetted clouds cutting shapes in the graded hues of a summer twilight. Sometimes it’s a shaft of light splitting two enormous rain clouds above a busy motorway. It’s all Sydney Light. - Rhett Brewer
BIOGRAPHY:
Born in Sydney in 1952, Rhett Brewer attended Art School as a mature age student in 1977-79. His first solo exhibition was held in 1981 in Sydney followed by another in Melbourne in the same year. Since that time Rhett has constantly exhibited his work whilst teaching in the University of Western Sydney and for a semester in Gloucester Polytechnic the UK. His work has been exhibited in Israel and Hungary as well as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
The work is usually in the form of paintings which return to certain themes of memory, urban and suburban environments, and investigations into our perceptions of time and how we experience it’s presence in the physical world.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Academic Qualifications
| 1977-1979 | Dip Art Alexander Mackie CAE, Sydney |
| 1983 | B.A. Vis Art, City Art Institute, Sydney |
| 1994-1996 | Master of Art (Hons) Fine Art, University of Western Sydney, Nepean |
Selected Experience
| 1981-2006 | Lecturer Painting & Drawing UWS |
| 2000 | Artist in Residence, Bundanon Trust |
| 2001 | UWS Representative and planning committee member and website curator for 5th annual conference of ISIS SYMMETRY at UNSW |
Selected Group Exhibitions
| 1979 | Ivan Doherty Gallery, Sydney |
| 1982 | Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Art Gallery, with David Hull and Graham Marchant |
| 1985 | Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of N.S.W. / 4 Ways, Brisbane College of Advanced Education |
| 1987 | Regional Accent, The Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Art Gallery |
| 1988 | Sulman Exhibition, Art Gallery of N.S.W. |
| 1990 | Australian Contemporary Art Fair 2, Melbourne |
| 1992 | Australsky Vzorek, The Academy of Applied Arts and Design, Prague, Czechoslovakia |
| 1994 | Michael Nagy Gallery, Sydney |
| 1995 | Beyond the Perimeter, Sydney Festival |
| 1998 | Bryan Nylan Collection Penrith Regional Gallery / M.A. and beyond, Casula Powerhouse / 1998 Australian Contemporary Art Fair 8, Melbourne / I.S.I.S Symmetry, 4th Conference and Exhibition, Hiafa, Israel Science in the Arts, Arts in the Sciences, Academy of Fine Art, Budapest |
| 2000 | May 2000 Artists Studio, Bundanon |
| 2001 | Intersections of Art and Science, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, UNSW Sydney. |
| 2003-2004 | The Landscape Show, Lewers Bequest & Penrith Regional Gallery |
| 2004 | Three Colours White, Brenda May Gallery Sydney |
| 2006 | Winter Stockroom, Wallspace Gallery / M4, University of Western Sydney Gallery. |
| 2007 | Solo Exhibition: 'Sydney Light', Wallspace Gallery |
Selected Individual Exhibitions
| 1981 | Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney / Zanders Bond Gallery, Melbourne |
| 1984 | Hogarth Gallery, Sydney |
| 1989 | D.C. Art, Sydney |
| 1993 | RIVER, Michael Nagy Fine Art, Sydney, NSW |
| 1996 | PAINT, Maling Gallery and Turbine Gallery, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney PAINT,Michael Nagy, Sydney |
| 1999 | Creation Myths, Michael Nagy, Sydney |
Selected Collections
Parliament House, Canberra
O.E.C.D. Offices, Paris
Sydney Institute of Technology, Sydney
Ballarat Court House
Art Bank
Private Collections in Sydney, Melbourne and the UK
Brian Nylan Geometric Art Collection
Transfield Collection
