Una Rey: The grass is darker..the violent grass

The Drawing Room: Violent grass series of paintings followed a family holiday to the UK in mid-2010. A combination of domestic drawing rooms, family stories ( in-laws histories) and their insinuated imagery drove the work. My own thoughts roam on the extension of Empire based on a certain 'disregard' for children - as the English might put it, in a typically understated manner- and how this played at least a part in the violence on which colonialism thrived. This is a simple explanation for a complex history.

lean to haiku,
away from the tome
grave-stones slope in
a long sweet lawn

Exhibition dates: March weds 9- sat 26, 2011 Podspace 3/231 King St Newcastle
Gallery hours: wed-sat 12-5pm

Whose sky are you under?

Una Rey. Photo: Melony Browell

This is my first post. I am reluctant to enter a new relationship on the rebound from Long to belong: landscape memoir, a 3 year focus in the academic lexicon, a studio based PhD at the University of Newcastle....however, this morning the sky is laden with orange dust, nature imitating art- on a personal level, that is. It is apocalyptic, post-safe blue and green world. One of the paintings currently on exhibition at the university gallery, She-oaks, (pictured above) has the same strange glow, more sunset inspired than end-of-the-world, but the sister work, Whose sky are you under, asks you to wonder....

Una Rey, backyard sky September 22nd 2009