• Please note that due to the close parallel line work on many of these paintings, a moire effect is caused during digital photographic documentation.
• Macro images are therefore included to show how the converging lines have distinctly separated colour vibrancy.
• Scroll down for Installation Views and illustrated catalogue of works

UNSPOKEN THOUGHTS

While the paintings exhibited in this show are process based, the process is not an end in itself. It does not constitute the meaning of my work all on its own. What I have tried to convey through these paintings is the reflection of my everyday life experience at Lake Clifton and of travelling across the big Spaces of the Western Australian landscape.
During the last few years, I have been bothered by the decline of the Tuart forest. Many of the old trees in the Lake Clifton area have died or are dying, and I have deliberately sought to convey some of my feelings about these issues in “Salt of the Earth” and “Yalgorup” in particular. Prior to the first evidence of these problems, I had planted hundreds of Tuart seedlings near my studio, several of these young trees have died or are looking sick, while some continue to grow vigorously. Because of this, I see the uncertainties about things that I used to take for granted near my home, as a metaphor for the uncertainties of our troubled times on a global scale.
As an attempt to bring real issues of everyday life into the process of painting, I have avoided the descriptive and the literal. Instead I have tried to use colour, texture and paint application as a means of conveying the feelings of fear and hope that are very much part of my own experience. In the isolation of my studio, I have learned to mistrust what comes easily or what needs to be propped up by theory ... trends come and go and riding on them can lead us astray. In art, as in life there is nothing new and nothing is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. But while we can never really create anything completely new our reinterpretation of the same old themes can be different in the sense that we all bring our own individual subjectivity’s to them.
In our contemporary society there is an obsession with the “new” and with doing things “right”, but newness doesn’t last long and everything becomes obsolete. Doing things right implies doing things according to dogmas or ideologies, or by following a mechanistic interpretation of the universe. Unfortunately ideals of newness and rightness are artificial, for in nature the all-important issue is survival. In art, mistakes are important because they often show us dimensions of reality that our rational minds cannot grasp. In a sense, mistakes may not really be mistakes but rather the coming to terms with something intangible revealed by the workings of our subconscious.
Maybe the trees are dying then because our activities have become separated from issues of survival. The focus should thus be more on future outcomes rather than present correctness.

Galliano Fardin, 16/12/2001

In June 2001 Phenomena New Paintings in Australia: 1 opened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The exhibition comprising work from just 13 Australian Artists, including Galliano Fardin, Howard Taylor and Judith Wright also travelled to The Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne (24 November 2001 - 20 January 2002) The catalogue essay written by curator Michael Wardell includes the following commentary and observations.
The artists in this exhibition were selected more for their individuality than their conforming to a particular creed. What they do have in common is an intelligent awareness of both the art of the past and of current critical
responses to the art of the past. They are all producing work that goes beyond the mere making of beautiful pictures and they are consciously avoiding the unrestrained expression of subjective emotions. However, they also embrace the importance of a poetic response to the outside world. No longer interested in ‘art for art’s sake’ these artists are investigating, with pragmatic objectivity, the inherently subjective realm of phenomena.
Like Howard Taylor, Galliano Fardin lives in the bush, and his work is also concerned with experience of being in the land. However Fardin’s art evolved from quite a different beginning to that of Taylor. Whereas Taylor gleaned the essence of being in the land from close scrutiny of nature, Fardin comes out of the late modernist tradition of process art. The paintings reveal the process from which they are made, emphasising the element of time as an inherent component, in the fine hand drawn lines that make up the compositional grids. The evident time, patience and care taken to make these paintings demand time, patience and care from the person viewing them. Fardin’s art, therefore, is a meditative process that, like litmus paper, absorbs the world around him and changes with the changing light of the landscape.

Michael Wardell
Curator. Art Gallery of New South Wales

GALLIANO FARDIN: Biography

1948 Born Mogliano Veneto, Italy
1970-72 Member of Galleria Piranesi, Mogliano Veneto
1972 Arrived in Australia
1984-86 BA Fine Art (with Distinction), Curtin University of Technology
1986 Studied Fine Art at the School of Museum of Fine Art in Boston, USA
1987-89 Built a Studio and House in Waroona, Western Australia
1990-91 Travelled with family and taught Art with wife Nancy at Tjukurla, Aboriginal Primary School near Alice Springs and Warburton
1992-94 Living and working, Tjukurla Aboriginal Community near Alice Springs. Involved in starting 'anTEP' course for Aboriginal Student Teachers.
1993-4 Graduate certificate 'Aboriginal Studies' University of South Australia
1994-95 Worked as Language Production Supervisor at RAWA Community School, Punmu, Western Desert, WA
1996-97 Part-time lecturer to Aboriginal Students, TAFE, Midland
1998 Part-time lecturer, Painting, Edith Cowan University, WA
1999 Lecturer, Edith Cowan University, Bunbury, WA

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1978 Drawings, Churchill Gallery, Perth
1988 Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1990 The Boundary Lake Paintings , Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1992 Horizon Line , Paintings, Assemblages and Drawings,Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1994 L'Incontro e il Racconto , Centro Artistico Culturale G.B, Piranesi,Citta di Mogliano Veneto, Italy
1995 Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1997 Acqua e Terra, Galerie Dusseldorf, Perth
1999 A Matter of Time, New Paintings, Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
2002 UNSPOKEN THOUGHTS: New Paintings, Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1984-86 Student Exhibitions in Perth and Boston
1988 First Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Melbourne, Represented by Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1989 Perspecta , Art Gallery of New South Wales
1989 Mandorla Art Prize, New Norcia Art Gallery, New Norcia
1989 Shades of Meaning , Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1990 Second Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Melbourne, Represented by Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1990 Mandorla Art Prize, New Norcia Art Gallery
1991 Mandorla Art Prize, New Norcia Art Gallery
1991 A Sideways Glance , Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1994 South West Review , Bunbury Art Gallery, (Best overall Award)
1995 A Rose is a Rose is a Rose , Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1995 Landscape as Metaphor , Claremont School of Art
1996 Out of Australia , PICA, Perth
1997 Peeled , Mandurah Arts Centre, WA
1997 Bunbury Biennale, Bunbury, WA
1997 Mine Own Executioner , Mundaring Arts Centre, WA
1998 Material Perfection , Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of WA
1998 Being , Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, WA
1998 The Curtin Collection: 30th Anniversary Exhibition, John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of Technology, WA
1998 Sculpture By The Sea , Albany, WA
1999 Art99, The Western Australian Art Fair, Fremantle WA, Represented by Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1999 Distant Horizons , John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of Technology, WA
1999 Resilience , Bunbury Regional Galleries
2000 Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Melbourne , Represented by Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
2001 Joondalup Art Prize, City of Joondalup, Western Australia
2001 Phenomena New Paintings in Australia: 1, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Ian Potter Museum of Art. The University of Melbourne
2001 Bank West Art Prize, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth
2003 Art03, The Western Australian Art Fair, Fremantle WA, Represented by Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth

AWARDS / PROJECTS
1994 South West Review , Bunbury Art Gallery - Winner
1997 Public Art Commission, design in glass, Wind Lobby Entry, Performing Arts Centre, Mandurah, WA
1998 Art project, Purnululu School, Via Kununurra, WA
1999 Exchange Plaza Perth, Foyer Painting Commission

COLLECTIONS
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Curtin University of Technology, Ian and Sue Bernadt Collection
Artbank, Edith Cowan University, Royal Perth Hospital, Wesfarmers, Parliament House, Canberra
Kerry Stokes Collection, King Edward Memorial Hospital, BankWest