Michael Carroll Goudge, the young and the old, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.
Michael Carroll Goudge
Gallery 2
Friday 21 March - Sunday 13 April
Opening Thursday 20 March 2025, 6pm-8pm
Coming from a traditional, realism background Michael Carroll Goudge has recently turned inward and embarked upon more abstract and minimal expressions in both two and three-dimensional works. This recent body of work compromises a combination of atmospheric paintings and weighty stone sculptures that sit gently side by side.
Painting studies of one, two or three hues explore the emotive power of colour, these works deliver a spacious, floating quality, internal and micro focussed. “My primary interest with painting is colour, the interaction of pigments when combined with story, shape, line, juxtaposition and the symbolism of hue, proportion and contrast. I am interested to go deeper into this with paintings that have a limited range of hues, to see how much one painting can deliver within these bounds”.
Alongside these colour studies Carroll Goudge has developed a body of minimalist sculpture works that ground the atmospheric paintings.
The sculptural works feature rocks collected on travels throughout Australia, stacked and assembled, often together with found objects, creating postcard like narratives, telling tales of travels and memorialising moments in time. The mediative nature of the stone stacking process results in pared back, totemic forms that speak a quiet language with a deeply Australian tone.
Drawn to contradiction Carroll Goudge finds subject matter in the social, political and environmental. His work can depict a frustration and rage coming from the contemplation of existential themes, but often too a sense of harmony and a peacefulness, clearly demonstrating Carroll Goudge’s ability to witness grace regardless of the turmoil within which it sits.
The presence of simple organic forms and shapes in both the paintings and sculptures creates a relationship between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional works, as if they are speaking the same language and sharing a common code.
About the Artist
Michael Carroll was born in 1940 and grew up at Garra, near Molong in the Central West of NSW. Michael’s work spans across two and three-dimensional expression and displays an impressive breadth and depth. His painting and drawing works vary from traditional oil painting, sensitive pencil drawing to refined abstract works. More recently Michael has been exploring the sculptural form with the use of rocks and found objects.
Michael’s stock breeding related travels in the sixties through South America, the United Kingdom and Rome, were the catalyst for further art focussed travels in the seventies. These art tours took him through France, the Mediterranean, New York, Mexico and later China and the Trans Siberian. Throughout these extensive travels he formed important friendships with many established artists and tutors. Such relationships and travel experiences informed a broad, explorative art practice which now spans nearly 60 years.
Michael began his formal training at the National Art School in East Sydney in 1969 where he formed another formative friendship with Nora Heysen, he then continued further studies in several disciplines all over the world from Alice Springs in the Northern Territory to Fortman Studios in Florence, Italy. His work has been exhibited in many galleries from Molong, NSW to Chelsea, London. Michael currently lives and works in his home-based studio in Molong.
