VIEWING DATES I SATURDAY 6TH OF JUNE TO WEDNESDAY 17TH OF JUNE
OFFICIAL CELEBRATION I SATURDAY 13TH OF JUNE 5-7PM
This exhibition is part of a duo solo event with Marisabel Gonzalez.
ABOUT RAINA
Raina Thomson is an Abstract-Expressionist artist who explores the intricate relationship between mind and body, and the often-unconscious forces shaping our emotional landscape. A Canberra-based artist who graduated from the Australian National University with a degree in painting and now resides in Newcastle, her practice utilises dynamic brushstrokes, textural experimentation, and expressive mark-making to translate deep emotions into abstract forms, examining identity and the complexities of unconscious predestination. As a first-generation Australian of Indian heritage, Raina communicates the nuances of these identities visually through materiality, colour, and gesture, inviting viewers to connect with the profound intricacy and inherent tensions that arise in their interplay, fostering a space for nuanced understanding.
ABOUT THIS BODY OF WORK
A threshold is a testing ground—a meeting point of limits and boundaries, an experience that has given me a lot of comfort throughout my practice. This body of work directly challenges my need to delve into the profound, often unfulfilled longing for resolution. Through the use of colour, form and raw medium, my aim is to convey the final leg in releasing a confusing journey—navigating its complex implications to find the profound relief in accepting that a limit has been reached.
This work represents a release, stripping back the echoes that have helped me navigate the grief of shedding an identity that is no longer aligned. Having been caught between many paradoxes, this collection accesses and merges all of the identities I have found through making thus far. In stitching everything together and being in a year of endings, this is the homage to my visceral experience.
The paintings are raw, uncut, and deeply personal. Through unrefined brushwork and stark forms, I have returned to a state of letting these deep emotions stand alone rather than trying to carve out their complexities. By stripping away the excess, the work visually communicates the profound intricacy and inherent tensions of this transition, letting the raw feeling simply sit as this limit speaks for itself.