Winter Blues
Renee Estée, Merryn Lloyd, Merryn Lloyd & Renee Cosgrave, Rafaella McDonald, Gervaise Netherway, Jahnne Pasco-White
curated by Laura Couttie and Daine Singer

Daine Singer Gallery
23 May – 23 June 2018
 
Winter Blues is an exhibition exploring the emotional depths of the colour blue. To ‘have the blues’ is an idiom that commonly refers to feelings of sadness, melancholy, longing and loss. Artists, writers and musicians have long been fascinated with capturing the blues, through paint, poetry, prose, and song. In this spirit, Winter Blues brings together paintings by Renee Estée, Merryn Lloyd, Renee Cosgrave, Rafaella McDonald, Gervaise Netherway and Jahnne Pasco-White, in an aesthetically and emotionally blue exhibition.

Read the catalogue essay

Images courtesy the artists and Daine Singer. Photos by Clare Rae.

Winter Sun
Matt Arbuckle, Sean Bailey, Lucia Canuto, Rafaella McDonald, Jahnne Pasco-White, Laura Skerlj
curated by Laura Couttie and Daine Singer

Daine Singer Gallery
27 June – 28 July 2018

In June we presented Winter Blues, a group exhibition exploring the emotional depths of the colour blue, inspired by seasonal affective disorder and the tradition of artists expressing sadness, melancholy and longing through the symbolic use of blue. Next we present its companion show. Winter Sun brings together works that seek the light in the dark. And while perhaps not entirely sunny, at least offer a glimmer of hope. As Leonard Cohen sang, ‘There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’ 

The exhibition features paintings and fabric works by Matt Arbuckle, Sean Bailey, Lucia Canuto, Rafaella McDonald, Jahnne Pasco-White and Laura Skerlj. Formally we have selected works that employ yellow, which symbolically stands as the antithesis of blue. For as Goethe wrote: ‘As yellow is always accompanied with light, so it may be said that blue still brings a principle of darkness with it.’ In Bluets, Maggie Nelson wrote, ‘I have been trying to place myself in a land of great sunshine, and abandon my will therewith’. And later: ‘During one particularly despondent New York City winter, I bought a huge can of bright yellow paint at the Hardware store on Allen Street, imagining that I might buoy my soul with its cheer.’ Likewise we look to yellow, seeking its therapeutic warmth and comfort.

Opening just after the winter solstice, this exhibition offers symbolic associations to the sun’s rebirth and the lengthening of the days. And while we are still at the beginning of winter, we can hopefully see the hope in the dark. Like Albert Camus, who wrote that ‘In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.’ 

Images courtesy the artists and Daine Singer. Photos by Tim Gresham.