Curated by Ingrid Periz

Since the 1970s, Brisbane-based artist Robert MacPherson has produced a diverse set of works that critically engage the materiality of painting, often employing a vernacular of the quotidian: Objects such as road signs, paintbrushes, shoes, and office stationery proliferate throughout his oeuvre. Over the years, critics and curators have cast MacPherson as an exemplar of Minimalism, abstraction, the archival impulse, and Conceptualism, but the meaning of his works has remained elusive. Perhaps answers will be found in “The Painter’s Reach,” MacPherson’s first major museum survey in his hometown, an outing that will consist of more than sixty works, from acrylic paintings on canvas and Masonite to the artist’s trademark assemblages in his “Frog Poem” series, 1982–. The catalogue will feature essays by Angela Goddard, curator Ingrid Periz, and Trevor Smith (who organized MacPherson’s monumental exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth back in 2001).

— Charles Green