Petalia Humphreys | SB #25-28 in second composition

Artist statement:

SB #25-28 in second composition is a series of 4 hard-edge geometric three-dimensional paintings. Like a gift-wrapped box, these cube paintings are the three-dimensional version of their two-dimensional counterparts. In conversation with each other they reveal multiple dimensionalities of form with illusory flattening and expanding of visual planes. That which is three-dimensional flattens out and becomes two-dimensional, and that which is two-dimensional appears as three-dimensional. Hung below eye height Humphreys’ works engage our inquisitiveness and challenge perception through a playful remapping of space, inviting the viewer to renegotiate their experience of the familiar.

Artist Bio:

Petalia Humphreys' candy-coloured three-dimensional paintings invite the ambulatory viewer to participate in an illusory game of shifting dimensionality. Employing reductive abstraction her playful architectonic inspired works celebrate the legacy of material and a genealogy of art making and woodworking - constructing site-responsive built forms that map familiar (and familial) domestic spaces. Petalia’s work references a history of abstraction, including neo-concretism and the active object. 

Petalia has worked as a secondary and tertiary educator and exhibited at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art, Metro Arts, Outer Space and Melbourne’s Five Walls. She has been commissioned for multiple public art projects and exhibited throughout Southeast Queensland including Redlands Art Gallery, Noosa and Caloundra Regional Galleries, and Floating Land. Petalia is founder, producer and curator for Studio 26, a project that curates opportunities for mentoring, critical conversation and exhibitions.