'Gallipoli' | Steve Lopes
28th Aug to 19th Sept 2015
‘Gallipoli’, is an exhibition by celebrated Australian artist and writer Steve Lopes. It commemorates the 100 year anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign, also known as the Dardanelles campaign.
This work was painted primarily in Turkey during a trip with a number of Australia and New Zealand’s finest artists. The aim was to travel to what has been termed Australia and New Zealand’s sacred site and honour the sacrifices made in that place 100 years ago.
It is a series of plein air paintings that evoke a sense of what it must have been like. These artworks are charged with emotion and provoke a profound sense of admiration for the countless number of feats of heroism and selflessness that occurred in this place and yet a deep sadness for what transpired.
Steve Lopes is a figurative painter who uses the landscape as a vehicle to investigate human existence. He often works en plein air, painting vignettes of a place which are used as references for large-scale studio works.
While his landscapes are often a representation of what he saw, the figures are often imagined personalities, or placed into the composition after the fact. He often depicts isolated figures to emphasise the displacement of the human figure within the world.
Steve's works have been acquired in collections such as the National Art Gallery of Australia, Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra, BHP Billiton Art Collection and the Time Warner Collection in New York.