An Agitation of the Air: A Challenge to the Blueness of Autumn’s Approach
From antiquity to today, artists have represented seasonal change as a metaphor for changing love, a metamorphosis of identity, a visual allegory of life cycles, and the ends and beginnings of all things human and elemental.
Image credit: L-R, then below: Matthew Johnson, Aureola IV and Aureola II, 1999, oil on linen, 57 x 48 cm; Moments in Civilisation (Invisible Cities),1998, oil and perspex, dimensions variable, Installation view, Lennox Street Gallery, Melbourne, 4-29 March, 2025. Photo: Christian Capurro. Courtesy Lennox St. Gallery
The transitional essence of March fills the air. Environmental change is tangible in temperature; in light, as day turns to night more rapidly, the sun sits lower in the sky, and the colours begin to seep into the shade of the next season. Draped in rich oranges, reds and browns, the ombre of autumn is often represented as a parting with summer's warmth and ethereal nature, a gradual change of pace and a retreat to the primal habits of hibernation.
This March, Lennox Street Gallery presents The Last of the Summer Blue, sensitively curated by Freddie Wright in response to a poem by Stanley Kunitz, End of Summer, which reads, ‘Blue poured into summer blue [...] and I knew/ That part of my life was over.’ In a corner of Melbourne’s Richmond area, where March signals the fading of summer, the exhibition offers an alternative approach to the seasonal dejection Kunitz’s poem addresses.
Bringing together two separate exhibitions, Wright’s curation speaks to the conjoining of old and new, a dynamic mixture of six artists and their different approaches to abstraction. Matthew Johnson paints vivid oils on linen and celestial Aureola’s akin to Whistler’s Nocturnes, where Claudia Terstappen places fresh emphasis on feminine energy conveyed through her bright ceramics. From the fantastical structures of Kate Rohde’s sculptures and a mixture of painterly adroitness displayed by Carissa Karamarko, Melinda Harper and Marie Hagerty, each artist begins with a unique version of nature, presenting a transfiguration of the essence of autumn, an uplifting contrast to the tropes of diminishment and decay.
Image credit: L-R: Claudia Terstappen, New Love, 2021, glazed ceramic, 45 x 38 x 30 cm; Autumn Spirit, 2004, C-print on aluminium, 150 x 150 cm, Installation view, Lennox Street Gallery, Melbourne, 4-29 March, 2025. Photo: Christian Capurro. Courtesy Lennox St. Gallery
Wright describes the show as ‘a study of thresholds’, reflected fluently in the positioning of Terstappen’s photograph, Autumn Spirit, which sits between the two halves of the exhibition - the centripetal piece that draws the show together. The patchwork hues of turning leaves represent the realism of autumn in contrast to the other works, which are more impressionistic, painterly and abstract. Contrastingly, Karamarko’s paintings entitled The Burning Song, Nero’s Fiddle/ The Lyre of Orpheus, and Nero weeps, Nero rejoices, draw on classicism, representing a tradition that values art and music amidst the impermanence of life. In ancient Rome, the city burned, and in Greek mythology, Eurydice died, but the openness and lightness of Karamarko’s brushstrokes and pastel colour palettes present a playful alternative to the trepidation that so often accompanies change.
Image credit: L-R: Kate Rohde, Three Roses, 2018, pigmented resin, 40 x 65 x 20 cm; Baroquetopus Urn #2, 2022, mixed media, 75 x 55 x 50 cm; Wallaby table (pink, green table), 2022, mixed media, 100 x 82 x 86 cm, Installation view, Lennox Street Gallery, Melbourne, 4-29 March, 2025. Photo: Christian Capurro. Courtesy Lennox St. Gallery
As you enter the airy space of Lennox Street Gallery, three of Rohde’s Baroque-style sculptures greet you. Her unorthodox use of neon colours and enchanting shapes adorned with roses, antlers and wallabies evoke extravagance and luxury, acting as portals into a fantasy world. Here, nature and art are inextricable. Using resin and mixed media, Rohde’s structures are immune to decay and the elements, steadfast reminders that beauty is in everything. Placed within the narrative of this exhibition, these pieces maintain the glamour of summer through colour and style, simultaneously signalling the transition to autumn through their subject matter.
As the Earth tilts on her axis and our precious summer days subside into cooler, greyer climes, The Last of the Summer Blue reminds us that there is more than one way to approach change. If, as Kunitz suggests, autumn’s approach brings feelings of disenchantment rather than inspiration, let Lennox Street guide you through summer's bright colours and shapes morphing into the richness and texturality of autumn through painting, ceramics and sculpture.
The Last of the Summer Blue continues at Lennox Street Gallery, Melbourne, until March 29, 2025.
