Alex Wanders
Artwork title: The Moon and Lady Franklin
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 122 x 122 cm
About the Artwork
My painting is a personal response to one of Tasmania’s most enigmatic colonial landmarks – Lady Franklin’s 1843 reconstruction of a Greek temple in Lenah Valley. Lady Franklin was so committed to the project that she surprised the labourers by climbing a ladder to inspect the roof during its construction. Intended as a museum to promote culture and learning in the fledgling colony, the building quietly encapsulates some of the ambitions, contradictions, and tragedies of colonisation. My painting explores these themes by presenting the structure in a theatrical setting which includes a reference to a nocturnal landscape by John Glover.
About the Artist
Alex Wanders is a Hobart based artist who has exhibited both locally and nationally since graduating from the Tasmanian School of Art in 1981. His carefully rendered images combine subdued palettes with a restrained stillness which invites the viewer into spaces of quiet contemplation. ‘Shadowland’ is part of a current series of paintings in which memories and traces of the past mingle with the present to suggest some of the ambiguous complexities and uncertainties of contemporary life. Alex’s work is represented in a number of collections including TMAG, Artbank and Arts Tasmania. In 1992 he was the inaugural Rosamond McCulloch Studio Resident at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, in 2016 he was awarded the UTAS Murray Todd prize and was placed on the Deans Honour Roll, and in2018 he won the Clarence Open Art Prize.