We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Gareth Donnelly / Australia b.1980 / 24 easy pieces 2006 / Wire, found wooden offcuts, cardboard, slide mounts, candle-holders, ready-made wooden craft shapes, synthetic polymer paint and enamel / 25 parts ranging from 3.3 x 7.2 x 3.5cm to 13.7 x 13.9 x 10.7cm; installed dimensions variable / The James C. Sourris AM Collection / Gift of James C. Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010 / Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Gareth Donnelly
Gareth Donnelly24 easy pieces 2006
Not Currently on Display
Gareth Donnelly’s work, using economical means, is physically stranded between painting and sculpture — in essence, his works are both and, paradoxically, neither. The artist describes the genesis of his series of ‘Easy pieces’, conceived while travelling in the early 2000s:
‘I can’t draw, so for me they are the equivalent of doing a sketch. They were made quickly with what is at hand . . . ‘Easy pieces’ started as small works done while travelling overseas in hotel rooms – with materials picked up along the way . . . They are always small-scale and immediate: something easy to take with you or leave behind.’1
Endnotes:
1. Gareth Donnelly, 19 May 2010. Email correspondence held in QAGOMA Research Library Artist’s File.
Gareth Donnelly negotiates the aesthetic values of high Modernism with a light-hearted touch, contradicting the standard narrative of artistic struggle with his modesty and facility. The intimate scale of the sculptures, and the everyday materials used in both works, show us a form of Modernism ‘at ease’.