“Queensland Melbourne, Melbourne Queensland”

Brin Cloud

22nd October - 2nd November
Opening night Friday 24th October 6-8pm

Artist Statement

It was six months after I moved to Brisbane.
It was a week after losing six months' worth of photos.
It was 2 days after I moved into a new house,
and I was browsing Facebook Marketplace.

And here I am, a day later, on a Nambour train to Morayfield, chatting with a lady to get more details. She is offering to pick me up from the train station. I'll be okay, I said. The 54-minute walk was not particularly scenic, but the house I arrived at, was. Sharon was abrupt but nice; she led me to her studio where thousands of paintings were stacked against all four walls. We had coffee and I bought a painting. Ever since, I found myself engaging in much shorter conversations with people in op shops, markets, and houses, all in an effort to acquire what some might call dull paintings.

The years that followed were a mix of collecting, editing, and reworking artworks that frame the Australian landscapes. In 5 years I have visited towns and cities all along the east coast and gathered paintings of landscapes that I enjoyed, explored or lived in. 

The way the painters framed nature did not satisfy me. This project was born to take control over these paintings, and perhaps in some way, over my life. I used lines, shapes, and colors to reframe the work and change the narrative, and tell familiar stories. Regardless of the original story they were trying to tell, I wanted to tell mine, and I, I tell lies.

“I Tell Lies” was the title of my first solo exhibition. This one follows the same storyline but focuses on my journey along the east coast; hence the name “Queensland Melbourne, Melbourne Queensland”, inspired by the many flights. The reworked paintings reflect stories I’ve overheard, fragments of strangers’ lives that lingered in my consciousness, prompting my curiosity to analyze what’s more to the story, to mirror what I’ve heard into my own life, to overthink, and ultimately to translate them into paintings rooted in those places.

Artist Biography

Brin Cloud is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist who uses photography, manipulation, installation, paint, text, readymades, and artisanal work to reflect and interrogate the value of beauty and manicured aesthetics in visual art narratives, they question the interplay of identity and human stories in and out of the artwork context.

Their work is seeded from a range of influences including social media, minimalism, architecture, and their perception of people’s stories. Brin translates their ideas into a physical matter outside the barriers of a specific medium.

@brincloud

Please contact us if you are interested in any of these works or would like additional images.