Chasing The Dragon

By Andrew Frost

Jeremy Kible is old school, using paint on canvas, collage and spray cans, and enamel on tarps.  His exhibitions at Mars Gallery in Melbourne attested to his affinities with classic modernist subjects – the composition of stencils, paint and mixed media on paper and canvas that made up the avian subjects of his 2011 exhibition All My Friends That Have Passed, I Hope They Come Back As Birds was a sweet and beautiful take on Japanese prints and street art techniques.  For his 2012 exhibition Kibel experimented with variations on the shape of poppy plants, rendered in mixed media, and despite the artists claim that the work was art about art, the subject’s suggested potency was apparent.

For Chasing The Dragon Kibel has again produced large-scale collages on paper, but for the most part the gestural elements of past series have been downplayed in favour of graphic effects.  Based in part on the artist’s “…beautiful opium field inspired journey through the farms of the Tasmanian midlands” the tension between subject and treatment is once again at the fore.

Until June 28
Art Equity, Sydney