Ships That Pass (with Penny Coss)

SHIPS THAT PASS
Jo Darbyshire & Penny Coss

An exhibition held at PS Art Space
22 Pakenham Street, Fremantle.

17 March - 7 April  2017

OPENING
17 March, 6.30pm-8.30pm
EXHIBITION
18 March - 7 April

There is a catalogue available- please inquire if you would like one sent to you
All sales please contact the artist jodarbyshire@gmail.com

I would like to thank Michele Elliot, Tom Mùller, Director and staff at PS Art Space,Rob and Janet Muir from Muir Books, Perdita Phillips and Sandra Murray

Both Darbyshire and Coss aim to immerse the viewer in the tactility of painting, the seductive nature of colour and their choice of marks. Both are conceptually and curatorally ambitious, experimenting and pushing the boundaries of visual language and the slippage between abstraction and something we recognise. Darbyshire’s paintings align with an imagined relationship with the WA coast: local islands, ships in the Port and the traces of colonial life she observes in the material fabric of Fremantle. Coss uses the landscape as a backdrop for relationships of cultural exchange, specific landscape that often allude to troubled histories.
Both artists welcome the challenges inherent in working with large canvases and consider the gallery a space equally as important as the artworks. The PSAS space offers the possibility of painting being given the space it deserves to be transformative, and for it to be experienced by an audience as installation rather than decoration. This exhibition complements the architectural characteristics of the building replete with the marks and traces of its history found in the walls and pillars of the building and beyond to its proximity to the vast Indian Ocean.

Ships that pass in the night, and
speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we
pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice,
then darkness again and a silence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1874