Watercolour: Phillip Edwards and Alexandra Sasse

Watercolour, the medium of the amateur, the traveller and the British is reinvented in the contemporary landscapes of Phillip Edwards and Alexandra Sasse

Bringing together the motifs of suburbia and state forest, this exhibition contrasts the urban landscapes of Sasse with the natural world of Edwards. Phillip Edwards, winner of the Trustees Watercolour Prize at the Wynne Landscape Award, 2018, presents haunting, ethereal images that echo the sentiment of early Australian landscape artists who infused a sense of melancholy with the sublime. In contrast, Alexandra Sasse’s suburban motifs find poetry in the pragmatic, built environment. Sasse is a recent finalist in two of Australia’s most prestigious landscape awards, the John Leslie Art Prize and the Lloyd Rees Art Prize.

The exhibition will be opened by artist Graeme Drendel whose own landscape works speak of solitude and isolation. Drendel’s practice spans three decades, incorporating landscape and figure. He is also acclaimed for his portraiture and is a recent finalist in the Archibald Prize and the Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize.

Post script: Severe storms have devastated the area depicted in the body of work by Phillip Edwards; the Wombat State Forest near Daylesford. These images take on a deeper sense of transience, common to all landscape work in the twenty-first century, but significantly highlighted in the light of these recent events.