Falling Without Weight at Blindside Gallery, Melbourne.

Caitlin Aloisio Shearer , Grace Chandler, Rebecca Suares-Jury

31 Jul–24 Aug 2024

The notion of Falling Without Weight relates to rising and falling simultaneously. An elusive state of assuming two antithetical qualities, such as being unmoored in a world that resists logic, whilst anchoring oneself in that same world through the creative act. In their ethereal exploration of this persistent contradiction, these paintings utilise this dichotomous framework to look at the sublime in everyday experience and the absurd within the mundane. In the liminal space between reality and fantastical representation, painting becomes a visual language to render sense from the nonsensical.

In combining Aloisio Shearer’s uncanny paintings of women, Chandler’s depiction of illusory domestic spaces and Suares-Jury’s dreamlike botanical abstractions; the viewer sees three interpretations of subject matter traditionally associated with the feminine. These ostensibly feminine subjects are often attributed less cultural value than those associated with masculinity. While the feminine is often dismissed as frivolous, overly sentimental or ungrounded, it is in fact rich with insight into the most pertinent and ubiquitous aspects of life.