DOUGLAS SCHOFIELD | FORGOTTEN SCULPTURE
POST SPACE is thrilled to present a selection of Doug Schofield’s recent works at our new project space in Surry Hills. Dougie Schofield is a Sydney based emerging artist whose work is focussed on the practices of gardening and painting as modes for investigating concepts of contemporary landscape. In recent works Schofield leads us down a garden path where domestic gardening and professional horticultural practices provide a framework for us to consider our interaction with Landscape and Nature.
As the artist states “Gardens reveal our complex relationship to landscape; I believe they indicate a deep desire for a closeness with Nature and a compulsion to curate and control it.” Celebrating the persistent motion of plants and the hypnotic rhythm of their undulating growth and decay, Schofield’s paintings are organic and gestural. Using painting tools to evoke an atmosphere of gardens and seasonality he transforms traditional representation of the landscape through a maximalist abstraction. Here the surfaces are worked, dug, scratched, grown, dappled with light and thick with rain - they are the place from which they were made in nature. Schofield’s ongoing body of work journals and ponders on the bodily experience in landscape in relation to his gardening practice.
As a gardener and horticulturalist, the climate and weather are determining factors in daily activities. Douglas notes, “We are witnessing dramatic, unseasonal and severe weather nation and worldwide. My practices of gardening and painting put me in contact with this change daily.” Schofield’s recent direction gently reflects on our current scenario where weather impacts our engagement with landscape and the natural world and speculates a future which dictates our ability to be outside.
Douglas grew up in Eden, on the Far South Coast of NSW, in his parents rambling garden. This early immersion in Nature has resulted in a practice that focuses on gardens as curious sites of Nature/Human interaction. Schofield has had solo and group exhibitions nationally and has been exhibited internationally in China, Spain, and the Philippines. He currently has work on display in the Macquarie Group collection, Sydney. and 2017 he graduated Fine Art (Hons) at UNSW Art & Design, with a major inpainting and minor in printmaking.
