SOLO EXHIBITIONS
‘Shiftscapes’
27 March - 19 April 2025, Boom Gallery, Victoria
Exhibition statement:
"In this series of paintings, Liz Wickramasinghe draws inspiration from the inner coastal and wetland landscapes of Wadawurrung country, particularly the environment surrounding her home near the Surf Coast of Victoria. Her work combines various processes, including painting, masking, and relief-printmaking techniques, to create richly layered surfaces. By interweaving elements of pattern, line, and repetition, Wickramasinghe seeks to capture the complexities of the ecologies within her landscape compositions. The smaller paintings offer playful abstract interpretations of her larger works. The colour shifts in these pieces symbolize the natural changes occurring within the landscapes, such as variations in sunlight, plant cycles, seasonal transitions, and other natural rhythms. These transitional changes also reflect the evolving shifts within Wickramasinghe’s own artistic practice, illustrating her ongoing refinement of focus and process."
(Photography by @carliwilsonphotography)
‘Textile Terrain’
14 September - 8 October 2023, Boom Gallery, Victoria
> View gallery catalogue here
Exhibition statement:
"In making these works, I have drawn on some of my earliest and most profound visual memories from childhood that have shaped my practice as an artist. Textile Terrain is an exploratory body of work which interweaves mountainous Australian bush-scapes and the intricate patterns of textile design.
Having spent much of my younger life bushwalking, rock and mountain climbing with my wilderness-loving family, landscapes of bold mountain silhouettes and the tangled patterns of dense bushland have left a deep impression on my visual memory. In a domestic setting, some of my earliest hand-making experiences were of sewing and textile making with my mother and grandmother. Creating rudimentary weavings and patchworks with scraps of fabric, learning to cross-stitch, embroider, fix, and make clothes cemented my early fascination with intricate details and patterns.
I have sought to highlight visual similarities from each of these themes with a cross-over of elements such as line, shape, repetition, and colour. Lines of threading and stitching can look like the angled branches of a forest; stacked, geological rock-strata can bear similarities to a beginner’s patchwork or tapestry; scrubland foliage can appear as a botanical lacework. I have used printmaking, painting, and masking techniques in the making of these works. This multi-layered process of revealing and concealing imagery is reminiscent of the process of weaving, further referencing textile patterns within abstracted landscapes."
(Photography by @carliwilsonphotography)
‘Marshland Rise’
9 September - 3 October 2021, Boom Gallery, Victoria
> View gallery catalogue here
Exhibition statement:
"Since moving from the inner suburbs of Melbourne to Armstrong Creek in the outskirts of Geelong, my everyday visual experiences have undergone a big shift. These paintings are a series which have been informed by the varied landscape surrounding my new home.
Like many places, this landscape has many layers. Wadawurrung People are the Traditional Owners of this land. Geographically, it is a vast, natural floodplain of Lake Connewarre and surrounding coastal inlets and wetlands. There is a postcolonial history of farming which still exist in much of the area; many old, run-down farms surround the marshlands, swamp gum forests and gaming reserves. However this region has recently been going through huge shift in the last decade as many new, ever-expansive, housing developments are now transforming this landscape into vast, residential suburbs. I am personally part of that change - my own family home is a new-build house.
This series of works is a direct study of these surroundings which I now live. My paintings are abstracted, some-what surreal landscapes, inspired by the old farms, marshy grasslands and new housing constructions. While new coastal wetlands, grasslands, creeks and billabongs have been re-cultivated in these new developments (creating a new home to wildlife), a sea of pitched roofs and housing construction now sit upon the flat horizon, creating an almost mountain-like presence in the landscape. Their newness contrasts the dilapidated barns, rusted farming equipment and wire fences nearby. This body of work aims to capture both the tension and harmony of the construction, re-construction and history of this landscape and blur the line between what is human-made and what is natural. In my process, I have used elements of hard edged line, technical drawings and geometric shapes alongside organic forms and scratched, splashed, printed and brushed paint work. In each composition, the marshlands dominate the foreground however the housing-like shapes overlook the horizon. Both elements are vast and seem competitive and are reflective of this new, changed landscape."
(Photography by @carliwilsonphotography)