Chris Carmody: All The Time

Overview

This exhibition brings together two bodies of work – recent Cover paintings and a new series of Bookend paintings. The Cover paintings respond observationally to specific faded books and are titled with the particular book's library call number. The Bookend paintings, on the other hand, are imagined and improvised in the studio. Chris painted the Bookends in parallel with the Covers, first preparing grisaille silhouettes using spray paint and then drawing directly from the palette of particular fades to layer different colours. One thing dries while another is revised, removing and returning, walking back and forth. There is a search occurring within the works. Overall, many of these works have a sense of letting the books go and allowing the surface incident to simply arrive. As such, the Bookend paintings anchor the recent Cover paintings with an understanding of how painted time can relate to faded time.

Chris Carmody graduated from Canberra School of Art in 2009 with work represented in private and public collections, including the ANU Art Collection and the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre. All the Time expands on the distillation of Fluorescent Array, his successful exhibition with Civic Art Bureau in 2025.