Untitled white reflection painting

BACKGROUND Untitled White Reflection was part of an exhibition, White Paintings, located in the history of the monochrome in Australia as part of the revitalisation of non-objective practice. It addresses questions of nothing and something: where a work ends and begins. The exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary addressed issues of abstraction and colour and, in addition to Thomas, included work by leading Australian artist and exhibition curator, John Nixon, as well as Melbourne and Sydney-based painters Gunter Christmann, Robert Hunter, and Karl Wiebke. CONTRIBUTION The research adds to an understanding of contemporary painting as a depiction of reality amid a cultural context in time and space. Thomas is among the first Australian abstractionists informed by the tradition of Western abstraction and non-objective art (the work of Blinky Palermo and Gerhard Richter) and the monochrome movement of Korea (Dansaekhwa) and Japan (Mono Ha Lee Ufan). Untitled White Reflection adds to knowledge of contemplative abstract practice in Australia. It employs colour (white) and surface (reflection) to set up a comparison between materiality, phenomenological readings and symbolic orders in time and space in a deceptively simple manner. By including reflected light as well as painted or pigmented light it demonstrates the complexity of signifiers and readings in a seemingly simple work, emphasising time as well as object and viewer as being carriers of content. Duration enables readings to become apparent to change. The work activates the surrounding space, but does not stop at the conventional modernist definition of the painted object: instead, via reflection, it includes light and image beyond the frame, thereby informing the environment of the work, its physical and cultural context. SIGNIFICANCE The work was included in the curated exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary whose mission is to "foster a culture of risk, collaboration and critical-thinking".