A beautiful collection of paintings by Lauren McCartney, which were completed for her honours at UOW for an exhibition called Multiple Personality Order. These paintings are made up of tiny grids that from a distance look very abstracted, but on closer inspection are actually tightly structured and meticulously composed. Her sculptural pieces, Three Cubes, appear as if one of the squares have jumped off the canvas and into a 3-dimensionality. Of her work, McCartney says:

The body of work in Multiple Personality Order is an exploration of colour, light and space through the repetition of brushstrokes set in place by the grid. The title refers to the balance between order and chaos, between the mechanical repetition of the grid and the unpredictable nature of gesture.

Repetition and rhythm are the basis for the composition of my paintings. My works use the grid as a guide for the structure of the finished painting, although I don’t let the grid restrict the brushstrokes, instead a subtle overlap of lines occurs as I allow the combination of the rhythmic and spontaneous actions of painting to be the dominant outcome.

Photography by Boni Cairncross.