Paul Saint
Slab

Objects partially cast or almost finished or somehow straining to remain upright—baskets and pots, poles, pillars and boxes. Mirrors, frames, sheets of note paper gauged and measured. The heft of a form in space considered. Comic book pages, playing cards and stamps copied, ordered, arranged and overwritten. Photographic surfaces excised. Images folded back over and previous objects or incarnations re-examined. From the late ‘80s through to the present Paul Saint has been making things that simultaneously infer purpose, reference and meaning… yet evade exactly that. Drawing on things within reach, from rubbish bins to mirrors, making forms at once beautiful, contemplative and somehow forlorn in their inevitable demise, Saint works the space between ‘technique and personality’ (to borrow from the title of a 1994 solo exhibition).

The largest exhibition of Paul Saint’s work to date, Slab was a survey or sorts, but less a filtering and ordering than a reunion of works and ideas, materials and images across the full set of Artspace galleries—an opportunity to gather together work crossing time and processes into new configurations, to introduce new work into the mix, to reappraise former conversations and to generate new.

Sydney-based Paul Saint (b.1960) has exhibited throughout Australia as well as in Germany, Thailand and New Zealand. He has featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Australian Perspecta 1995 and everyday, the 1998 Biennale of Sydney, and has held solo exhibitions at a range of galleries including Gitte Weise Gallery, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and Firstdraft. The titles of many of his solo projects reflect the humble humour in his practice: rules + suits; Meagre; Palatial; Rat a tat tat; When a great artist makes a gun; Three Vases and a Ball; Towards a Cultural Future; The pot was awful; Technique & Personality; Slump; Boy Friday; Botanical Studies; Goodbye to All That; and Can’t See the Wood for the Trees.

The exhibition was opened by Max Delany, Director, Monash University Museum of Art