By Tanya Steele
Artist Stephen Glover’s ‘Fragments of Experience’ exhibit is on display from Saturday 1 July until Sunday 6 August at the Yering Station Art Gallery.
Glover said the work is in essence about memory and his expression of experiences moving through the world as he sees it.
“It’s about being around for a couple of months and just soaking up what I see where I go and what interests me,” he said.
Glover’s work provides visual conversation and feasts the eyes with urban grunge colour palettes in winding patterns that the viewer can play with.
“It is about play and intuition and trusting your gut,” he said.
This is the first time his work will be exhibited in this gallery and Glover said it is such an excellent location and he is looking forward to installing his work there.
“My main purpose of exhibiting is really to get all of these pieces in a space where they can be seen at their best and they can speak to each other in the room and not distracted by all the ephemera,” he said.
Despite the natural scenery in his home in Kalorama, the artist is drawn to the urban landscapes and grungy vibe that encapsulates Melbourne.
“I love the patinaed surfaces of rusty old dump trucks and industrial bins with all the metallic surfaces and layers of paint,” he said.
This exhibition’s form of abstract style was developed by Glover through Covid, where he experimented with almost a jigsaw style of using cut up canvas on wood then moved on to several different abstract college styles.
“Collage and placement and working small was a really, actually a really good thing because it kept the cogs turning,” he said.
The work is subjective and Glover said it poses questions and truth to the viewer.
“Your memory of something will be different to mine and how you tell it,” he said.
“There’s this sort of philosophical arching kind of bent to it.”
Glover said inspiration could come from sitting at the lights and looking at the world around him.
“There may be a truck next to me and I’ll just look at it, it has this narrative attached to it that tells a story because of where those scratches and marks come from,” he said.
The artist has a studio he shares with Rain White at Stain Studio at the Burrinja Cultural Centre and he enjoys the collaborative aspect of having a shared space.
“It’s quite rare with an artist, you’re often in the studio alone, here you have people around all the time,” he said.
Staying in this abstract space is on Glover’s horizon for the time being and he said in the future he would like to scale up and continue experimenting.
“I would like to do some larger works, which take more work with composition and planning,” he said.
“So I have intentions to work in a similar aesthetic, to keep exploring and I think there’s a fair way to go.”
Fragments of Experience will feature at Yering Station Art Gallery from Saturday 1 July until Sunday 6 August.
