Cathy Drummond: Hot Potatoes

4th– 25th May 2019

The new paintings in Cathy Drummond’s latest exhibition continue to reflect her interest in the built environment, how we shape it, and how it shapes our lives. Through painting she approaches our relationship to place, home, community and shared spaces.

For more than twenty years she has been painting the buildings, shops and streets of everyday Melbourne, attracted by their colour and shapes, their cultural significance and particular character. Lamentably, many of these places have disappeared, victims of development and gentrification in a rapidly changing city.

In this latest body of work, a fascination with the possibilities of oil paint continues as the capturing of Melbourne’s evolving built history almost coincidentally appears as a continuing theme. The recent news that the Hot Potatoes shop in Smith Street may soon be closing its doors due to increasing rent, is proof once again of the importance of these paintings to our collective Melbourne memory.