Chris Carmody: ALL THE TIME

Chris Carmody
Bookend 1 2025
acrylic and spray paint on canvas
51.0 x 40.5 cm

This exhibition brings together two bodies of work – recent Cover paintings and a new series of Bookend paintings. The Cover paintings respond observationally to specific faded books and are titled with the particular book’s library call number. The Bookend paintings on the other hand are imagined and improvised in the studio. I painted the Bookends in parallel with the Covers, first preparing grisaille silhouettes using spray paint and then drawing directly from the palette of particular fades to layer different colours. One thing dries while another is revised, removing and returning, walking back and forth. There is a search occurring within the works. Overall, many of these works have a sense of letting the books go and allowing the surface incident to simply arrive. As such, the Bookend paintings anchor the recent Cover paintings with an understanding of how painted time can relate to faded time.

Chris Carmody, May 2026

 

Chris Carmody, born Canberra 1986, currently lives and works in Brisbane. Chris graduated from Canberra School of Art in 2009 and has continued his studio practice whilst moving around Australia working in Libraries and the Arts. Chris has held numerous exhibitions in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Alice Springs and Brisbane. Chris’s works were recently included in Colour and Form at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Art Gallery and Conjunction at the Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra. Chris returns to Civic Art Bureau to follow up his 2025 exhibition Fluorescent Array, sharing further developments in his painting practice which deals with faded library books.