Chris Carmody: ALL THE TIME

Opening 3pm Saturday 13 June.

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 graduated from Canberra School of Art in 2009 and received the Qantas Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award in 2012, travelling to document faded library books across Australia and overseas. Since this time Carmody has painted and exhibited whilst moving about from Canberra to the Blue Mountains and the remote communities of Yuendumu and Nyirripi, NT, where he worked with Warlukurlangu Artists Inc. Carmody now lives in Meanjin/Brisbane, where he works in Libraries and has returned to the subject of faded books. Carmody’s work is represented in private and public collections including The ANU Art Collection and the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre. All the Time expands on the distillation of Fluorescent Array, his successful exhibition with Civic Art Bureau in 2025.