Artist’s Statement
David Freney-Mills – Gallery Elysium 2021
Through his paintings, Melbourne artist David Freney-Mills explores the visual properties of text. He does this via painting layers of ink on Mulberry paper, choosing a single word for each painting. Through fragmenting and repeating the text he creates abstract arrangements that convey a sense of flux and transformation. Freney-Mills’ paintings are akin to organisms made up of accumulated layers and traces of decisions. In different paintings the text overlaps in chance combinations, weaving throughout the atmospheric surfaces created by the artist.
Freney-Mills uses text to represent matter and it’s shifting nature as a vehicle for energy. The text is also evocative of human consciousness in a state of constant re-invention, absorbing perceptions of colours and light from the outside world while also focused within it’s inner space, both outer and inner worlds have frontiers for awareness to push into, in both directions a void is contemplated, not a sterile void but one fertile with possibilities from which all forms, all ideas and realizations come.
Porous Amorphous no.52_184cmWx 214cmH_Mixed media on canvas(Ink,Hanji paper $14,500
CURRICULUM VITAE
DAVID FRENEY-MILLS
Lives and works in Melbourne.
E-Mail: davidfreneymills@gmail.com
EDUCATION
1994 Bachelor of Arts Fine Art Painting RMIT.
1999 Studio Access Course-Latrobe Street School of Art & Design
Travelled and worked in Europe from May 2000 to July 2003.
2005 Graduate Diploma in Visual Art-Victorian College of the Arts.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2016 The Spaces are as Important as the Words, Yarra Sculpture Gallery, Collingwood.
2019 LINK, Australia China Arts Exchange (ACAE) Gallery, Canterbury – curated by
Chonggang Du
2019 Haenam International SUMUK workshop, Haenam Arts and Culture Centre,
Korea.
“2019 Haenam International SUMUK workshop”, Sooyun Art Space, Haenam, Korea.
2021 Group exhibition, Anne Gallery, South Yarra
2021 Transcendence, Gallery Elysium, Hawthorn
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2015 Sublimation Cycle, Rubicon ARI, North Melbourne.
2016 Porous Amorphous, Community Project Wall – Hawthorn Arts Centre
2017 Alchemical Text, Alternating Current Art Space, Windsor.
2018 Oracular Nebula, Five Walls Projects, Footscray.
2019 Text-ecology, Alternating Current Art Space, Windsor.
2021 A Reign of Green – Green Rain House, ACAE Gallery, Canterbury.
AWARDS AND PRIZES
2005 Finalist Athenaeum Club Visual Arts Award- Athenaeum Club Melbourne
2007 Finalist Agendo Art Prize- Gardner Galleries, Richmond.
RESIDENCIES
2016 to Present – Artist-in-Residence at Hawthorn Arts Centre.
2019 Sumuk Ink Painting Residency, Haenam Cultural Arts Centre, Haenam City, Korea.
TV
2019 Interview by MBC News network, South Korea
http://naver.me/5l8Y2dk2
RADIO
2016 Alex McCulloch Arts Show: http://www.alexmccullochart.com.au/the-arts-show-5-may-2016/ (interview begins at 44.10 mark)
2017 Alex McCulloch Arts Show: http://www.alexmccullochart.com.au/the-arts-show-may-24-2017/ (interview begins at 33.27 mark)
COLLECTIONS
St Vincents Hospital, Melbourne.
Haengchon Cultural Art Foundation Collection – Haenam, Korea.
Sooyun Artspace Collection – Haenam, Korea.
Private collections in Australia and Europe.
A Reign of Green 184cmWx214cmH_mixed media on canvas(Ink,Hanji paper $14,500
A Reign of Green no.1_mixed media on canvas(Ink,Mingeishi paper)61cmWx76cmH
A Reign of Green no.1_mixed media on canvas(Ink,Mingeishi paper)61cmWx76cmH $500
Green Rain House no.8_mixed media on canvas(ink,Hanji paper $500
Green Rain House no.9_mixed media on canvas(Ink, Hanji paper $500
Porous Amorphous no.42_Mixed media on canvas9Ink,Kozo paper $2,500
Porous Amorphous no.43_Mixed media on canvas (Ink,Kozo paper) 61cmWx76cmH $2.500
Porous Amorphous no.48_Mixed media on canvas(Ink,Mingeishi paper) 61cmWx76cmH $2,500
Porous Amorphous no.50_Mixed media on canvas(Ink,Mingeishi paper) 61cmWx76cmH $2,500
Porous Amorphous no.51_mixed media on canvas(Ink,Mingeishi paper)61cmWx76cmH $2,500
Sublimation Cycle no 30 MIxed Media on panel ( Ink Mgheishi Paper. 25x30cm $2.500
Sublimation Cycle no.24_mixed media on panel(Ink, Kozo paper $2,500
Sublimation Cycle no.25_mixed media on canvas(Ink,Kozo paper)51cmWx61cmH $1,500
/Sublimation cycle no.26_Mixed media on canvas(Ink,Kozo paper)51cmWx61cmH $1,500
/Sublimation cycle no.27_Mixed media on canvas(Ink,Kozo paper)51cmWx61cmH $1,500
Sublimation Cycle no.29_mixed media on panel(Ink, Mingeishi paper)25cmWx30cmH $500
Sublimation Cycle no.31_mixed media on panel(Ink,Mingeishi paper) 25cmWx30cmH $500
Transcendence no.1_Mixed media on canvas (Ink,hanji paper)92cmWx107cmH $3,500
Transcendence no.2_Mixed media on canvas(Ink,Hanji paper)92cmWx107cmH $3,500