Image: Thomas Thorby-Lister, Site Action 23 (Gentle Ripple).
SITE ACTIONS presents a series of site-responsive paintings that engage intimately with the natural environment that surrounds Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf. The artist uses the landscape as an active participant in the creative process: embedded within Blackburn Gardens, sheets of linen are exposed to the elements—rain, wind, sun and water—allowing these natural forces to shape and imprint their textures onto the fabric. The resulting artworks capture the raw, textural imprints of the weather, rendered in subtle monochromatic tones that reflect the natural hues of the environment. These paintings evoke the contours of topographic maps, inviting viewers to connect with the sensory experience of the landscape and fostering emotional and intuitive responses.
Thomas Thorby-Lister is a visual artist whose work explores surface, space, and time across mediums such as painting, video, prints, drawings and sculpture. His practice challenges traditional representations of information, offering alternative depictions of physical environments through abstraction, fieldwork and site-specific projects. Themes of geography, agency and environmental issues are at the core of his more recent works, creating spaces that invite emotional responses and reinterpretation. Thorby-Lister has been a finalist in over 20 art prizes, including the John Glover Art Prize, and has exhibited at prestigious venues such as Orange Regional Gallery and Annandale Galleries. His work has earned multiple awards and grants.