Both Sides Now
- Mary Tonkin

This highly anticipated exhibition presents a magnificent series of recent work by eminent Australian landscape painter, Mary Tonkin.

This deeply immersive installation is comprised of large-scale oil paintings, alongside smaller scale oils, works in watercolour, gouache and collage, drawings and ceramics.

Central to this exhibition is the magnificent ‘Coprosma’ Madonna, Kalorama’ a three panelled oil painting in the form of an altarpiece, which reaches more than three metres in height and spans just over six metres in length.

‘A secular altarpiece is perhaps a nonsense; I hope its form lends an inclination toward reverence, not in a vaulted or other-worldly sense but in wonder and celebration of what is, of what it is to be present to the glory of this pocket of bush…

The image is comprised of three disparate points of view, from both sides of a long fallen tree. That great Joni Mitchell song ‘Both Sides Now’ kept occurring to me as I made this painting and in many ways it seems an appropriate title for this body of work.’

– excerpt from ‘Both Sides Now’ catalogue essay by Mary Tonkin, 2024