Paul Gundry

Paul Gundry – All About The Weather
Review by Andrew Harper, TasWeekend 26/10/2024
Paul Gundry is an artist who deserves more notice. I’ve been watching his work change and develop for a long time now, and he has a pointed, near obsessive, investigation that looks at subtle shifts of localised weather phenomenon, finding a beauty that has hints of complex critical theory, the traditions of Romantic painting, a strange, otherworldly sensuality, and a profound fascination with light and heaviness of a rain cloud and that locally unique contrast of rain and sun. He also manages to capture that classic ‘four seasons in 15 minutes’ weather, the slow rolling drama of fog, the oddness of the human interventions on kunanyi.
That wet silver-grey glow of the bright winter weather is gloriously captured, but there’s something more here – you feel in these small, precise works that Gundry himself stands in a quiet rapture, breathing in the wet air, seeking the brief poetic moment that he will convert into an image.
This new collection of works builds on previous shows, but has its own statement to make: Gundry’s fascination with mist and fog is truly the centre of this series. The works observe and capture that subtle delicate fading, the way lines of land and vision are blurred as they are consumed by the water-drenched air. It could be just imagery, but it could also be memory; Gundry has long had a hint of allegory to be found in his work.