Perceptions and experiences of place inform Bridie Gillman’s paintings, abstracted to convey the felt rather than the seen. A childhood spent in Indonesia, and many subsequent cross-cultural residencies, has seen her capture the layers of travel in her practice. Watching Walls is a new and sumptuous body of work (paintings, ceramic sculpture, and a soundscape made in collaboration with her partner, musician Reuben Schafer) emerging from a residency in Portugal’s Arraiolos. The small inland town is best known for its historic buildings (often blue and white) and its rug-making traditions.
Gillman was living in an 18th century building, absorbing the layering of paint and frescoes on the walls, the light which changed with time of day, and the sounds and movements of people around the town. The backdrop of church bells, which chime every half hour, imbue the large canvases she produced here with a sense of punctuated time.
The installation titled Her mother’s room holds the soundscape. A single family owned this building over generations until fifteen years ago, with Maria Angelica the last of the family. Gillman, sleeping in Maria Angelica’s mother’s room, was surrounded with the original furniture.[1] Here the light and colour shifted the pink walls from red to gold; these moments are captured with a sense of disquiet. In her awareness of the histories in this room are those who have gone before, lingering.
Gillman’s rugs (created using a technique she learnt in Arraiolos and with wool produced there, and which viewers may sit on) rest on a plinth in the centre of the installation. Ranging around them, paintings titled Her mother’s room are immersive. In Her mother’s room (through the doors) (2023) clouds of translucent paint in muted colours (pink, gold, grey, blue) are anchored by rust red sections on either side. They recreate the layers of history carried by the walls with the flatness of thinner rust-coloured areas, pinned between the past and contemporary experience. For Gillman, ‘It is important that people know each work is about a specific observation, that the paintings are rooted in reality. Though of course, everyone brings their own experience.’
Other paintings, such as Touched, rubbed, worn. (2023) are gestural and open, with luminosity that holds an afterimage in the retina. Marks capture space in shades of pink and white, drawing together and then apart, a reminder of amorphous skies as the day lightens. Its surface engages, shape-shifting nuances that speak to the longevity of this environment. Gillman’s abstract ceramic sculptures are tactile, expressions of the ineffable in their surfaces, their sinuous shape, colour variations and treatment.
This exhibition sees Gillman using her painterly evocations to take us deep inside a past that is caught and ameliorated with the now. They make tangible her emotional responses in a way that engages our own.
Louise Martin-Chew, 2023
[1] Gillman said, ‘Maria Angelica was an artist, had no children and few resources, so the building fell into disrepair. The pink room I occupied was her mother's room, and it looks almost exactly as it was found, same faded pink walls, furniture and broken chandelier. It is interesting to me that Maria Angelica didn't sleep in this room (the best one in my opinion!). Rather she kept it as a type of memorial.’
Reminiscent of the early 20th century action painters, Bridie Gillman’s mark-making is an intuitive response to the memories and emotions evoked from her cross-cultural experiences. Initially inspired by her childhood in Indonesia, the now Brisbane-based artist’s practice has evolved to consider more broadly concepts of place, reactions to the environments through which she has travelled, her connection to land as a non-indigenous Australian and the intangibility of memory.
Spontaneous and physical, Gillman’s compositions capture the tension between reminiscence and experience, wanderlust and belonging, combining instinctive use of colour and gesture with literal, poetic titles that hint at sentiments beyond.
Bridie Gillman is an alumna of Queensland College of Art, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours) in 2013. In 2019 she was a finalist of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, winner of the Moreton Bay Art Award and finalist in the Fisher's Ghost Award at Campbelltown Art Centre. She is a past finalist of the Redland Art Award, the MAMA National Photography Prize, Murray Art Museum Albury, and PRIZENOPRIZE, Gold Coast (all 2016), as well as the 2013 GAS Graduate Art Show, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally including the Museum of Brisbane, Metro Arts, Brisbane, The Walls, Gold Coast, Blindside, Melbourne and Run Amok, George Town, Malaysia and she has undertaken residencies at Rimbun Dahan, George Town, Malaysia, in 2015 and Ketjil Bergerak, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2014.
Congratulations to Bridie Gillman whose work 'Pink room, pink womb' has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
The Ramsay Art Prize supports contemporary Australian artists under 40 to make their best work in any medium and of any scale. Supported in perpetuity by the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, finalist works are selected by a panel of judges and shown at the Art Gallery of South Australia in a major exhibition opening 31 May, 2025.
IMAGE:
Bridie Gillman Pink room, pink womb 2024 oil on canvas, timber, tufted wool, audio soundscape 202 x 190 x 162cm
"For Bridie Gillman’s latest exhibition Sight Lines at Edwina Corlette, Brisbane, the paintings invite a moment
of pause. A moment to be in the landscape. Hear the wind and rain. Watch the shadows dance in the
foliage. Gillman invited this energy in the repetition of line, form, and colour—translated from the rural
typology. Engaging not only the senses we resonate with on an immediate basis (like smell, sight, touch,
taste, hear), but also the ones we don’t—memory and emotion—for a tapping into the subconscious.
In her large-scale abstract paintings, Gillman presents her recollections of Bundjalung Country in Northern
NSW. The landscape through the Tweed Valley—Brays Creek and Murwillumbah—and her observations of
the winding 33km road between the two. One the artist comments is full of lines: ridge lines, fence lines,
tree lines, shadow lines, sight lines, tyre lines, dotted lines, and solid lines. These are translated into fresh
gestures, textured surfaces, and expressive mark making.
Vast in size at 168 x 213cm, Breathing in a cloud (2024) was one of the first artworks the usually based in
Brisbane artist created on her residency in the country. After a time when she was struggling to create in
her home studio in the city. Painting in a horse shed in Brays Creek, Gillman observed a sense of working
in a micro-climate specific to her location up the mountain. The feeling of being in a cloud with the weather
rolling through. The artwork, full of varying shades of grey, buzzing on the canvas, replicates the sense of
drizzle and immersion in the elements.
With Gillman’s studio in the heart of Murwillumbah town, she builds on the canvases first worked on in
the farm. In Between the lines (2025), 153 x 122cm, the artist has used old pieces of canvas, stitched
together for a geometric abstract, in varying shades of green, thick with paint. The viewer may view the
artworks as the artist views this rural landscape. Divided, gridded, agricultural, with light peeking through
the composition. She comments that each painting starts with a specific memory or observation — holding
an initial reference point and isolating the colours. Perhaps the ridge lines or the blues and purples of the
eucalyptus mountains.
Paintings like Listening to the grass (2024) and Shifting shapes (2024) are full of dark and textured mark
making, quickly worked and full of energy. More so than the artist’s other series of works. Here, the artist
reveals her interest in exploring new methodologies of mark-making. What before would be painted out,
are now held onto. The artworks reveal the action, the moment of life they are created within, and the
moment they set out to capture. Painting, sewing, drawing, and sanding back are all used on the surface.
Colour pulled forwards and pulled back, adding depth and that sense of looking through the landscape at
the light and shadow that form.
Completely green with darkly worked lines, Listening to the grass evokes being in the landscape during the
day. But Shifting shapes represents the isolation of the country at night and the sense you get from being
the only person around. Gillman says this work is like night vision; your eyes adjust to the light and the
dark. Where things move and push in and out, a vibration. Shapes becoming other. In particular as she
notes her isolation in these new places. Away from people. Immersed in the landscape.
Here is where the magic of Sight Lines is revealed as Gillman captures her sense of being light and
unburdened, and completely alone, in awe of the environment with time to reflect. We are witness to
how art allows for a tapping, an entering, of another realm, where reality and fiction intermingle with
memory and emotion."
We are thrilled to congratulate Bridie Gillman on being selected as a finalist in the 2024 John Leslie Art Prize with her painting ‘Hanging, holding.’
The $20,000 Acquisitive Prize is named after John Leslie OBE (1919—2016), Patron of the Gippsland Art Gallery and celebrates landscape painting by Australian artists.
Bridie’s work will be on exhibition amongst the other finalists from 7 September to 24 November at the Gippsland Art Gallery, in Sale, Victoria.
Congratulations to Bridie Gillman who is a finalist for the The Elaine Bermingham National Watercolour Prize for her work 'Night Lines'.
Celebrating excellence and innovation in the watercolour medium, this non-acquisitive prize offers a winning of $20,000 generously donated by Elaine Bermingham.
Selected finalists will be exhibited at QCA Galleries, located within Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art and Design at South Bank, Brisbane from 30 November 2023 - 11 January 2024.
Bridie Gillman is a finalist in the 2023 Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize for her work 'Quiet, after the storm' (2023).
The inaugural Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize is a major acquisitive prize of $25,000, that seeks to explore our reciprocal and inextricable relationship with the environment through contemporary art.
Selected artworks provide unique perspectives on industrialised landscapes, the forces of extreme weather events, our relationship to domestic gardens, ecological concerns and speculative solutions, ruminations on the beauty and power of nature, and much more.
The finalists’ exhibition, is held at the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery 23 September to 12 November 2023
Bridie Gillman completed a residency at Córtex Frontal, for a 6 week placement in an 18th century building located in Arraiolos, Alentejo, Southern Portugal, in April 2023.
Córtex Frontal is a multidisciplinary cultural project created in 2016 by the Cultural Association Córtexcult, in Arraiolos, Évora, Alentejo. The artists in residence program aims to provide the time and space to develop a project, fostering the sharing of experiences between artists and the community.
Bridie's new body of work directly inspired by her time spent at Córtex Frontal will be exhibited in her upcoming show, Watching Walls at Edwina Corlette Gallery 4 October - 24 October 2023.
Córtex Frontal is part of the Portuguese Contemporary Art Networks RPAC.
Bridie Gillman has been been selected as one of six finalists in the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is now in its 21st year and is open to Australian painters aged between 20 and 30 years. It was created from an endowment by Mrs Beryl Whiteley in 1999. The inspiration was the profound effect international travel and study had on her son, the artist Brett Whiteley, as a result of winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship in 1959 at the age of 20.
Brisbane Art Design festival is a 17-day festival of exhibitions, performances, talks, art tours, workshops and open studios of artists and designers in Brisbane. BAD showcases more than 150 Brisbane artists across all career stages.
Bridie Gillman collaborated with Brisbane designer Alexander Loterztain to make the work Breath as part of the festival held at Museum of Brisbane.
The Moreton Bay Regional Art Award is an annual acquisitive exhibition proudly sponsored by the Moreton Bay Council. This year the Art Award offered an acquisitive prize of $8000, four category prizes of $2000 each, and two supplementary $1000 prizes for a Local Artist and a People's Choice Award.
Judged by Megan Williams, Manager of the University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery, Bridie Gillman was awarded the overall winner with her work 'Some sort of growth' 2018.
Megan Williams commented: 'The artist's sense of the materiality of paint, the play of colour, darkness and light make it a very strong and visually arresting painting. The colours reference the natural environment and you get a sense of the artists awe and love of nature, however, its abstract quality resists clear and direct communication. It is a work to become immersed in, to sit with, and to contemplate.'
Bridie Gillman's work as featured in Woven Kolektif's looking here, looking north exhibition at Casula Powerhouse has been reviewed in Art Asia Pacific Magazine.
At the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney, a video portrays the interior of a restaurant, its walls decorated with Australian-flag bunting, and kitsch Australiana tea towels and posters, positioning us inside an ostensibly Australian establishment. It is revealed in subsequent shots of the staff, clientele, and the beach outside, however, that this is in fact a tourist spot in Bali. Bridie Gillman’s video work Bali State of Mind (2017–18) ruminates on the unequal power dynamic between Australia and Indonesia, the latter being economically reliant on tourism and subject to the objectifying tourist gaze that comes with over one million Australians visiting annually.
Gillman is one of seven artists included in the exhibition 'looking here looking north' by members of Woven, a collective with “continuing personal connections to Indonesia.” While Gillman’s work is subtly political, the exhibition holistically was striking in its ability to reach beyond essentialist identity politics, reconfiguring what it means to be part of the Indonesian diaspora by speaking to universal themes of memory, place and belonging.
- Soo-Min Shim, Art Asia Pacific Magazine
looking here looking north is on view at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, 12 January - March 17, 2019
looking here looking north is an exhibition by Woven, a collective of artists who each have continuing personal connections to Indonesia. Themes of identity, memory and cross-cultural experience are explored through performance, painting, installation, photography, video and sculpture.
Featuring work by: Kartika Suharto-Martin, Ida Lawrence, Mashara Wachjudy, Bridie Gillman, Sofiyah Ruqayah, Alfira O’Sullivan and Leyla Stevens.
looking here looking northis presented alongside an exhibition by artist Frances Larder and an exhibition of video works by Jumaadi as part of a suite of exhibitions showcasing perspectives on Indonesia.
The exhibition is on view at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, 12 January - March 17, 2019
John Aslanidis, Belem Lett and Bridie Gillman are finalists in the 2018 Fisher's Ghost Award through Campbelltown Arts Centre.
The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is part of Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost. Held over 10 days, the Festival dates back to 1956 and celebrates Australia’s most famous ghost – Frederick Fisher.
The Open section of the Art Award is acquisitive to the Campbelltown Art Centre permanent collection and the artist is awarded prize-money of $20,000. Over the years, the prize has been won by some of Australia's most well respected contemporary artists.
Jo Hoban from the Design Files recently caught up with Bridie Gillman in her Brisbane studio.
Brisbane-based artist Bridie Gillman is inspired by cross-cultural experiences – from a childhood growing up in Indonesia, to residencies abroad and trips across Australia. Her bold, striking compositions convey moody landscapes, exploring both emotional and physical terrain.
