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Ewelina Madry 2009 Australia
600 x 850 mm, oil on board, 2009
In Your Face
Paintings by Ewelina Madry
fortyfivedownstairs
Tuesday 27 October 2009 to Saturday 07 November 2009
In Your Face is a series of portraits of the residents of a Rooming House in St Kilda, Melbourne. It is a study of faces, gnarled and worn, frantic and joyful, faces perhaps rarely appreciated and often overlooked in the western world.
Ewelina Madry has painted this series of portraits close-up and head-on, resulting in an aspect that is in some cases intimate and gives the viewer the feeling that they are in the presence of the subject.
Madry’s portraits are concerned not only with the likeness of the person but also their social positions and inner lives; their characters and virtues, psychological states and personalities.
“…God.If you knew the life of any of them here from cradle to this point. If you knew what brought them here. And they’re not completely bad. Sick, yes. Warped, yes. How can anybody judge any one else? Not, at least, without knowing all of his life and that of his parents and his grantparents.It’s easy to judge. It’s harder to dig down into the solid rock of cause…”
From Willard Motley’s novel, Let No Man Write My Epitaph
Free Admission
fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane Melbourne
Tue – Fri 11am to 5pm, Sat 12pm to 4pm
(03) 9662 9966, www,fortyfivedownstairs.com
