Eugene Carchesio is the current Artist in Residence at The Church Gallery, as part of an ongoing collaboration between The Church Gallery Art Angels and Edith Cowan University. Whilst in Perth Eugene will work with the ECU honours programme students, produce a set of 100 limited edition artworks for the Art Angels and work towards his solo exhibition at The Church Gallery in April.

His minimal, simplified forms and structures exude a quiet beauty and have a tough conceptual foundation that has not been overlooked by curators and collectors around the country. In 2001 Eugene was selected to represent Australia at the tenth Indian Triennale of Art in New Delhi and his work is held in many prestigious collections, including the Art Gallery of NSW, the Art Gallery of WA, the National Gallery in Canberra, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery and Artbank.

Eugene was born in Brisbane, where he still lives and works. He is a self-taught artist and musician who has been practicing since the early 1980s and quietly achieving national recognition. His artworks, including watercolours, collages, assemblages and sculptures, are also quiet and unassuming. Often created on an intimate scale, they are the product of his interest in the spiritual ‘interconnectedness of things’ and show a reductive analysis of conceptual art and abstraction. Works are loaded with possible interpretations about man in relation to nature and the cosmos. Eugene uses a number of recurring symbols in his artworks. The cone, the sphere, the cube. The cone, one of his most popular, represents human beings in general and himself.

His watercolours often express the simplicity and purity of geometric patterning in fresh, clean colours. Eugene sometimes incorporates words, letters or numbers into their surface, toying with the signifiers of language and meaning. His sculptural assemblages make use of discarded objects from everyday life, such as match boxes, paper or cardboard. By reusing them Eugene injects them with fresh vitality, giving them another chance at life, a life that incorporates their history, and a life that will deteriorate and fade like the first. As one critic mused, “His art flows blissfully against the tides of fashion.”

Proudly supported by

The Church Gallery Art Angels Inc

and Edith Cowan University

Eugene Carchesio is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne and Bellas Gallery, Brisbane

*prices valid 2002