+61 3 9654 6000
Open: Tue-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 1pm-4pm

Level 5, 104 Exhibition St., VIC 3000, Melbourne, Australia
Open: Tue-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 1pm-4pm

Visit    

Artist: Andrew Browne

Following his inclusion in the current Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2026 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Tolarno Galleries presents Lux Sublimata, a new exhibition of photo-based imagery on satin banners by Melbourne artist Andrew Browne.

Echoing unstretched paintings, these satin banners incorporate a compelling array of imagery based on manipulated photographic sources.

The overall effect is poetic, the soft, delicate satin shimmers and floats, and each image appears to shift.

“They embrace a luminous abstraction taken from the real world,” says Browne. “While closely related to the modestly scaled photographic works on brushed aluminium I showed with Tolarno last year, they offer an expanded and immersive encounter with bodily scale as well as heightened light effects.”

Most of the imagery incorporates an intricate field of white cracks on seemingly textured expanses of colour, deep blacks or subtle tonal variation. These networks of light-emitting fissures are open to multiple interpretations: cracked ice or glass, parched soil, the craquelure on the surface of an oil painting, perhaps even the tracery of a spider’s web.

“The cracks undoubtedly conjure both representational and abstract form,” says Browne. “They may describe aspects of the real world, or, in veering closer to abstraction, also evoke mortality, time passing, decay and entropy.”

‘Skein’ is a white-on-black organic tangle, dotted here and there with red and yellow leaves as bright as lolly wrappers. Another satin banner pictures what could be a black sun hanging in an orange sky, an assessment very much encouraged by the veil of cracks covering the entire image.

The exhibition’s title, Lux Sublimata (Latin for sublimated light) nods to the dye sublimation printing method Browne employed to embed each image within the substrate of the satin material.

Activated by heat and pressure, solid dye particles suspended in sublimation ink are transformed directly into a gas, bypassing the liquid stage – this is known as sublimation. In gas form, they bind with the particles of the fabric, which needs to be synthetic for the process to work.

“As a result of the heat and pressure, the structure of the polyester material physically loosens and opens up to receive the gas,” explains Browne. “I specifically chose satin as it shares some of the qualities of the brushed aluminium I have recently used on a smaller scale. It’s both lustrous and reactive to ambient light”.

Lux Sublimata also refers to the central role played by light in the series, and the extent to which Browne has captured and redirected it in each image. And, of course, satin itself is a lux(e) material.

Significantly, this series sees Browne leaning into colour, something he’s previously employed only sparingly. “A lot of my work has been quite tonal or certainly in the minor key,” he says. “Here, in part because of the technical possibilities and in part because the imagery seemed to demand it, I’m embracing a more saturated colour, with all the optical and psychological baggage that comes with it.”

“Working across multiple media – prints, photographs, drawings and paintings – in my broader practice and across the decades, I see this as yet another challenging material to both honour and embrace, teasing out the specifics of its technical character with images that invite multiple readings and responses,” he says.

“Ultimately these new works sit within an ever-expanding lineage of investigation into nature and phenomena – here winnowed to abstraction – where both light and darkness also operate as key components.”

all images © the gallery and the artist(s)