Greg Clarke and Louise Vadasz join forces for Adelaide Fringe at Fleurieu Arthouse

Good friends Greg Clarke and Louise Vadasz first met whilst studying fine art at the South Australian School of Art. Some years and a number of successes down the line, the pair have come together again with a new exhibition here at Fleurieu Arthouse.

Clarke is well-known in Adelaide as the one-time director of the Adelaide Fringe, a position he held for 5 years before moving interstate and taking on the creative directorship of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardis Gras.

While he no longer calls Adelaide home, his ties here remain strong and visiting is always a highlight for him.

Clarke’s move interstate has been an inspiration though, and his landscape paintings tell of his home in an idyllic location on the New South Wales mid-north coast. Capturing the magical light of the ocean, mountains and architecture that now surround him is something that preoccupies Clarke.

The still life works presented in this latest exhibition are elegant and pared down, blurred lines and calming subjects bring an ethereal quality to the otherwise bold and contemporary vases and jars.

“I paint very simple paintings that are more about line and form in very calming colours,” he said recently in an interview for an article about the exhibition published in In Review.

Vadasz’s works are a riot of rich colour with vibrant still life floral arrangements and large abstract landscapes in her unmistakably loose style. Vadasz has been a finalist in a number of art prizes and cites her two artistic loves as abstract landscape and still life.

Most of Vadasz’s works are heavy impasto painted on transparent linen; she says, “I’m switching from each subject with a similar technique of layering the thick oil paint to create a rich surface of intense colour,”.

Clarke and Vadasz can be seen until March 17th here at Fleurieu Arthouse. Click here for more information.