Masters of Paint at the University Gallery

Nicole Chaffey, Weathered, 2014, oil and beeswax on Arches paper, 76 x 57 cm

Pablo Tapia, Lazarus (Process First Painting) 2014, oil on panel, 35 x 30 cm

Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 11 February – Saturday 28 February
Opening Event: Wednesday 11 February, 5:30pm


Nicole Chaffey, north: remembering country
Pablo Tapia, Luz Corporea

Nicole Chaffey started her art education in 2006, completing an Advanced Diploma of Fine Art at the Newcastle Art School (TAFE) in 2008. She then graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from the University of Newcastle in 2010 and has regularly exhibited in Newcastle and regionally. She maintains a professional studio practice in the Newcastle suburb of Georgetown.

north: remembering country is the result of Chaffey’s MPhil candidature at the University of Newcastle. Expanding on a long and intensive study of humanity’s relationship with the Australian landscape, Chaffey has turned her investigations inward, exploring concepts of contemporary Aboriginality, memorial and emotional ties to the country of her forbears, the Biripi country of the Manning River region and the intricate familial relationships that keep it all connected.

Traditional paint medium and paper surfaces evoke a deep history of attachment to place, and skyward looking imagery is a reminder of the transience and evolutionary nature of identity.

Growing up during 17 years of recent military dictatorship in Chile - a country imbued with a complex mix of Native American cosmology and European culture – influences the way Pablo Tapia views life at large. This, and ongoing visual deterioration, means he sees life as a complex, magical, and sometimes uneasy experience.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 2005 from the University of Newcastle before studying with painter, Charlie Sheard, in Sydney. Tapia’s current practice reflects a passion for surface and the materiality of Renaissance painting methods. Luz Corporea is the result of his recent MPhil candidature at the University of Newcastle, itself an outcome of long research into the transformation of personal language of feelings into a powerful universal form. Light and memories find substance and activity in the physicality of paint.

Tapia is currently represented by Frances Keevil Gallery, Sydney.

The materiality of traditional oil painting techniques defines the practices of both Nicole Chaffey and Pablo Tapia. Each artist use the medium as a search for self-knowing, transforming personal language and feeling into a universal experience, one looking outward to landscape and sky, the other focusing on the human interior.