Monumental Work
The focus of a great deal of Ross’s energy toward the last years of his life were a series of massive paintings on builder’s plastic sheeting. Completed outside in the front yard of Bulimba Road, Ross made layer upon layer of these extraordinary paintings, building them up on top of each other until an edit became necessary and some were rolled up and stored in the back sheds to make room for more. The scale and ambition of his creative practice only increased, and from 2014 he the paintings became even more massive scale (up to six metres long and three metres wide) on plastic sheeting. This group of works is both extremely ambitious and extraordinarily powerful in their final resolution.
Yellow and Black, 2017-19, acrylic on plastic sheeting, 200 x 520 cm
Technically, these paintings were very difficult to pull off. Firstly, their scale required Ross to have an image and translate it with an inherent sense of structure, despite being able to assess it visually.
Seen in Drone shots taken by Brendan Hutchens, their complex structure is breathtakingly co-ordinated across the metres of the surface, resulting in a tightly woven set of forms.
The image of a Dunnart (a marsupial mouse though in Ross’ version it is more like a fire breathing dragon) is surprisingly coherent considering the scale at which he was working.
Ross Seaton's home, August 2020. Photograph by Brendan Hutchens.
Blue & Black, 2017-19, acrylic on plastic sheeting, 200 x 650cm
Ross Seaton's home, August 2020. Photograph by Brendan Hutchens.
Ross Seaton's home, August 2020. Photograph by Brendan Hutchens.
Several of these large works on plastic sheeting seem like Runes, letters from an unknown alphabet, describing a truth we can only speculate.
- Ted Snell, curator
Top to bottom: Black & White: The Force and Red, Blue & White, 2017-19, acrylic on plastic sheeting, 200 x 520 cm each
Photograph by Brendan Hutchens, August 2020.
Several of these large works on plastic sheeting seem like Runes, letters from an unknown alphabet, describing a truth we can only speculate.
In white on black, yellow on black plastic and some in blue and red on clear plastic sheeting, the letter forms hover and shimmy across the surface, activated by the artist to draw our eye at varying speeds from one to the next.
One is a dense undergrowth of spikey forms creating an all-over pattern of dazzling inventiveness, while others are more like pages from a ritual text.
Ross Seaton's home, August 2020. Photograph by Brendan Hutchens.
Seen in Drone shots taken by Brendan Hutchens, their complex structure is breathtakingly co-ordinated across the metres of the surface, resulting in a tightly woven set of forms.
- Ted Snell, curator
Photograph by Ted Snell
