Rural backgrounds to reintroduce artist

THE next exhibition at the Old Butchers Shop Gallery will mark something of a homecoming for the displaying artist despite living in the region most of her life.

Running throughout next month, Tarli Glover’s Familiar Ground will be her first local show in a decade following Paperscape in 2013.

She said much like her past displays at Castlemaine, and Geelong’s Boom Gallery, the exhibition will entail a driving theme in her art.

“My work’s always been influenced by central Victoria and the Western District in the sense of the light that’s used and the sense of space,” she said.

“My mother came from Lake Bolac so we spent a lot of time going backwards and forwards and around the Grampians and Terang.

“That’s been the biggest influence on how my work looks. I have a limited colour pallet generally, and see things a bit in the abstract.

“This will be a sort of reintroduction to Ballarat people again. There’s a whole new group out there that don’t really know I’m here.”

The exhibition will feature about 20 acrylic pieces as well as more than 30 small works part of Glover’s Western Volcanic Plains series.

Work started on the exhibition late last year, with Glover paining in her Ballarat North studio and using photographs and her own memory of the surrounding landscapes to create the pieces.

“It’s semi-abstract rather than realistic,” Glover said. “They’re fictional works but based on real places. I may have a hill from somewhere and a track from somewhere else.

“I’ve taken things like the centre-pivot irrigation systems and used those, and lots of canola, crops of wheat, harvests, tracks, and lines as well.

“At the moment, I’m a bit obsessed with all the hills around like Mount Rowan, Weatherboard.”

Familiar Ground is on display from Saturday, 3 to Sunday, 25 June.