Double delight at Boom Gallery

Boom Gallery has opened two stunning new exhibitions in its Newtown gallery spaces.

Sullied by Cricket Saleh and The Unwritten Places by Ben Crawford were unveiled last week in Boom and Big Boom respectively.

It is certainly not the first time respected Geelong photographer Cricket Saleh’s work has graced the walls of Boom and this time around she says her intention with Sullied was to “get some flesh in there”.

“It needed red, and it needed to hurt a little,” the gifted creative explains.

“This work shifts the gaze a few degrees, from human consumption to individual and collective value systems, and the impact they have on the natural world.

“I was very much committed to working with the interior/still life and in the landscape, but as the work unfurled, I found myself incapable of leaving the interior.

“I became fearful of enlarging the space. I found incredible comfort in the steaming, and the folding. I meditated in the unravelling and the decay.”

Cricket says this work is a conduit between the past and what might come next on her artistic journey.

“The exhibition houses all the symbols, vessels and vehicles I have used in my work for the past 15 years. In Sullied I lay them bare,” she says.

Artist Ben Crawford hails from Ireland but now lives in southern Queensland with his wife and two daughters.

Figures, architecture and landmarks drawn from his life imbue Ben’s paintings with a sense of narrative, anchoring his work tentatively to reality.

He says his latest work has been inspired by landscapes – both real and imagined.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about landscapes over the past year.

“Landscapes are subject to the changing of the seasons, variations in light, and even alterations to their topographies over time.

“This makes the experience of being in these places quite unreal to me at times, almost preternatural.

“Whether it’s somewhere new or familiar, my perception is inevitably informed and distorted by the prism of my memory and imagination.

“This collection of paintings is about those landscapes and places that don’t necessarily appear on any maps.

“They are ‘the unwritten places’ that exist in a moment of time, tethered to our hearts and memories.”

Both Sullied by Cricket Saleh and The Unwritten Places by Ben Crawford are sponsored by 6ft6 and on display until March 20 at Boom, 5 Rutland Street, Newtown.