FireWorks Gallery’s second solo show for the year is local artist Andrew Arnaoutopoulos: Still Life.  For over 40 years Greek born, Brisbane based, artist Andrew Arnaoutpoulos has built a contemporary practice that critically extends the legacy of modernism. Inspired by his time working in a packaging factory, and as a contemporary artist who focuses on the materiality of painting and its formal and conceptual limits, he has created paintings and installations that evoke industrial surfaces—rust, brick, signage and graffiti.

Of his work, curator Nicholas Tsoutas writes:

“Blurring the distinctions between what constitutes a painting as a finished work of art and the by-product and detritus produced through the painting process, Arnaoutopoulos ironically challenges both the meaning and the history of painting with a type of ‘un-painting’ that emphasises his meticulous concerns with the construction of the patterns and forms of painterly abstraction.”

While Arnaoutopoulos’ practice has traversed and engaged genres such as graphic design, performance, and process art, what makes this series particularly compelling is the way Arnaoutopoulos brings his lifelong investigation of abstraction into dialogue with the classical, urbane genre of still life.

Still Life at FireWorks Gallery presents nine still-life paintings alongside an installation of debris and detritus from the artist’s studio, oversprayed with, what he calls by-products or, paint splatter. These works have never been shown and offer affordable, domestic-sized paintings that subtly echo the installation materials. Still Life #1 depicts blurred foregrounded paint tins, while Still Life #8 features a lifeless mannequin. Across the series, objects remain deliberately ambiguous, resisting fixed interpretation and reinforcing the works’ oblique, suggestive quality.

Tsoutas also reflects on Andrew’s fascination with what lies beyond the frame. He suggests the artist recognised that the true provocation of the work may not reside solely within the resolved surface of the painting, but in the uncontrolled overspray that escapes its edges—implying that what exists outside the frame can be as significant, if not more so, than what is contained within the finished work.

Also on display will be an installation of the Samos series, works which are referenced from the weathered, blue-painted walls, of a long ago, abandoned, dilapidated leprosy hospital situated next to a pebble beach near Karlovasi, Samos, Greece from which Andrew originates.