Art opening: Isabella Bunce 'In Transit'

Isabella Bunce is a Sydney-based artist whose oil paintings illuminate the fragile interplay between time, perception and memory. Her work spans from a variety of media, predominantly working within the perimeters of oil paint. Working with an intentionally overexposed palette, her practice captures the blur and distortion of recollected memory, contemplating the temporality of reality. The abstraction of forms becomes more prevalent in her recent series, merely blocking in colour to create a sense of hazy recollection. Through this process, Bunce explores how the sensory qualities of light and texture inform feelings of longing and persistence. Memory here is not loud, nor performative. It transforms into conditions of sensing, remerging, and tending.

Guided by a sensitivity to ‘the quiet’ and stillness, the influence of photographic film allows for a transformation of the everyday into meditative reflections on the act of remembering. Diffused light and thin washes evoke a space between presence and absence, ultimately where the familiar becomes ephemeral. Hence, Bunce’s practice serves to explore how care, stillness, and reflection reside in the most unassuming spaces. In doing so, the series undermines the politics of slowness as viewers are invited to rest in between and observe slowly. Her practice continues to evolve as a study of impermanence, and the ways the past reimagines itself.