Join us at Australia's most disruptive commercial art projects, Grau Projekt. Relocating from around the corner in Clifton Hill we are celebrating our new home with a new body of work by the founder Matt Bax.

The famous TRINK AUTOMAT cocktail machine is back. The menu selection will feature the best of our Twn 'n Country

TWN

A cocktail by Hayden Lambert of ABOVE BOARD

A cocktail by Andy Chu of ONE or TWO

CUNTRY

A shrub/cocktail by Annie Smithers of Du Fermier

A Macocktail by Dan Hunter of Brae

Wines curated by Leanne Altmann, Head Sommelier / Beverage director of Andrew McConnell's restaurants

Your ticket includes a complimentary drink (trink) from the machine. Please check in on arrival to access the TRINK AUTOMAT.

TWN 'N CUNTRY

Painted during the enforced interiority of the pandemic lockdowns, this series navigates a psychological landscape of confinement and a yearning for the vastness of the Australian bush. Drawing on a childhood in the remote South Australian town of Naracoorte, Bax confronts the tension between memory and immediate experience, engaging directly with the Western canon of Australian art, from the "alien" landscapes of early colonial paintings to the beautiful depictions of children lost in the bush, through to the structural abstraction of Arthur Boyd and Fred Williams.

Bax adopts the role of a "student of nature," narrowing the gaze to eliminate the noise of the periphery. Where Williams sought the vast, empty horizon to make sense of the continent, Bax finds the bush in the minute details of the urban environment, collapsing the macro into the micro to dissolve the boundary between the organic and the industrial.

There is a quiet optimism in this recalibrated vision. Rather than getting "lost" in the bush, we are asked to find it anew, to recognise the iridescent spectrum of a gum tree on a city street as a vital, living tether to the land. Bax offers these works as a reminder that connection to nature is not a luxury of location, but a discipline of attention.

MATT BAX

Matthew Bax (b. 1974, Adelaide) is a Melbourne-based contemporary painter. He works in the space between presence and absence, somewhere between Cage's echo of nothing and the stillness of mu.

Central to Bax's conceptual framework is the notion of mu, the Buddhist concept of nothingness or void. Influenced by John Cage's assertion that "every something is the echo of nothing," Bax's paintings function as visual koans, inviting contemplation of what exists in the spaces between intention and accident, between presence and absence. His canvases become sites where the ordinary is transfigured, where the overlooked backdrop of existence is foregrounded as worthy of sustained attention and aesthetic consideration.

Bax's extensive exhibition history spans Australia, Europe, and Asia, with solo presentations at Grau Projekt (Melbourne), Anna Pappas Gallery (Melbourne), Fost Gallery (Singapore), and Marquardt Ausstellungen (München). His ambitious 2017 public installation series #partsofpaintings traversed multiple continents, appearing in Paris, Venice, Bellagio, Matera, Alonissos, and Melbourne, questioning the boundaries between gallery space and public realm, between art object and urban intervention. His work has been featured in significant group exhibitions including Venice - Word of Mouth (2019, curated by Dr Peter Hill) and the Australian Video Pavilion at Art Stage Singapore (2015, curated by Paul Greenaway).

Holding a Master of Fine Art from LASALLE College of Arts (Singapore) and a Master of Contemporary Art at the VCA (University of Melbourne), Bax brings both rigorous theoretical engagement and intuitive material sensibility to his practice. His work has been extensively reviewed in The Age, Broadsheet, Australian Art Review, and GQ Magazine.

Contact the host of VERNISSAGE COCKTAIL PARTY MATT BAX TWN N CUNTRY