The Anticipation Project
Michael Eather
18 April–5 May 2024

Established, multi-disciplinary artist, Michael Eather, returns to Melbourne with the The Anticipation Project. The artist's oeuvre explores how colour functions in space through intertwined series of paintings and sculptures.

Adventure Index—an expansive, multi-panelled periodic table of ‘colour maps,’—described by the artist as a “wall of consciousness,” is presented as source material to inspire the viewer to engage with the unfolding narrative in the room. The still-life arrangements, suggestions of curtained walls, and drifting maps that make up the Wallpaper Interiors and Figments series all encapsulate the orchestrated patterns from Eather’s Index series. Several paintings appear as both objects to look at and vistas to look through.

The recurring portal imagery draws attention to how “we momentarily frame relationships between ourselves and the world,” says the artist. Sculptures from the Favourite Games series embody tangible elements of Eather’s absurd, metaphorical narratives, with bronze stingrays navigating portals, and wooden chairs divided by handsaws. Punctuating this space is a bright yellow rock.

One proposition for this ‘anticipation’ is that we are poised—ideally just there, between these realms of narrative, imagination and abstraction—as we foresee borders vanish, floating in a philosophical landscape.