Colour and contemplation in ice art at Hyphen

Gravity and time are delivering “melting moments” at Hyphen – Wodonga Library Gallery, creating bright, beautiful images that encourage observers and participants to reflect upon change and diversity.

Transmogrification is a collaboration between artists Gav Barbey and Andrew Howie that uses “ice melt” to create paintings that evolve as they dry out.

Pigments are placed into water which is frozen to create coloured ice cubes that transform into ice paintings when they melt on to paper. The paintings can be seen on a wall at Hyphen’s Playspace Gallery.  

As part of the exhibition, visitors will be encouraged to make their own creations to add to collaborative canvases.

Barbey, who is a Victorian-based international artist, hopes the collaboration will encourage people to think about the process of change and to explore the diverse complexities that make each of us unique.

“It’s not until you go up close (to the paintings) that you see the fine detail so for me, it’s that thing of where we come into really close contemplation or mindfulness or an observation that we start to see real diversity,” he said.

“You get a lot of depth (in the works), the dry pigments – or your fat pigments – will give you one texture and your inks will give you another so I hope people will go, ‘Yep, there’s a wall of circles of paint and colour but when I go up close to them, I start to see the micro within the macro’.”

Barbey’s work is enhanced by that of his colleague, Andrew Howie, who’s a visual artist and has been working with sound and light for more than 40 years.

Barbey says the pair drew inspiration from the Murray River as an “imaginary border” between people of one community, noting that like melting ice, some people don’t see the constant changes of the river itself.

“It’s about trying to bring in an observation or a meditation in seeing that transformation from water and pigment into ice and you get a 3-D sculptural block out of it and then that transmogrifies again into a 2-D stain,” he said.

As part of the exhibition, local school children have been working with the artists to create their own works.

The exhibition opens on Friday and ends on Sunday, 16 July.