Winner: Sir John Sulman Prize 2016
Esther Stewart Flatland dreaming
acrylic on board
181.5 x 261.5 cm
Flatland dreaming takes its title from Edwin Abbott’s novel Flatland: a romance of many dimensions, a 19th-century satire that drew a comparison between dimensional geometry and Victorian social mores.
Within my work, I am interested in exploring domestic spaces through the dimensions of abstraction. Inherently, when representing domestic spaces, questions about gender, socialised gender roles, ownership, hidden histories, privacy, and personal and cultural identities are present. I often use the visual languages of hard-edge abstraction and minimalism – both male-dominated historical movements – as a way of investigating this interest. I seek to subvert, twist and change the gender, context and possible readings of the languages that I am engaging with.
- Esther Stewart, 2016