I was late to see this exhibition but had to see in-situ as I had the privilege of previewing the works in Rosslynd’s studio before they shipped to Brisbane. The distance between there and here is vast. From the centre of Rosslynd’s world, captured and restricted by the years erratic pace, a world to digest and investing in inner thoughts, the place of making and inspiration and making good with what’s at hand and within grasp. Then to see these works holding a room in Brisbane. Transmission received.

A fine publication has been produced and it contains three texts that envelope like tuberose.
This cloak of insight provided by quasi-diaristic musings reveal central themes and experiences that enable Rosslynd to progress her work. The works hold without these missives to the floral world, but they provide another note for the audience, another nuance or dream to pursue.

The visit progressed episodically, starting in an elongated room with a series of intimately scaled landscape format works. Washes of colour blending with chemical rushes of geometry that insinuate themselves on devoted viewing.  Pale rainbow prisms as if projected through time, from glass objects in the Melbourne studio, push forward as you linger. There’s a layered drawing on semitransparent washi in the room that is the key to the floral/ temporal compression at the heart of this exhibition.

Once your eye is set to the softness and attuned to the gentle gradients, the impossible happens in the next room. You become blind for a moment.

There’s a sense of vapour in the room but it is the shift in scale that is the perpetrator. This large volume contains the biggest works but that are no less nuanced. The scale confirms the technical prowess required to render these misty abstractions. Crystal glints of coded geometry interrupt the gassy realm of these paintings. They evoke colour, therefore light and they evoke sensory memory. The scale is less about looking but a cloak of experiences where the surface disappears, and you are permitted to hover in this perfumed space.

It is immersive space & it is time both endured and furtive informing this group of paintings. Disrobe and slip in.