Louise Paramor

“The painting Space Monk comes from the 2009 Mood Bomb series. This series was an experiment in abstraction, relying on the chance pouring of oil paint onto glass, the reverse side becoming the viewable artwork.  Conceived intuitively, the paintings themselves ultimately suggested their own titles.”  ….Louise Paramor 2020.

Louise Paramor is a renowned Australian artist, celebrated for her distinctive and extraordinary creative vision. In a career encompassing over forty national and international solo exhibitions, numerous group exhibitions, international residencies, major sculpture awards and public commissions, Paramor has developed a significant profile as a highly accomplished and innovative artist. As described by the exhibition curator Diane Soumilas in the survey exhibition catalogue, “Louise Paramor has been experimenting with found objects and ephemeral materials for more than two decades,and has achieved considerable recognition for their transformation into distinctive and innovative works that challenge conventional readings of everyday detritus in contemporary life”.

“Her extraordinary repertoire of assemblage sculptures, figurative and abstract collages and paintings, readymade glass and ephemeral installations, elaborate honeycomb paper sculptures evoke concerns with the discarded, transience and mass consumption, addressing the relationship between recycled domestic and industrial remnants and related spaces.”

Space Monk 2009 was acquired for the Glen Eira City Council Art Collection following the artists survey exhibition Louise Paramor: Emporium presented at the Gallery in 2013. With references to 60s abstraction and pop culture, the smooth luscious surfaces of the Mood Bomb, 2008–09, series of paintings such as Space Monk 2009 entice the viewer to explore the coloured shapes and abstract forms that spill seductively onto the glass. Unleashing delicate washes of colour and fluidity, the works evoke a sense of play and reveal an exuberant confidence in abstraction. A radical transition from the figurative collages of previous years to the realms of modernist abstraction and colour is successfully investigated in the Mood Bomb 2008-09 paintings.

As described by the exhibition Curator Diane Soumilas, “Paramor exploits the rich associations evoked by residual materials in daily life, elevating the humble and exotic into extraordinary works that resonate with allusions to domestic and industrial history and notions of transience. Re-invested with a new aesthetic life, her work provides rich territory in which to investigate the powerful potential and compelling realms of the everyday and beyond.”

Louise Paramor’s work is represented in major public gallery and museum collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Monash University Collection, and Monash University Museum of Art. She has received numerous sculpture awards and public commissions including the prestigious 2010 McClelland Award, McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery for her assemblage Top Shelf and the monumental sculpture Panorama Station 2012 commissioned by Southern Way for the Peninsula Link Freeway at the Eastlink interchange in 2012. Supermodel, a permanent public sculpture was sited in Lorne in 2015 and the found object assemblage North Polar won the Lorne Sculpture Biennale Award in 2014. The exhibition Palace of the Republic was shown at The Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria in 2017/2018.

(excerpts from catalogue essay by Diane Soumilas, Residual History, published in Louise Paramor: Emporium, Glen Eira City Council survey exhibition catalogue, September 2013, pp. 5-13.

Work from Council’s art collection