7.6 No.7

About This Work

This series of works was developed during the pandemic using a custom typographic system I designed, with each painting containing a written message. The repeated figure ‘7.6’ refers to the 7.6 million Australians who were born overseas in 2020. For many, the pandemic meant being separated from their families and home countries for almost two years due to border closures.

Across the series, the number 7.6 appears once, twice and eight times. This repetition references both the monotony of lockdown, and the sense of rapid manifestation that were characteristic of the pandemic. Each triptych was painted in three different colour combinations to further emphasise the ideas of repetition and emotional intensity.

The colour system comes from the separation of white light into red, green and blue, and their overlap to form cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Colour becomes a metaphor for separation itself, and highlights that distance and isolation, although sometimes painful, can also produce new perspectives and a rich spectrum of emotions. I wanted the work to be both an acknowledgment of separation grief, and a small offering of colour and solidarity to those who were also struggling.