Featuring new work by Susan Gourley and Cosima Scales, Shelf Life is an intimate exhibition inspired by the everyday objects that surround us and the friendships that sustain us. Each artist engages with the still-life tradition, observing incidental and transient domestic moments.

Scales’ modest paintings depict pieces of fruit, a phone, a cup and other items around the home. The items are not arranged into a composition, instead the paintings focus on the singularity of each object. These are careful studies of form, light and colour, with loose, economical brush marks interrupting the realism of the image.

Gourley’s sculptures similarly veer towards realism, presenting life-size assemblages of mushrooms, sponges, teabags and other ordinary things. The sculptures commemorate the incidental in their subject and in their construction: they are made from discarded materials and by-products of domestic life and construction work, including cardboard, Styrofoam and wood off-cuts. Each artist’s work develops from care and attention to the taken-for-granted.

The title, Shelf Life, refers to both the tradition of the still life that is the overt content of the work, and to the long-lasting friendship between the artists. The exhibition reflects the way that each artist’s distinct practice has informed the other, as mutual respect, studio visits and informal conversations have slowly accumulated, in often imperceptible ways, to inform their current work.

—Kyle Weise, Curator Redland Art Gallery, 2024.