Magda Cebokli

Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2024 - Finalist

_{[Image courtesy of the artist and Nancy Sever Gallery, Canberra.]}

Artist Statement

Time spent travelling in Spain provided the inspiration and impetus for a series of works, of which Port Vell is one. It represents a conceptual mapping of space and of movement through it, an abstraction rather than a literal depiction, of the act of negotiating place. 

 I have visited the city of Barcelona, of which Port Vell is a district, several times stimulating me to make a number of paintings. The resultant Barcelona Series has become part of a larger Spanish Series which explores aspects of the language of space and light and of their impact. 

 Themes of changing luminosity, the movement between light and dark and the structure of space have long interested me and have motivated much of my explorations as an artist, as has my interest in the relationship between order and the operation of chance. In my practice, I use abstraction as a language of synthesis, a tool for analysis and for the presentation of a concept or idea. The result is an enunciation of a generic principal rather than a reference to or depiction of a specific event or situation.   

 I work with acrylics producing conceptual, process-based hard-edged abstractions and typically work in series. These groups of paintings develop over time, each painting addressing an idea or memory of an experience and extracting and refining an element of it.