# Christopher McVinish Exhibition
ARTWORKS
Exhibition Foreword
Silent Light, Cracow QLD
The early gold rush town of Cracow first caught my attention when my niece sent me an image of the town’s main street. It piqued my imagination. I finally got there in a side trip to attending the opening of this year’s Brisbane Portrait Prize as a finalist.
Cracow is a gold rush town about a six and a half hour drive from Brisbane in the North West Burnett region. A pastoralist, John Ross, named it in 1875. Some say it was in reverence to the Polish city of Cracow’s then recent fight for national independence. Others believe it reflected the cracking (‘cracko’) sound of stock whips that echoed throughout the ranges.
Gold was first been discovered there in 1875. Then in 1931 the Golden Plateau mine was established which operated continuously until 1973. At it’s peak the town had five cafes, barber shop, billiard saloon, two butchers, a picture theatre and soft drink factory. But with the mine’s closure it became more like a ghost town; many shops and houses were left deserted.
In 2004 Newcrest Mining reestablished gold mining raising everyone’s hopes it would breath new life into the town. But it’s never returned to those heady times. A 2006 census found Cracow and Aeris Resources operates the mine these days. The shops are all vacant but the pub remains open.
Walking around Cracow I felt a palpable presence within the silence there…a stillness full of past hope and endeavour…the wonderful colours and textures of those buildings dreaming in the late afternoon light; I had my next subject.
Silent Light, Cracow Qld, continues my quest to make portraits of places – time-weathered buildings – whether urban or country town. Our passing history.
Christopher McVinish, December, 2024
About the Artist
Katoomba-based painter Christopher McVinish hunts for fragments of our architectural past. From abandoned buildings to quiet suburban lives McVinish seeks to make portraits of our history.
Characteristic of these works is a certain trademark stillness. These paintings can evoke a vague feeling of disquiet or a sense of loss, yet never a loss of hope. Ideas and motifs are allowed to hover in the artist’s mind for some time (even for years) before their moment of coalescence seems ‘right’ and the business of capturing depiction can begin.
A long-held fascination with light and weather also assists in establishing the mood of the work, as if the vagaries of weather are a match for the vagaries of human endeavour.
McVinish’s methodology involves numerous time consuming applications of paint and glazes as well as scraping and scumblings to achieve weathered
effects. This affords not only a substantial illusion of depth but also a palpable sense of air itself around things in the picture plane.
Some works can be intriguingly oblique. These are visual stories that linger in the mind like a half-remembered dream.
