Virginia Cuppaidge | Skyspace Paintings
VIRGINIA CUPPAIDGE: THE SKYSPACE PAINTINGS 1977 – 1982, is an exhibition of important work from Cuppaidge’s well known series at Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Collingwood, Melbourne.
VIRGINIA CUPPAIDGE: THE SKYSPACE PAINTINGS 1977 – 1982, is an exhibition of important work from Cuppaidge’s well known series at Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Collingwood, Melbourne.
Jane Eckett writes of the series in the exhibition catalogue, ‘Cuppaidge’s Skyspace paintings are at once emotionally charged and romantic yet as tautly balanced as steel constructions. Conceived and created in New York, and now repatriated to Australia, they represent a visionary experiment in minimalism infused with romanticism and painting steeped in sculpture’*
Skyspace 1981, the seminal work from this series is on permanent exhibition in the Conservatorium Foyer. At over 6m in length it was painted in a tiny apartment in New York, a city where the artist lived for over 43 years. However, Cuppaidge but now calls Newcastle home.
This major work from the University Collection was donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program in 2008 by author Libby Hathorn. Another key work by this artist is Chrysalis Beginning 1989, donated under the Cultural Gifts Program by Helen and Christopher Ford in acknowledgement of our Chancellor, Trevor Waring. The collection now has over 2,300 paintings.
Cuppaidge was a part of the Guerilla Girls movement that sought to acknowledge women in art in New York in the 1960s, and is now a part of the #KnowMyName initiative with the National Gallery of Australia.
*Jane Eckett, Nicholas Thompson Gallery Catalogue
Image: Virginia Cuppaidge, Skyspace 1981, oil on canvas, 200 x 606 cm
For more information on how you can donate to the University of Newcastle's collection, or if you have any enquiries about the University of Newcastle's Art Collection, contact the University Gallery.
E: universitygallery@newcastle.edu.au
P: +61 2 4921 5255
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