Hug & Repel
It’s a boundless energy that manifests itself in the juxtaposition of the shapes and colours he uses, which he chooses by the way they either ‘hug’ or ‘repel’. The way his organic forms undulate on canvas or in sculpture, it’s as if he can sense light formations and energy that our naked eye can’t see, but his subconscious can.
Bold geometries of colour appear like pulsating pods or alien forms in Ormandy’s paintings, which when transmuted into sculpture morph into fluid and futuristic shapes. Some configurations appear to be ejecting what is inside, others ingest the outside within, like galactic molecules synthesising new forms. Despite this, Ormandy’s paintings are laced with a nostalgia imbued with the magnetism of 1960’s pop art; a time when Kennedy’s space age was raging and everyone was desperately trying to get to the moon.
Stars are between 1 billion and 10 billion years old, so we will never know the whole of their stories in our lifetime. But scientists have found that humans and our galaxy have 87 percent of the same kind of atoms, so because of this, maybe we know more than we can see. Though our human forms limit what we can explore, exploring is what Ormandy sees as the central role of the artist; “That’s what you do as an artist, explore for a lifetime,” he says.
Stephen Ormandy is an Australian artist whose work, based on colour and form, has been exhibited worldwide.
Shana Chandra is a freelance writer, currently residing in Sydney. Her words on fashion, arts and culture have been featured in Vestoj, Some/Things, Domus and Anniversary magazine.
