Riptide

A celebration of natural beauty, Riptide brings together works across Luke Shadbolt’s exhibitions Maelstrom, 2016-2018, Spéirling, 2020, and The Terminator Line, 2022. In this exhibition, we see the ferocious sculptural ferocity of the ocean, but also its delicate, fragile beauty, emerge through Shadbolt’s skill with the camera.

Both Maelstrom and Spéirling act as witnesses to the turbulent tussle in nature between creation and destruction. Waves are frozen in grand moments, caught at the apex of their explosion. The stillness of the photograph, contrasting against the violent movement of the ocean, creates a moment of sculptural liminality. Like primordial dancers, white foam flies across the horizon, springing and tumbling, crashing out of sight only to soar towards the havens in a split second.

Inspired by the work of Impressionist painter J.W. Turner, The Terminator Line engages in a deft interplay between light and movement, bending the dappled light in the waves to create sublime moments of painterly beauty. It is impossible not to get lost in the waves, caught in the undulating pulses of shape and form that weave throughout Shadbolt’s works.

In bringing these works together, Riptide highlights the contrasts that are so central to Shadbolt’s work. The cycles of beauty and chaos, of creation and destruction. In these works exist primordial rituals that represent an innate humanity within all of us. A connection between light and dark, and the beauty that binds it all together.