Angus Cummings

"I have always been interested in old black and white family photographs, especially those from my childhood and from before I was born. They seem to have an atmosphere about them, as though coming from a different realm, as though the past were qualitatively different from the present, occupying a place imbued with a special kind of happiness. Added to this was a personal interest in time travel, along with the awareness that this yearned-for past was inaccessible, off limits.

My interest in making drawings from old photographs came from a desire to be able to inhabit the realm of the photograph. The process of putting pencil to paper and building up areas of tone, of sculpting a three-dimensional reality in that realm is the closest to having agency in the past. From this came a desire to incorporate feelings and imaginings in response to the new reality that was being rendered along with a sense of reconnecting with a childhood sense of the oceanic or divine. This led, in turn, to the creation of a kind of intermediate reality, comprising elements of nostalgia, longing and the dreamworld. I enjoy the sense of depicted people and forms looking real and tangible, but with the overall artwork having the feel of existing in a parallel universe."

Angus Cummings, March 2022

Click here for artwork by Angus Cummings

Exhibitions at Tacit include
2022 The Shadow of Memory

Exhibition history
solo
2022 The Shadow of Memory, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2003 Angus Cummings, Hilton Hotel, Melbourne Airport
2002 Intimate Details, Level 11 Gallery, Melbourne
1992 Recent Works, Lyall Burton Fine Art, Melbourne
1990 New Works, David Ellis Fine Art, Melbourne
1989 New Works, David Ellis Fine Art
1988 Views of An East Ringwood Childhood, David Ellis Fine Art

group
2023 Arbor, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 Eastgate & Jarman, Melbourne
2010 Ballan & Pannan Galleries, Sorrento
2006 Ballan & Pannan Galleries
Brightspace, Melbourne
Ballan & Pannan Galleries, Melbourne
2002 Ballan & Pannan Galleries, Melbourne