Magda Cebokli

Light and edge doesn’t seem to be much to work with and yet these are the basic ingredients with which we construct our complex visual world. They are also the subject matter of over a decade of my explorations as a painter.

Working with small differences, simplified form, repetition and a restricted palette, I develop series of often nuanced paintings addressing the function of edge, the movement between light and dark and the structure of space. In this analysis of visual experience, I whittle away at irrelevancies to produce series of paintings that appear minimal but whose surfaces are built up layer by meticulous layer, each painting speaking to a question raised by another. Points of ambiguity are of interest to me: how the hard edge becomes the soft boundary, the straight line a curved space, the square becomes lost to the circle.

Issues of abstraction in art and its relationship to abstraction in other disciplines, the development and testing of ideas over a series, how a visual text is built up: these are additional subtexts that inform the work I make.

Click here for artwork by Magda Cebokli

Exhibition history
solo

2022 Proximal, Tacit Art, Melbourne 
The Root of the Square, Five Walls, Melbourne
2017 
Iĉones, Langford 120, Melbourne
Suite for a Curved Space, Factory 49, Sydney
2016 An Analysis of Variance, Langford 120, Melbourne
2015 Set Square, Gallerysmith, Melbourne
The Lie of Light, Gallery 9, Sydney
2014 Light Lines, Langford 120, Melbourne
2013 Drawn Out, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne
2012 Corner Suite, Factory 49, Sydney
2011 Ring Cycle, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne
Light Moves, Jan Manton Art, Brisbane
2009 Square, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne
2008 Light Paintings 08, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne
2006 Light Paintings 06, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne
2005 
Out of Light, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne
2004 
Of light and edge, Geelong Gallery

group
2022 Of colour and light, West End Art Space, Melbourne 
SUBSTRATE 22, Tacit Art, Melbourne
Five, West End Art Space, Melbourne

TAPE TWENTY TWENTYTWO, Five Walls, Melbourne
Together Again – 2πr Artists, Rovay Gallery, Melbourne
2020 
Image_Object, Poimena Gallery, Launceston 
20[2020], Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 Parallel Universe, Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
Ciphering Place, Five Walls, Melbourne (w/ Wendy Kelly)
Abstract Works, Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide
2018 Analogue Art in a Digital World, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne

Support 18, Five Walls, Melbourne

Of Colour and Light, West End Space, Melbourne
Abstraction TwentyEighteen, Five Walls, Melbourne
Convergence, Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide (w/ Matthew Johnson)
Black & White and Red All Over, Justin Art House Museum, Melbourne

Edge, Langford 120, Melbourne
2017 Abstraction 16, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne

Shades of Grey 2017, Tacit Art, Melbourne
First Site Gallery Turns 21! First Site, Melbourne
NotFair, NotFair Art Foundation, Melbourne
Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, Sydney

Annual Group Show 2017, Factory 49, Sydney
2016 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, Geelong Gallery

Sky Lab: Kepler’s Dream, La Trobe University VAC, Bendigo

Shades of Grey 2016, Tacit Art, Melbourne

Divine Abstraction, Justin Art House Museum, Melbourne
The Alice Prize, Alice Springs
2015 NEO-0-10 Works on Paper, Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne

Sky Lab: Lines of Sight & Forces of Attraction, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne

Black & White, Spot 81, Sydney
2014 The M Collection Award, Gallerysmith, Melbourne

Dark: More than Black, Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
Tangible, Trocadero Art Space, Melbourne

Perceptions of Space: Justin Collection, City of Glen Eira Gallery, Melbourne

Fourteen: Trajectories, Langford 120, Melbourne

The Alice Prize, Alice Springs
2013
 
Non-Objective Conversations x 4, LaTrobe University VAC, Bendigo
2012 Shelf Life, Delmar Gallery, Sydney

Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, Geelong Gallery
Non-Objective Conversations x 4, Sydney Non-Objective, Sydney

R & M McGivern Prize, Maroondah Art Gallery, Melbourne
2011 Diverse Technieken, Galerie bij de Boeken, Ulft, Netherlands


Prometheus Visual Arts Award, Gold Coast
2010 The Exquisite Palette, St Luke, Melbourne
City of Albany Art Prize, Vancouver Arts Centre, Albany WA
2009DLAP 2009, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne
City of Whyalla Art Prize 2009, South Australia