TJ Bateson
TJ Bateson's art practice is heavily driven by process. It is machine-like, but not arbitrary; scaffolded by mechanisms but still showing the traditional hand-painted line of the brush. The simple replication of a line until it becomes a field of immersive colour and tone. It is ultimately a journey of freedom and triumph as much as it is a production of subtle beauty. The elaborate richness of the surface is a testimony to what can be done with one simple line if you repeat it often enough. Immersive, his work functions as a healing and meditative activity in its repetition. His subdued tonal range calls our attention to the whispered differences between shades and tones: heavily layering his marks and gestures.
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Exhibitions at Tacit include
2024 A HrD+
A HrD+ continues TJ Bateson's exploration of the creation of work looking into the altered states of difference. Having survived a 10 year battle with Mantel Cell Lymphoma, Bateson is now loaded with a new immune system, powered by new blood made possible by the stem cell donation by daughter, May Rose Bateson. This body of work explores the structures and patterns of DNA mapping, bone structures and more.
2023 The two of us
The two of us is a deeply, deeply personal body of work following Tim's lifesaving bone marrow transplant this time last year.
'Not dead, not broken but very much altered, I'm now the two of us. Loaded with a new immune system, powered by new blood and cancer-free after a ten year battle with Mantel Cell Lymphoma, all this made possible by a donation from my daughter, May Rose. In short, May's bone marrow has replaced mine and I now make her blood to fuel my body. I have two DNAs coexisting together and a new immune system that won a battle against cancer that I alone could not.
Her presence within me is felt and reflected in this work through the abstracted layering of our DNA maps. This work explores this new internal and emotional relationship that exists within my new altered self. It is, indeed, the two of us.
2022 Tacit Voices
To you, Tacit is a place but tacit is the unspoken, a visual, emotive or experiential knowing not defined or described by words. Tacit Voices is an exhibition that brings together the unspoken heroes of mine that guide, support and challenge my practice.
Tacit Voices is an exhibition of my latest work alongside six artists, each of whom have donated work in support of raising funds.
Each would say that the studio is an isolated, private space protected, guarded, closed to outside influences; a place of innovation, exploration, creation. It’s a lonely, fragile environment protected by rules, guided by scaffolding and inner voices bubbling with hope. During the performance of making, the artist has permission to invite external voices that can help to shape, encourage and promote a sense of empowerment, to move forward in the innovation or distillation of work, a new idea in an attempt to solve that undescribed, unimagined need to keep making. But the space itself isn’t important.
2021 Glimmer of Hope
2020 Embedded Revisited
In April 2018, the National Gallery of Victoria remounted The Field, its inaugural exhibition at its new premises on St Kilda Road of 50 years earlier. Controversial at the time, the restaging resulted in new audiences and rethinking of responses (as well as a whole number of related exhibitions around Melbourne). But it set a train of thoughts in motion as Tacit approached its 20th anniversary.
The exhibition that launched the original Tacit was Embedded, a two-person show between TJ Bateson and Kerrilee Ninnis, co-founders of Tacit, and a response to the breakdown of their marriage. Separated at the time of the exhibition, the work looked at a sense of self in a changing relationship. For Bateson, it was about coming out as a gay male in a married context. Ninnis looked at the loss that’s carried when a relationship breaks down for orientational reasons and how they navigated that together. The result was a heartfelt and deeply personal photographic exhibition.
That exhibition, along with new work revisiting the theme, was re-mounted in our Gipps St premises to celebrate the 20th anniversary. For the move to our new Johnston St premises, a revisiting a sense of self and include the new work created by Bateson is the focus. As the new venue evolves, so that sense of Bateson self is reflected in the new layout and intimate presentation of Tacit's move back to Johnston St.
In doing so, the artist has carried forward a memory of process and the agency that fuelled the original works into a contemporary space. Like the rise in focus and interest of reductive and minimalist abstraction spawned by The Field Revisited at the NGV, Embedded Revisited readdresses photographic processes and its place within a digitally saturated world.
2020 Scape
TJ Bateson’s new body of work is heavily driven by process. It is machine-like, but not arbitrary. It is scaffolded by mechanisms but still shows the traditional hand-painted line of the brush. It functions as a healing and meditative activity in its repetition. His subdued tonal range calls our attention to the whispered differences between shades and tones: he layers the marks and gestures heavily.
2019 Iteration Self
Iteration Self revisits Bateson’s 2000 Em’bedded exhibition, an early exploration of self and sexuality that looked at changes of beauty and self awareness fuelled by his coming out. Iteration Self revisits the concepts of beauty and physicality and explores new notions of altered self, post chemotherapy treatment.
Bateson’s work looks to immortalise the physical self in an attempt to extend mortality through the making of layered, meditative, rhythmic works.
2018 Iteration Arc
The curving arc of the brush slides down the canvas. In measured replication, the thin bands of paint capture a slice taken from a gigantic circle. TJ Bateson’s subdued tonal range calls our attention to the whispered differences between shades and tones. He layers the marks and gestures heavily, utilising the strata beneath to echo memories of the journey back to the surface story. In this case, it is a voyage of parading bowed stripes across the canvas that provides the form of this latest chapter: layered in black, silver and greys, with threads of gold and humming blues or earthy browns in between.
This new body of work is heavily driven by process. It is machine-like, but not arbitrary. It is scaffolded by mechanisms but still shows the traditional hand-painted line of the brush. Iteration Arc represents the latest telling of a narrative of paint. The simple replication of a line following a partial arc until it becomes a field of immersive colour and tone. It is ultimately a journey of freedom and triumph as much as it is a production of subtle beauty. The elaborate richness of the surface is a testimony to what can be done with one simple line if you repeat it often enough.
2017 Pause II
How appropriate for TJ Bateson to be the inaugural exhibition at Tacit Galleries in Collingwood, having founded the original Tacit Contemporary Art in Thornbury 17 years ago. And how appropriate for artist and educator Euan Heng to launch the exhibition. Euan and Tim’s paths first crossed back in the 90s at Monash and, more recently (2016), at RMIT when Euan was the external assessor for the MFA course.
Once engaged, we are no longer the passive observer - we are provoked into a response, a sophisticated, ethereal response to fundamental material processes. So stated John Rabling in The Pinoteca, July 2016, of Bateson’s work which explores an iteration of mark that embraces and celebrates machine-made aesthetics alongside evidence of the hand of the artist within an immersive, visual experience.
Through introspection into the personal meaning, his work has a gentle, calming influence that is striving to be immersive - a totality of aesthetic experience - and intriguing, process-based that both requires and reflects time spent by both the artist and the viewer. It looks to the essay in discretion, inwardness and silence of artists such as Agnes Martin in its minimalist, ethereal quiet.
But Tim has also, throughout his practice, continued his exploration of colour and low tonality, which have become synonymous with his work. Quiet, muted tonal shifts of a contemplative nature and the broken moment of pattern call for reflection, allowing the many layers of the artist’s work to unfurl and unfold.
To him, the subtle and easily overlooked is the most striking.
Long influenced by Australian artist Ian Fairweather in celebrating meditative pattern and rhythm of quiet tonality, Bateson looks to embody, through multiple iterations, a passage of thought, respond to time, take a breath and replenish self whilst providing a vehicle for others to contemplate and re-evaluate.
Exhibitions
solo
2024 A HrD+ - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2023 The two of us - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2022 Tacit Voices [Redux] - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2021 Glimmer of Hope - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2020 Embedded Revisited - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Scape - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 Iteration Self - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2018 Iteration Arc - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2017 Pause II - Tacit Art Melbourne
Iteration Part III - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2016 Iteration II - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Iteration I - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2015 Linear - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2014 Medicated - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2013 Striped - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2012 Temporality - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2011 Pixel - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Pixelated - 69 Smith St Gallery, Melbourne
2010 Veiled in Plain Sight - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2009 Woven Fields - City Gallery, Melbourne
2008 Fields - fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
Woven Fields - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2007 Fields - Tacit Art, Melbourne
[Feilds] - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2006 Spheres - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2004 Em'bodiment - Gallery NewQuay, Melbourne
Em'bedded - Horsham Regional Gallery
2003 Pause - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Bent is Beauitiful - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Enshroud - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2001 Em'bedded - City of Glen Eira Gallery
2000 Em'bedded - Tacit Art, Melbourne
1998 Palimpsest Prints - 445 High Street, Melbourne
1997 Palimpsest - 445 High Street, Melbourne
1996 Temporal Landscape - Switchback Gallery: Gippsland Centre for Art & Design, Gippsland
Temporal Landscape - Switchback Gallery: Gippsland Centre for Art & Design, Gippsland
group
2023 SUBSTRATE 23 - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Bound Pigment: Celebrating Paint - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2022 TACIT Still Life Prize - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Tacit Voices - Tacit Art, Melbourne
SUBSTRATE 22 - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Superimposed - No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne
2021 St Kevin's Art Show - Melbourne
PINK - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Editions - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2020 Embedded Revisited - Tacit Art, Melbourne
20[2020] - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Editions - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 Pulse - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Burnie Print Prize - Tasmania
Editions - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Impress - No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne
2018 Summer Salon - Collins Place Gallery, Melbourne
The Exquisite Palette - St Luke, Melbourne
Small Works - Red Rock Regional Gallery, Cororooke
Eventide - New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, NSW
Editions - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2017 Shades of Grey III - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Peebles Print Prize - Queenscliff
ACMD Art Prize - Melbourne
Chromatopia - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Moreton Bay Art Prize - Queensland
Print Council of Australia Commission -
Handmark Gallery, Hobart
West Gallery, Adelaide
Impress Gallery, Brisbane
Sydney Contemporary, Sydney
Mundaring Arts Centre, Western Australia
Collins Place Gallery, Melbourne
Editions - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2016 New Linden Art - Melbourne
Chroma - Queenscliff Gallery & Workshop
Coalesce ARI - Melbourne
Shades of Grey II - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Eventide - Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
Postcard Show - New Linden Art, Melbourne
Editions - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2015 Shades of Grey - Tacit Art, Melbourne
The Hutchins Art Prize - Hobart
The Silk Cut Award - Melbourne
Editions - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Collections
City of Doncaster - City of Yarra - Justin Art House Museum, Melbourne - La Trobe University, Bendigo - Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery - RMIT Gallery, Melbourne - St Vincent's Private Hospital, Melbourne - State Library of Victoria - Wagga Wagga Regional Gallery
Awards
2016 Masters of Fine Art - with Distinction, RMIT
2007 Australia Council for the Arts, The Inter-art Grant - The Darker Edge of Night awarded to Hellen Skye and collaborators
1998 Australian Postgraduate Award with Stipend - The University of Melbourne
1997 Alice Taylor Memorial Prize - The University of Melbourne
1997 Dean's Honours List - The University of Melbourne
1994 Batchelor of Teaching Hons - The University of Melbourne
1994 Graduate Diploma Visual Art - Distinction, Monash University
1992 BA Fine Art - with Distinction, La Trobe University, Bendigo
2021 Omnia Art Prize, Melbourne - Finalist
2019 Burnie Print Prize, Tasmania - Finalist
2017 Print Council of Australia - 50th Anniversary Print Commission
Moreton Bay Art Prize, Queensland - Finalist
ACMD Art Prize, Melbourne - Finalist
2015 The Hutchins Art Prize. Hobart - Finalist
The Silk Cut Award, Melbourne - Finalist
Reviews
2016 The Pinacoteca - Rhythm, by John Rabling thepinacoteca.org /2016/09/18/rhythm/14 Time Out, Medicated, Critics Choice
2014 Star Observer - Melbourne warms up for Midwinta
2014 Midsumma Festival - Medicated, Midwinta
2014 Melbourne Art Gallery Openings - Medicated by TJ Bateson, galleryopenings
2013 Leader - Abbotsford exhibittion inspired by silks and suits, Heraldsun
2013 Art News Portal - TJ Bateson & ‘Striped’ at Tacit Contemporary art, Art News Portal
2010 Arts Diary 365 - t j bateson@tacit, Eugene v Reisberg,wordpress.com/2010/1910 Arts Diary 365, Vivien St James, Eugene v Reisberg, wordpress.com/2010/01
2010 DNA - ‘Midsumma Dream’, art, Veiled in Plain Sight, P52,#120
2009 The Week Magazine - ‘Where to buy Art’, Peter Wright09 Art Almanac, December/January 09, exhibition profile, Midsumma Festival
2009 Seen something a little queer - ‘Midsumma Reviews’, web.mac.com/jmacproductions
2009 QueerTastes - Canvas, Richard Watts, http://canvas.e-p.net.au
2009 The Melbourne Art Review - Emma Kirsopp Jan 09 melbourneartreview.com
2008 MCV - ‘Men on Men’, Richard Watts, feature story, p 5, 1 9/0608 MCV,‘Art for everyone’ by Dark Lord
2008 MCV - Midsumma’s visual arts convener, Tim Bateson, Lucy Elliott. 16/01,mcv.e-p.net.au/frontpage/art
2008 Bnews -‘Queer City’, Darren Pope, exhibition review, 10/0108 Man About Town, Midsumma Visual Arts
2008 Richard Watts - Jan 08, richard watts.blogspot.com
2004 The Age - ‘Whats On’, Megan Backhouse, ‘em’bodiment’ exhibition review, 06/11
2003 IO Winter issue - Pauline Hoogen, ‘Loft in Space’, lead story, front cover plus pages 12 -17 issue 12
2003 MCV - ‘Same’, exhibition review p13, 21 /11, MCV, MCV, ‘We are Family’, Andrew Milnes, lead story p7, 2 5/7
2002 Emerald Hill Times - ‘em’bedded’ exhibition review p7
Publications
2014 Medicated (documentary) - Singing Bowl Media Palace Cinema, Westgarth
2009 Midsumma Visual Arts Catalogue exhibition catalogue - Celebrating Queer Culture
2008 Midsumma Visual Arts Catalogue exhibition catalogue - A Queer Coming of Age
2008 Hellen Sky and Collaborators Darker Edge of Night - Art House, Meat Market
2007 Midsumma Visual Arts Catalogue exhibition catalogue - 21 years of Midsumma
2004 em’bedded - Horsham Regional Art Gallery, catalogue essay by Kerrilee Ninnis
2004 em’bodiment - Gallery NewQuay, catalogue essay by Keith Lawrence
2001 T.V. Commercial - Produced, directed and animated 30 second commercial for MSA