Canny painter opts for Korean colours
Yvonne Boag at the Macquarie University Art Gallery
Korea has been good for Yvonne Boag in that she has learned to trust the aesthetics of colours straight out of the tube.
Untitled 2025, pictured above, is an example of a work done in what she calls “Korean colours”.
The painting is bold, the application of paint flat and the attitude blunt.
There is very little pussy-footing around in Carried Between Worlds, a survey of Boag’s work at the Macquarie University Art Gallery.
The exhibition of recent paintings and historical works from Boag’s collection opened last week and the artist was down from her studio in Korea with her husband and son.
The recent paintings are imposing yet friendly with large, clean shapes complementing people and their gestures such as Pink Table 2025, pictured below.
“I’m trying to see the bottom line. Less and less is necessary,” she said, of these beautiful acrylic constructions.
Boag, pictured below in front of the glowing Blue Square 2024 is canny about locations, opportunities and the economics of being an artist.
“I’ve been going (to Korea) since ‘93,” she says. “There are a lot of art curators and artists. I get more exhibitions there.”
She lived in Melbourne in the ‘80s, showed at Niagara and had a studio in the much coveted building on the corner of Lennox Street and Rowena Parade in Richmond.
She’s obviously a trend-setter. There’s now a gallery called The Lennox in the building. After that she moved to Erskinville.
“I find places before they become hip,” she says. “Now the place is super trendy. I’ve got a good eye for real estate.”
In Sydney Boag taught at the National Arts School and at a university in South Korea, refusing tenure to follow a new project. She doesn’t like being pinned down.
Recently she has become so adept at gouache that she does about 10-20 works a night on paper, setting a trend for repetition, exemplified in the extraordinary skillfulness of the brushwork. The gouaches, pictured below, sell sell for about $450 each.
“I have a voice in my head,” she says about selecting colours. “It’s intuitive. I pick what I want. Korean paints are in much happier colours.”
Akky Van Ogtrop, curator of the show which includes early etchings, suggested that dislocation is a feature of Boag’s work and that she felt uncertain in her younger years.
“Displacement is a very personal feeling. She didn’t feel at ease in Australia. The works on paper make me feel more uncertain,” Van Ogtrop said.
A particularly bold and restrained work Untitled 2024, shows some sign of indecision in the slight texture of over-painting, perhaps introducing a somber note.
Boag’s next show will be at Atrium in Botany Bay, opening on 1 August.
Carried Between Worlds: The Journey of Yvonne Boag, Macquarie University Art Gallery, Until 7 August.