InFlux

Alluvial Gallery Bendigo 2006

Kate Shaw’s InFlux exhibition at Alluvial Gallery continues her exploration of transformation, geology, and the sublime through her signature technique of poured acrylics and collage. In this series, Shaw draws deeply on the landscape of inland Australia, infusing her compositions with spectral echoes of ghost gum trees—those iconic pale sentinels of the outback. Rather than depicting these trees literally, Shaw evokes their presence through her marbled textures and branching paint forms, which resemble bark patterns and limb-like structures. The ghost gum becomes a visual and symbolic anchor within her abstract terrains, representing both resilience and fragility in an environment shaped by deep time and sudden flux.

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Shaw’s use of mirrored imagery and reflective surfaces heightens the uncanny quality of these ghostly arboreal forms. They flicker across her compositions like memories or imprints, suggesting a landscape that remembers. The ghost gum, in its whiteness and association with spiritual presence in Indigenous culture, becomes an apt metaphor for Shaw’s layered, alchemical process—a tree of memory and myth entwined in paint. In InFlux, the landscape is not static but in the process of becoming, dissolving and reforming through pigment and perception. The ghost gum, elusive yet rooted, stands as a spectral witness to these unfolding cycles.