The Invitation 2022

Caroline McGregor’s solo exhibition at Sidespace Gallery examines the intersection of mental space and physical space through an exploration in media. The Invitation expresses material resolutions to the artist’s immaterial journeys. These are private works made public. 

Working in a linear language, McGregor’s sculptures are informed by her long-spanning drawing practice, as black steel echoes charcoal in its ability to both ribbon around space and contain it. Embodying invitation, the artist’s work seeks to create the sensation of doorways and thresholds so that light, air, and others may feel welcome to move through the negatives of framed shape. The allure of passageways has been a constant in McGregor’s practice, whose large-scale sculptures border on the architectural. 

Of great influence upon McGregor’s studio work are two seemingly separate moments in art history, Romanesque architecture, and American minimalism. Having had a sustained interest in the geometry and seriality of minimalist sculpture, it was not until the artist was awarded an opportunity to take up residency in Tuscany that she was moved to embrace the femininity of roundness characterised by Italy’s built environment. Her memory of the experience is marked by an overwhelming sensation evoked by the passage through ancient cathedrals. This has seen a transformation in McGregor’s work; whereby the viewer’s physical and psychological navigation of an artwork is paramount.

Enchanted by the beauty of Tasmania since her move to the state in 2021, she has included Tasmanian timber into many of her sculptural pieces, introducing a certain warmth and tactile comfort to the clarity of the steel line. For the benefit of one who is looking for the door into her work she has sought to allow complexity to appear as simplicity, to make steel feel soft and heavy forms light, and always, an invitation to cross the threshold and enter into the mystery. 

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Introduction By Shannon Smith