Quiet Rocks 2004

Rohan Wealleans is known for his "layer" paintings. He makes them by applying coats of paint, then cutting into them, peeling and pinning them back like a surgeon, exposing candy-coloured flesh. Wealleans' work is an exploration of the physical stuff of painting. But the work also engages adolescent gynaecological interests (it has been called "pornographic abstraction"), artworld in-jokes and psychedelic effects. Quiet Rocks is one of Wealleans' more serious - or pseudo-serious - works. He collected paint chips excavated in making layer paintings and pinned them in evidence bags to a notice board; sorted from smallest to biggest. Beneath each specimen, Wealleans made a contour line drawing of it for the record. Quiet Rocks is part of a series of Wealleans' works related to a fictional Planet Earth Geology Department (PEGD), whose members scour the galaxy collecting rocks for scientific analysis. The title riffs on Wealleans' 2001 notice board work, In Space No One Can Hear You Collect Rocks. (Snake Oil, 2005)

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