Michael Michaeledes
White Reliefs

5 July - 9 September 2006

Michaeledes began his artistic career as a self-taught painter, painting near-naturalistic landscapes before his work became increasingly abstracted.

Even in his early paintings he has always been concerned with the effects of light and shade. By the end of the 1960s he had moved away from painting and started making shaped canvas reliefs, initially painted but later eliminating all colour in preference for bare canvas. The elimination of colour came about by the artist's recognition of his formal inspiration: marble relief sculpture of the ancient Greeks.


This exhibition comprises of ten canvas reliefs dated from 1999 to 2005 which are all in the same neutral tone of the un-primed cotton duck canvas. Wooden structures beneath the canvas create three dimensional space pushing on the canvas to create sculptural ridges and valleys complimenting the architectural forms of the works.


Michael Michaeledes started exhibiting with Annely Juda Fine Art, then still called Hamilton Galleries, in 1963 and he has had numerous solo and group shows nationally and internationally.