Art Wall: Kerrie Poliness
Art Wall: Kerrie Poliness
Swamp Drawing
From 27 March 2025
Melbourne-based contemporary artist Kerrie Poliness brings her abstract geometric practice to the SAM Furphy Family Art Wall for a site-specific installation. Combining two styles used repeatedly throughout Poliness’ dynamic forty-year creative practice, Swamp Drawing consists of two layers, with 36 coloured diamond-shaped transfers on the glass windows and balcony, and a linear wall drawing made with silver reflective film.
Visible from both inside and outside, the reflective elements of the wall drawing respond with the movement of people, light, birds, and trees in the wind. The wall drawing work continues Poliness’ longstanding instructional geometric wall works, with the shimmer of the lines activating as you move through the space and change in colour depending on where you stand. The diamonds on the glass and the reflective elements of the wall drawing are visible to birds flying by, alerting them to the physical presence of the large glass windows.
Create an artwork with Kerrie Poliness
Make your mark with SAM Art Wall feature artist Kerrie Poliness in this participatory large-scale line drawing session that will flow down the lawn of SAM’s Orchard Hill.
Together, Poliness and participants will map out a line drawing in the artist’s signature abstract, geometric style that expands on her new Art Wall installation.
About the artist:
Kerrie Poliness (b. 1962 Melbourne, Australia) is a Melbourne-based artist whose systematic, collaborative, and often open-ended process produces paintings, drawings, sculptures and films inflected with histories of conceptual and abstract art. Poliness is associated with an influential group of artists who reiterated the relevance of geometric abstraction in Melbourne in the late 1980s and 90s, through the innovative artist-run space Store 5 which she co-founded.
Poliness exhibited extensively across Australia and internationally, including HOTA, Gold Coast, 2018; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2017; G‑MK, Zagreb, 2014; and Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2013.
She has developed a number of site-specific public artworks including Stream, Green Square, Zetland, Sydney, 2022; Parliament Steps Walking Drawing, Melbourne, 2021; Field Drawing #1, Maywar Green, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2014; and Wave Drawings, Highpoint Shopping Centre, Melbourne (2013).
Her work is held in a number of public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, and Dowse Museum, Lower Hutt. Kerrie Poliness is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.
