The Graven Image
Alexandra Peters
Warrnambool Art Gallery

The act of paint­ing, in its endur­ing and often debat­ed rel­e­vance, finds an impact­ful con­tem­po­rary expres­sion in the work of Alexan­dra Peters. Her expand­ed paint­ing prac­tice is sit­u­at­ed with­in a lin­eage that crit­i­cal­ly engages with the medium’s his­to­ry and its rela­tion­ship to the sur­round­ing world. Indeed, her work enters a rich dia­logue with oth­er key, often dis­parate, fig­ures in art and the­o­ry. This exhi­bi­tion brings togeth­er a body of work that nav­i­gates the com­plex ter­rain between man­u­al ges­ture and the cool detach­ment of indus­tri­al process­es, ulti­mate­ly ques­tion­ing the very nature of paint­ing in our con­tem­po­rary moment.

In Peters’ work there is a sub­tle but impor­tant pres­ence of the artist’s hand, traces of per­son­al touch and ges­ture that cre­ates a strong ten­sion with the way her marks are treat­ed as objects or prod­ucts. This ghost­ly pres­ence con­trasts with the imper­son­al, almost mechan­i­cal feel of the mate­ri­als, high­light­ing the con­flict between human expres­sion and the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of artis­tic labour. While she employs meth­ods of repro­duc­ing these ges­tures, aim­ing for a fin­ger­print-less sur­face¹, the ini­tial impulse of a work often stems from a man­u­al action, a mark that is sub­se­quent­ly mag­ni­fied, copied, and silkscreened onto vinyl. This process of ini­tial cre­ation fol­lowed by repro­duc­tion and era­sure, mir­rors a dual desire to both acknowl­edge and efface the artist’s sub­jec­tive pres­ence, pok­ing at the roman­tic ide­al of artis­tic expres­sion while still embody­ing the act of paint­ing itself.

Peters’ prac­tice is clear­ly informed by a gen­er­a­tion that came after the dom­i­nance of expres­sive abstrac­tion. Like Michael Kreb­ber, who stat­ed, ​“I do not believe I can invent some­thing new in art or paint­ing because what­ev­er I would want to invent already exists”², Peters’ focus is more on a crit­i­cal re-com­po­si­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion of visu­al lan­guages and mate­ri­al­i­ties. Her engage­ment with indus­tri­al mate­ri­als like vinyl, often asso­ci­at­ed with clin­i­cal steril­i­ty and mass pro­duc­tion, is a ges­ture rich with impli­ca­tion. By replac­ing the tra­di­tion­al­ly per­me­able can­vas with a non-absorbent ground, she intro­duces a mate­r­i­al dynam­ic where resis­tance and oppo­si­tion become cen­tral. Rather than aim­ing to pro­duce a uni­fied field, the ges­tures of paint­ing are elec­tri­fied by these ten­sions. They become expres­sions of dif­fer­ence rather than attempts at cohe­sion. Like in works by Michaela Eich­wald, who also uses vinyl as a paint­ing sup­port, flu­id ges­tures which sug­gest a fleshy, bod­i­ly pres­ence are con­strained, refined and denied by the non-porous sur­face, which threat­en era­sure through the always immi­nent pos­si­bil­i­ty of sim­ply wip­ing the sur­face clean.

The dynam­ic and dis­rupt­ed forms with­in Peters’ work also find a com­pelling res­o­nance with the prac­tice of Steven Par­ri­no, whose decon­struct­ed can­vas­es, often fea­tur­ing tears, twists, and delib­er­ate manip­u­la­tions of the stretch­er and sur­face, rad­i­cal­ly chal­lenged the tra­di­tion­al integri­ty of the paint­ing as a uni­fied field. While Peters’ meth­ods are dif­fer­ent, the result­ing visu­al impact shares a sim­i­lar sense of frag­men­ta­tion and a delib­er­ate depar­ture from reg­u­lar paint­ing struc­tures. In this lin­eage of chal­leng­ing the paint­ed object’s con­ven­tions, Peters’ offers a con­tem­po­rary ana­logue to Parrino’s aggres­sive­ly altered can­vas­es. Both artists rig­or­ous­ly ques­tion estab­lished bound­aries and expec­ta­tions, extend­ing a his­tor­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry that finds an ear­ly and pow­er­ful artic­u­la­tion in Lucio Fontana’s inter­ven­tions into the can­vas plane.

Anoth­er aspect of resis­tance in Peter’s works is their mon­u­men­tal­i­ty. They demand space, refus­ing an easy assim­i­la­tion into domes­tic set­tings. This spa­tial assertive­ness extends to the instal­la­tion itself, becom­ing a cru­cial ele­ment in con­trol­ling the read­ing of the show, res­onat­ing with Cady Noland’s prac­tice. Noland’s instal­la­tions, often incor­po­rat­ing ready­mades and delib­er­ate­ly struc­tur­ing the viewer’s move­ment through the space, aimed to cre­ate a spe­cif­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal and crit­i­cal encounter. Both artists set up a map of ref­er­ences, to estab­lish an elu­sive yet demand­ing pres­ence. The unseen vio­lence that Peters’ work embod­ies, con­nects with an unset­tling aura com­pa­ra­ble to Noland’s prac­tice. While Noland fre­quent­ly incor­po­rat­ed overt sym­bols of Amer­i­can anx­i­eties and poten­tial vio­lence – bar­ri­cades, hand­cuffs, crime scene tape – Peters’ approach is more sub­tle, but even in the absence of explic­it imagery, an under­tone of aggres­sion and soci­etal unease often prevails.

Cru­cial­ly, Peters’ use of ele­ments like pipes can be read through the lens of Fred Moten and Ste­fano Harney’s inter­pre­ta­tion of ​“logis­tics.” In The Under­com­mons: Fugi­tive Plan­ning & Black Study³, Moten and Har­ney artic­u­late logis­tics not mere­ly as the sci­ence of effi­cient move­ment and organ­i­sa­tion of goods, but as a fun­da­men­tal struc­ture of con­trol and con­tain­ment with­in cap­i­tal­ist and colo­nial sys­tems. These pipelines, seem­ing­ly func­tion­al and aes­thet­i­cal­ly inte­grat­ed into Peters’ instal­la­tions, can be seen as mate­r­i­al man­i­fes­ta­tions of these unseen net­works of pow­er. They evoke the arter­ies of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, the path­ways through which resources and bod­ies are chan­nelled and often con­trolled, mir­ror­ing the rad­i­cal cap­i­tal­ism and colo­nial­ism asso­ci­at­ed with logis­ti­cal networks.

The way these pipes are placed in the exhi­bi­tion space, dic­tat­ing the viewer’s move­ment and fram­ing their per­spec­tive, fur­ther rein­forces this con­nec­tion to logis­ti­cal con­trol. Peters’ incor­po­ra­tion of these indus­tri­al con­duits can be inter­pret­ed as a sub­tle yet potent com­men­tary on the under­ly­ing struc­tures that gov­ern our move­ment and per­cep­tion with­in the built envi­ron­ment and, by exten­sion, with­in broad­er soci­etal frameworks.

Fur­ther­more, Peters’ ded­i­ca­tion to the aes­thet­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties of her cho­sen mate­ri­als, even in their indus­tri­al nature, cre­ate a com­plex sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence, ini­tial­ly per­haps allur­ing but ulti­mate­ly hint­ing at a deep­er, poten­tial­ly unset­tling truth about the sys­tems that under­pin our seem­ing­ly ordered world.

Alexan­dra Peters’ work oper­ates with­in a rich and crit­i­cal dia­logue with the his­to­ry of paint­ing. By embrac­ing indus­tri­al mate­ri­als, manip­u­lat­ing the artist’s hand through repro­duc­tion, and assert­ing a demand­ing pres­ence in space, often artic­u­lat­ed through the unset­tling pres­ence of logis­ti­cal ele­ments like pipes, Peters skil­ful­ly com­pos­es and inter­prets the endur­ing ques­tions of paint­ings’ rel­e­vance in a world sat­u­rat­ed with images and indus­tri­al process­es. Her unset­tling sur­faces and care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed instal­la­tions invite us to recon­sid­er the medi­um not just as a visu­al prac­tice. Instead, her work func­tions as a crit­i­cal lens through which to exam­ine our rela­tion­ship to mate­ri­al­i­ty, space, and the often unseen net­works of con­trol that shape our con­tem­po­rary expe­ri­ence. Alexan­dra Peters’ first insti­tu­tion­al solo exhi­bi­tion at the War­rnam­bool Art Gallery offers a com­pelling glimpse into an expand­ed paint­ing prac­tice that con­stant­ly chal­lenges its own bound­aries and our expec­ta­tions of its decorum.

– Micky Schu­bert, Curator

End notes
1. Hugh­es, Helen, Mil­du­ra Atroc­i­ty Exhi­bi­tion, Burchill/​McCamley, Lau­ra Bur­row, Alexan­dra Peters, NAP Con­tem­po­rary Art Gallery.
2. Birn­baum, Daniel, Kelsey John, Mor­gan Jes­si­ca, Man with­out Qual­i­ties: The Art of Michael Kreb­ber, Art­Fo­rum, Vol.44, NO 2, Octo­ber 2005.
3. Har­ney, Ste­fano, Moten, Fred, The Under­com­mons, Fugi­tive Plan­ning & Black Study, Minor Com­po­si­tions, Wiven­hoe, New York, Port Wat­son, 2013.

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Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished for the exhi­bi­tion The Graven Image by Alexan­dra Peters, pre­sent­ed by the War­rnam­bool Art Gallery from 2 August – 19 Octo­ber 2025. © The authors, artists and War­rnam­bool Art Gallery, 2025.