Jenny Topfer – Paintings

Jenny Topfer makes paintings that operate in a world of whispers and patient disclosure. Their communicative intent is held – undemonstrative. Such discretion remains rare, but for Topfer, consideration and judgement have been quietly accumulating over a long arc of time. 

There is simultaneously much more and much less at stake in these recent paintings. Made on either side of calamitous fires in Tasmania, fire that took many of the works and very nearly her home, these paintings can’t help but infer something of the risk and transience that accompanies making a painting.

Beneath their tenacious surfaces lies a web of lyrical gestures, that are more about personal ceremony and establishing her own physiological cadence than being a dominant substrate to the paintings. They anchor the body of the painting philosophically more than architecturally. They swiftly become fugitive, subsumed by a newer approach to more robust material. Though vestiges of the initial calligraphy sometimes remain visible, especially at the edges of the canvas – as if the heavier body of pigment has retreated in a late seasonal thaw – their role reminds us, that what matters is not always visible and what is visible is built upon procedures and transactions that form an orienteering journey that concludes with resolution more than destination.

Look closely at the surfaces and you can sense something of their construction as pigments rasp and abrade over an ever-developing body. You can almost hear the pigment, feel its advance, witness its progress as it negotiates with the linen. This exchange between energy, material and support is at the heart of Topfer’s work. My repeated analogies to weather systems, to the hushed environment they inhabit is simply an attempt to apprehend them assisted by allegory. Truth is, all they ask of you is to look as if you were listening – with a little patience and composure knowing that time was a crucial ingredient in their making and ought to be reciprocated by the viewer.

This Is the third solo exhibition Jenny Topfer has made with the galleries. Her work has also been included in projects The Anatomy of Gesture and Permafrost. She will be present at the opening, all welcome.

Andrew Jensen, May 2026