The More Things Change
10–24 September
In ‘The More Things Change’, Julie Battisti presents a series of large-scale oil paintings centred on the flower as a subject of profound visual and emotional resonance. Familiar yet transformed through scale, these works invite a renewed encounter with the flower; the sublime intricacy of the painted surface reveals the depth held within a recognisable subject.
Through their expansive scale and exquisite attention to detail, Battisti’s paintings create an enveloping pictorial space in which the familiar is newly perceived. Forms extend across the linen, revealing the subtle interplay between presence and dissolution. What first appears as an arresting depiction gradually unfolds through the magnetism of illuminated passages, shifting surfaces, and the accumulated gestures of paint.
Emerging from carefully composed floral arrangements, Battisti’s paintings transform fleeting natural encounters into enduring studies of light, surface, and material presence. Removed from a specific setting or occasion, the flowers become open to interpretation, allowing space for memory, reflection, and individual response. In The More Things Change, the familiar subject of the flower becomes a point of continuity and transformation, revealing how the ways we see, interpret, and experience beauty evolve across time.
Constructed through successive layers of oil on linen, each painting reveals the material language of its making. Visible brushwork moves between passages of opacity and translucence, holding delicacy and strength within the surface. The works embody a relationship between immediacy and duration, where the physical presence of paint carries the trace of its own making.
Across the exhibition, Battisti invites a return to an earthly pace, where perception expands through continued engagement. The familiar flower remains, yet continues to change, revealing new possibilities with each encounter.
Featured artwork: Fiercely Delicate, Delicately Fierce
