Michelle Hanlin’s new exhibition of paintings signals an improvisational process that lends itself to the content. Compositions worked out on the canvas are given an open interpretation by the interplay of figuration and abstraction echoed in the makeshift forms inhabiting them. The dynamic use of painterly gesture, colour and enigmatic figure/ground relationships illuminate Hanlin’s continuing fascination with geomorphic structures, architectural motifs and weathered sculptural assemblage evoking ruins and abandoned habitations. Hanlin’s addition of monoprints and framed imagery suggests paintings within paintings, multiplying the subject and its boundaries in a balancing act of the concrete and the visionary.

Hanlin’s work embodies a relationship between sculpture, painting and colour. Her early work was mainly concerned with figurative sculptures and tableaux scenes. Recently painting has become her main focus, with compositions worked out on the canvas given an open interpretation by the interplay of figuration and abstraction echoed in the makeshift forms inhabiting them.

In Hanlin’s latest work, the dynamic use of painterly gesture, colour and enigmatic figure/ground relationships illuminate her continuing fascination with geomorphic structures, architectural motifs and weathered sculptural assemblage evoking ruins and abandoned habitations. Hanlin’s addition of monoprints and framed imagery suggests paintings within paintings, multiplying the subject and its boundaries in a balancing act of the concrete and the visionary.

Hanlin’s first solo exhibition at Gallery 9 was in 2007, with nine to date. She studied Sculpture at Sydney College of the Arts and was awarded a first-class honours degree. She has exhibited interstate and internationally in group exhibitions.

Her work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, MCA, Artbank, Wollongong City Gallery, and numerous private collections around Australia and internationally.