Where is my home? - Press Release

Mark Gerada says that he's "just tryin' to work it all out". Where do I come from? Where is my home? What is home? 

Born in 1968 in Merrylands to Maltese parents, his current exhibition explores the emotions, issues and aesthetics of being a first-generation Australian. 

Mark completed a degree in architecture at University of Technology Sydney and went on to write his thesis "Kandinsky from painting to teaching", a history of abstraction. Mark's style partly originated in his early projects and work with architectural practices. His ideas for planning and design, where his bold use of colour, his illustrator's flair and organic, non-conformist approach to presentation caused amusement and created some friction with the "powers that be", were unique.

Some design projects followed and he subsequently won a scholarship and travelled overseas. After a jubilant beginning in Spain, Mark based himself in London and hopped from Paris to Brussels and eventually to Malta, a beautiful vibrant island clustered with small limestone villages, perched on rich yellow cliffs. The towering churches, at the epicentre of life there form a potent contrast to the small rectangular dwellings that are cut from the nearby cliffs. These blocks and segments caught Mark's eye and his drawings from this time are horizontal refractions and reflections of the Maltese landscape.

His current paintings are more personal. Origins, special memories of childhood, his great grandmothers craft as the village seamstress, growing up as an Australian with a Maltese family in Sydney suburbia, and his current explorations, and exuberant enthusiasm for life have all been explored in these works.

Mark says that, "in order to work out where you're going, you've gotta work out where you're coming from". 

Exploring his motives and feelings about these paintings, Mark said that he sees them very much as a musician would see a score. A series of segments and blocks like bars that create rhythm - a harmonious whole.