Harley Oliver’s exhibition Dad took a picture opens on August 10th at Stanley Street Gallery in Darlinghurst, Sydney. I had the pleasure of discussing the layered imagery of Harley’s paintings with him to create the text for this exhibition.

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Time erodes. It slides across a scene like a second shutter, obliterating narrative.

Gestures voice stories of interactions and faces beam with the optimistic exuberance of youth. Others meld away, erased by time as enigmatic snapshots of the past. Behind, waves crash and clouds gather as the beach continues on, stretching back and reaching forward in time, witness to these figures and with a time scale of its own. Harley Oliver’s latest series ‘Dad Took A Picture’ considers what has gone and what remains with the passing of time. Gaps in memory mirror the gap in time between us and the figures, leaving holes in the images where faces are unrecognised and relationships are unknown.

Harley’s interest in marking this disjuncture plays out in the landscapes of these works. As the figures dissolve he offers us visions of the eternal beaches of Australia’s ancient landmass which were here long before we could make footprints in the sand and which will continue on long after we are gone.

Harley has captured the flatness of Australian coastal light through painterly drama. The figures are embedded into these beaches, frozen in that fraction of a second as the camera shutter closes. He conjures them into frame as if spotlighting the past physically, if only for an elusive moment.