Caryn Griffin & Jamie Preisz, State Of Mind

As the weather heats up, what better way to ring in the season than with bevvies, mates and art at the Old Fitz. That's exactly what artists Caryn Griffin and Jamie Preisz had in mind with their joint exhibition State Of Mind, in which both artist's figurative studies of the human body were showcased among native Australian flora and the eclectic jumble of candlesticks, fairy lights and mismatched furniture of the upstairs bar Drinks for the evening were sponsored by Young Henrys, with a row of taps in the upstairs bar flowing like honey in Eden all night.

Griffin's oil paintings carry a highly emotional charge: intimate, raw and honest. Non-naturalistic colour palettes of pale peach, cream and orange extended out from the human figures to the negative space — creating a sense of the body as omnipresent — it's internal emotional state and external physicality emanating out to fill the entire frame. Elements of abstract expressionist practice contribute to this depth of feeling, as in Hannah In Mask, in which both body and background are rendered in frenetic strokes that blur the lines of the body as naturalistic object.

PreIsz's works provided an interesting contrast to Griffin's gestural oils and emotive figures, with paintings somewhat reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelites. Kit, for example, an auburn-haired nude figure laying Ophelia-like in a bath, is overplayed with psychedelic figures: fish and pastel geometric lines, abstracting the human body to a decorative figure.

State Of Mind showcases the possibilities of contemporary portraiture by two emerging Australian talents.