Emma Stuart - TEMPUS: Works on Paper

Emma Stuart

TEMPUS: Works on Paper

24 October – 7 November 2026 

Time asks something of us.

These works began with the aftermath of the fires of summer 2025/26, when the grass trees flowered in extraordinary numbers—an ancient chorus rising from scorched ground. They are paintings of renewal, but also of attention: an attempt to stay with a place long enough for it to reveal itself.

Working across paper, I return to the same landscapes repeatedly. Each painting begins with looking, but gradually becomes an act of listening. Edges dissolve, weather shifts, and the distance between observer and landscape becomes less certain.

The works explore the relationships between forms—how cloud reshapes mountain, how branches frame distance, how weather transforms colour, and how one presence changes another. In the end, attention itself alters what we perceive.

Every painting begins with the same luminous ground. It becomes the quiet light that everything else is built upon, remaining present even when it is almost invisible.

Tempus is a meditation on time—not measured by clocks, but by textures of trust. It suggests that belonging is not something we find, but something that slowly emerges through sustained attention.

About the artist:

Emma Stuart is an Australian-based artist whose painting practice explores the relationship between landscape, memory and the experience of place.

Informed by years of walking, observing and returning to familiar terrain, her work moves between representation and abstraction, exploring the shifting relationships between light, atmosphere, colour and form. Through layered surfaces and an intuitive approach to painting, Stuart considers how sustained observation can transform both our perception of landscape and our sense of belonging within it.

Born in New Zealand, Stuart has lived and worked in Melbourne, London, Berlin and Alice Springs, and is now based in Western Victoria, near Gariwerd. She has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally, including Hidden Arrernte at Araluen Arts Centre, and has undertaken a major commission for Hamilton Gallery.

Her work is held in private collections across Australia, New Zealand and Germany, as well as the collection of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.