Pink Nostalgia is a series of paintings that addresses ideas of nostalgia and sentimentality as well as ideas of history and decay.
‘Pink Nostalgia’ is a series of paintings that explores Dempsey’s sentimentality toward today’s rapidly changing urban environment.
In Dempsey’s inner west neighbourhood he finds himself nostalgic for humble relics that signpost previous generations. A hand painted sign for a newsagent or a milk bar or the history told through layers of previous tenants that are revealed as they are peeled back through demolition and re-development.
‘Pink Nostalgia’ is a series of paintings on plywood and small cardboard cases. Repeated abstract lines are layered over hard-edged shapes of white, grey and pink. Time is explored in this layering, through painting and then painting over again in reflection of an urban environment changing over time.
This passing nature of time and the way things decay is also explored through hand-made cardboard mementos. Their sizes and shapes relate to CDs, DVDs and 7” records: technological relics of previous generations. These mementos represent Dempsey’s nostalgia for their tangible quality that is being lost as they become made obsolete by digital technologies. Significantly, most of the cardboard used is the repurposed packaging of vinyl records the artist has purchased online.
Pink is a colour once popular in the interiors and exteriors of generations past in pale and muted palettes. It is now commonly used as a fluorescent, to mark out construction.
BIO
Marc Dempsey is Sydney based artist who grew up in greater western Sydney. He graduated Sydney College of the Arts in 1998 and directed two galleries during the early 2000s. After an extended overseas and interstate hiatus Dempsey has been steadily painting from his inner west garage for the last six years.
‘Pink Nostalgia’ is a series of paintings that explores Dempsey’s sentimentality toward today’s rapidly changing urban environment.
In Dempsey’s inner west neighbourhood he finds himself nostalgic for humble relics that signpost previous generations. A hand painted sign for a newsagent or a milk bar or the history told through layers of previous tenants that are revealed as they are peeled back through demolition and re-development.
‘Pink Nostalgia’ is a series of paintings on plywood and small cardboard cases. Repeated abstract lines are layered over hard-edged shapes of white, grey and pink. Time is explored in this layering, through painting and then painting over again in reflection of an urban environment changing over time.
This passing nature of time and the way things decay is also explored through hand-made cardboard mementos. Their sizes and shapes relate to CDs, DVDs and 7” records: technological relics of previous generations. These mementos represent Dempsey’s nostalgia for their tangible quality that is being lost as they become made obsolete by digital technologies. Significantly, most of the cardboard used is the repurposed packaging of vinyl records the artist has purchased online.
Pink is a colour once popular in the interiors and exteriors of generations past in pale and muted palettes. It is now commonly used as a fluorescent, to mark out construction.
BIO
Marc Dempsey is Sydney based artist who grew up in greater western Sydney. He graduated Sydney College of the Arts in 1998 and directed two galleries during the early 2000s. After an extended overseas and interstate hiatus Dempsey has been steadily painting from his inner west garage for the last six years.
