Castlemaine artist Rob McHaffie talks about his new exhibition We Are Family, at the Bendigo Art Gallery.

Transcript

00:00This exhibition for me is really exciting.

00:08It brings together 84 of my works from paintings, sculpture and works on paper.

00:15Paintings really traverse mostly the last kind of 12 years in my life.

00:20So some of the paintings are set in Thailand, some of the paintings are set in Bayside Melbourne

00:26and some of the paintings, these new ones, are set in Castlemaine.

00:30So they're always quite portraiture based and they feature someone that I've observed

00:36or someone that's close to me and situates them in a backdrop, whether that's Brighton

00:42or Castlemaine.

00:43We've got this beautiful swimming hole in Castlemaine called the Reservoir or Golden

00:47Point.

00:48So I decided to feature some of the local family gathering around the reservoir there.

00:57So in the centre of the painting is my wife emerging into the water and then other different

01:03collected figures.

01:07Moving to Castlemaine made me feel like I then had licence to do landscape painting

01:13and I hadn't really approached painting the Australian bush that much.

01:17So this is the first kind of painting that I've kind of really shifted my palette to

01:22reflect perhaps the drier kind of landscape of Castlemaine and surrounds.

01:27But we do have the kind of beautiful greens and the yellow kind of blossoms coming through

01:33the bush.

01:34And then I've kind of added a sprinkling of colour with the bright combi van and some

01:41of the fashions that are kind of like trendy little outfits that people are wearing.

01:57This painting was inspired by, actually I was turning a corner in my car and came past

02:03this house and the light was just really hitting all of these autumn leaves and really brightening

02:10up this suburban house.

02:12So I captured it with my camera, I may have had a camera or a phone with me at the time.

02:18And I went back to the studio, I kind of had this photo and then I was driving along St

02:22Kilda Road and noticed these two women walking in unison, kind of marching, doing their exercise

02:31in their lycra leggings with their phones and I thought that's quite a modern day scene.

02:36I kind of shifted the two women walking into a mother and a daughter character and it reminds

02:44me a little bit of my pap's sister and her daughter, looks like the mum is kind of happily

02:52on the phone organising brunch or a chai latte and the daughter is a little bit more self-conscious

03:01and a little bit more, you know, oh mum's just been super annoying or something.

03:06I search for kind of people and if I've got a reference in my life I might use that person.

03:12So my wife and family featuring a lot of the paintings.

03:17Sometimes I construct people out of collage.

03:19In this case I think I probably found this woman's image in a magazine and this is actually

03:30I think her name is from Crocodile Dundee and then I kind of flipped through magazines

03:36or local brochures.

03:37In Brighton where this is set there's a lot of Lululemon leggings shops so it's partly

03:44inspired by that culture too.