Put it in a drawer presents an experimental shift from Lloyd’s encaustic painting practice. During a three-month residency at Canberra’s Megalo Print Studio in 2018 she worked with master printmakers to understand and glean elements of traditional printmaking processes. The works in this exhibition were created using manual printing press equipment and discarded etching plate off-cuts. In this body of work each work is unique. Lloyd subverts the laboriousness and the concept of multiples inherent in etching.
Lloyd’s late mentor John Nixon once advised her to put finished artworks away in a drawer. Don’t look at them for a while – days, weeks, months, years – then take them out and re-evaluate. Giving these prints time in the drawer has grown Lloyd’s confidence in extending her practice beyond painting. John’s daughter Emma Nixon has written the room sheet essay to accompany the works, situated in the context of John’s mentorship. Emma is an emerging curator and writer and contributes to contemporary art discourse, running a small gallery space called Cathedral Cabinet in a window located in the same building as CAVES.
Merryn Lloyd’s artistic practice is concerned with our sensory experience of things. Lloyd’s works emerge from process, and it’s the conceptual rigour behind this invisible part of making that drives her practice. She is methodical and sets up ways of doing things, letting the artwork unfold within that methodology. Her paintings are made from familiar materials such as wood, plastic, wax, netting, silk and felt and are intimate in scale. They search around themselves for space, form, expression and associations with everyday life.
Click here to request a catalogue of available works.
MERRYN LLOYD
Born in Melbourne, Australia
Lives and works in Canberra, Australia
Education
2008 Bachelor of Visual Art (Painting), Monash University
2007 Semester Abroad, Prato, Italy (Monash University/Australians Studying Abroad)
Residencies
2019 Messengers, Tuggeranong Art Centre
2018 Megalo Print Studio
Solo exhibitions
2021 Put it in a Drawer, Caves Gallery, Melbourne (forthcoming)
2017 Invisible Labour, Tributary Projects, Canberra
Hot Mess Paintings, Daine Singer, Melbourne
2016 Dusty Plain, Paulnache, Gisborne, New Zealand
2015 Chalk and Cheese, Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn, Melbourne
2014 Oil on a Spoon, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne
2011 Slide, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne
2010 Sample Window, curated by Patrice Sharkey, Platform, Melbourne
2008 The Beginning of Something New, Count Six Student Gallery, Monash University
Group exhibitions
2021 KNUCKLES, Knulp Gallery, Sydney (forthcoming)
2020 Eroded Crater Remnants, Conners Conners, Melbourne
2019 Spring 1883 with Tributary Projects, Sydney
In the Valley, curated by Danny Lacy, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Melbourne
2018 At the Edge of Matter, curated by Karena Keys and Phoebe Hamra, ANCA, Canberra
In a World of Wounds, curated by Talia Smith, Artbank Sydney
Always Slipping Away, curated by Grace Blake, Tributary Projects, Canberra
Winter Blues, Daine Singer, Melbourne
Heavy, Chamber Presents, Melbourne
2017 Spring 1883 with Caves Gallery, Sydney
What’s Happening Here? Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn, Melbourne
2016 Caves Fundraiser, Caves, Melbourne
Veranda Archibald, curated by Clementine Edwards & Esther Stewart, Brunswick East
Painting Matter, Daine Singer, Melbourne
Caves offsite, curated by Storm Gold and Kez Hughes, Switchback Gallery, Gippsland
West Space Annual Fundraiser, West Space, Melbourne
2015 Utopian Slumps, Three Thousand Apartments, Melbourne
West Space Annual Fundraiser, West Space, Melbourne
TBC Fundraiser, TCB Inc., Melbourne
Cave Painting, Caves, Melbourne
Faux Fair, curated by Kim Brockett, c3, Melbourne
2014 Fin, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne
A Necessary Evil, curated by Dioni Salas, Kings ARI, Melbourne
Movements, curated by Justin Hinder and Eleanor Butt, c3, Melbourne
Pavilion, curated by David Homewood, TCB, Melbourne
Das Boot Fair, curated by Esther Stewart & Oscar Perry, Next Wave Festival
West Space Annual Fundraiser, West Space, Melbourne
2013 Window Painting, collaboration with Renee Cosgrave, Monash University Museum of Art
Method and Gesture, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne
Soft Eyes, curated by Pip Wallis, TCB, Melbourne
painting/sculpture/floor work/wall work, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
Poetic Forms, Access Gallery, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne
2012 Seventh Super Sell Out Show, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
Platform Fundraising Exhibition, Platform Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne
Model Home by Madeline Kidd, un Magazine, issue 6.1, edited by Lisa Radford and Liang
Luscombe
2011 Merryn then Renee, Platform Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne
2010 Abstract Now, curated by Danny Lacy, Shepparton Art Gallery, Victoria
Falls Creek Artists Camp, curated by David H Thomas, Falls Creek, Victoria
Whole Pieces, curated by Pip Wallis, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
Merryn Lloyd / Renee Cosgrave, The Narrows, Melbourne
2009 Fundraiser, The Narrows, Melbourne
2008 Monash University Graduate Exhibition, Monash University, Melbourne
Using Pink Sporadically, Runt Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne
Is it the beginning or the end? 3rd Year Painting Students Draw, curated by Marriane
Coutts, Runt Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne
2007 Repeat (Repeat), curated by Kent Wilson, Runt Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne
Guadare Impare (To look, to learn), Monash University, Prato, Italy
Selected collaborations
2019 Meet Makers 8, with Karen Bondietti, Hands on Studio and exhibition at ANCA, Canberra
2017 In Common, with Kirsten Perry, Guild of Objects, Melbourne
2016 The Hunch, with Renee Cosgrave, curated by Boe-Lin Bastin, Incinerator Art Gallery,
Melbourne
2014 Window Painting 2, with Renee Cosgrave, Cecelia Fox, Melbourne
Confessions, with emerging designer Gretchen Dobson, Desktop Magazine
2013 Window Painting, with Renee Cosgrave, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne
2008 Print Workshop, with Renee Cosgrave, curated by Warren Taylor, The Narrows, Melbourne
Kuwaii Pop-up Shop, with Renee Cosgrave, Penthouse Mouse, Melbourne
2007 Good Ambiguity vs. Bad Ambiguity, with Renee Cosgrave, Runt Gallery, Monash
University
The Narrows Window, with Renee Cosgrave, The Narrows, Melbourne
Open Day at Monash University, with Renee Cosgrave, Dom Sowersby and Sam Martin,
Monash University
Curatorial projects
2016 Art Exhibition/House Warming, Narrabundah, Canberra
2014 Nine Painting Presentation, with Renee Cosgrave, part 5 of Incidents Above a Bar, the
Alderman, Melbourne
Writing/talking about my work
Miriam Kelly, ‘Focus on: Cool Hunter Predictions’, Art Collector, Issue 83, Jan-Mar 2018, p. 74
Tai Snaith, Art Attack, RRR 102.7FM, 30 June 2016
Boe-Lin Bastin, ‘The Hunch’ catalogue essay, August 2016
‘Melbourne painters Gisborne bound…’, The Gisborne Herald, Thursday Jan 7, 2016, p. 20
Dan Rule, ‘Forecast Merryn Lloyd’, Vault Magazine, Issue 10, July 2015, p.124
Steven Rendall & Lisa Young, ‘Groupgrope: improvisation?’ catalogue essay, 2015
Dan Rule, ‘Merryn Lloyd: Chalk and Cheese’, In the galleries, The Age, January 30, 2015
Artist pages, Material, edition 5, edited by John Nixon and Danny Lacy, 2014
Dan Rule, ‘Method and Gesture’, Your weekend: In the galleries, November 30, 2013
Kent Wilson, ‘Renee Cosgrave and Merryn Lloyd, Aug 2013’, The SubMachine, August 23, 2013
‘Painting the campus red (and pink, green, blue, yellow…)’, Monash University News, July 22, 2013
Kent Wilson, ‘Exhibition Essay, painting / sculpture / wall work / floor work’, May 8, 2013
Dan Rule, ‘Poetic Forms’, Your weekend: In the galleries, January 19, 2013
Kent Wilson, ‘Poetic Forms, Jan 2013’, The SubMachine, January 14, 2013
Artist pages, un Magazine, issue 6.1, edited by Lisa Radford and Liang Luscombe, 2012
Pip Wallis, ‘Whole Pieces’ catalogue essay, May 2010
Caroline Clements, ‘Narrow Intersection’, The Blackmail, March 2010
Dan Rule, ‘Renee Cosgrave & Merryn Lloyd at The Narrows’, Around the galleries, The Age, A2,
February 13, 2010
Writing about other people’s work
Catalogue essay for Break it up exhibition by Karena Keys, PhotoAccess, Canberra, 2018
Collections
Private collections in Australia, New Zealand and USA.