Caroline
Esbenshade

Carmel Robertson: Wish you were here

23 November 2024 - 2 March 2025
Shepparton Art Musuem

Carmel Robertson is an emerging figurative painter based in the Goulburn Valley. Since her retirement as an arts educator, Robertson has dedicated herself fully to her art, developing a distinctive style that reflects both her personal experience and unique artistic voice.

In Wish you were here Robertson presents a series of oil paintings that depict familiar locations in Shepparton, with subtle manipulations. Colours are intensified, shadows elongated, and perspectives are distorted, creating a surreal effect. Robertson aims to capture the heightened sense of awareness that comes with being alone at night; when familiar surroundings become alien, taking on a dreamlike tinge that is at the same time beautiful and menacing.

Robertson’s paintings offer a commentary on Shepparton as a transitory space rather than a tourist destination. The town's transient nature is emphasised and transformed into a liminal space through the depiction of empty streets, vacant lots at night, alleys and concealed pathways and familiar buildings at dawn or dusk, dissolving the boundary between the real and the unreal.

Carmel Robertson: Wish you wre here exhibition catalogue