EXHIBITIONS
Liz Coats is an abstract painter who has been exhibiting in solo and group shows since the mid-1970s. She works in series’ that explore enduring questions about colour perception and spatial relations.
A full list of solo and group exhibitions can be found on her CV page.
CURRENT EXHIBITION
check back here for upcoming or current exhibitions
SOME RECENT EXHIBITIONS
SOLO
2020 ‘Interdependence’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW
Inspired by the structure of rocks, these new paintings might be understood as a kind of aggregate, a collection of colours applied to a stable ground, liquid colour which kept shifting as the artist painted.
2018 ‘Some Paintings’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW
“I want to go deeper; to be led into the surface through a network of colour shapes and gaps between that have equal importance. Sometimes I want the colours to circulate around and through each other, to be as irregular as possible before losing cohesion.”
2017 ‘Active Seeing: A Survey’, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT
Liz Coats’ impressive survey exhibition, ‘Active Seeing’, encompassed a selection of works created over four decades of the artist’s career. A book, ‘Liz Coats – Active Seeing’, accompanied the exhibition.
2015 ‘Second Nature & Plenitude’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW
"When colour and shape sensations lead analysis, questions arise as to how these spatial observations can be made visible as images for sharing.”
2014 ‘Streaming’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW
Walking alone one morning whilst on a field research trip at Glenbog State Forest in south-eastern NSW, Liz came upon a flooded creek... “Watching strands of foam circling below the fall of water, invited comparison with forces of nature that can’t usually be seen directly, except through their impact.”
2014 ‘Second Nature’, Megalo Print Studio + Gallery, Canberra, ACT
“Assimilation of the fragmentary nature of colours as one sees them filtered through light, or glimpsed at the periphery of vision, are for me the life in painting.”
GROUP
2021 Abstraction, Utopia Art Sydney
2020 Highlights from the ANU Art Collection, ANU Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, ACT
2020 Abstraction 20, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria.
Annual group exhibition
2020 It’s not FAIR (works on paper), Utopia Art Sydney, NSW.
2019 ‘Celebrating Australian Abstraction’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW
2019 ‘Australian Landscapes’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW
“Stones and rocks, and indeed the ground I walk on, holds so much more than surface appearances might suggest. I’m reminded how initial impressions, on closer inspection of surface, tell of substances within that make appearance what it is.”
2018 ‘Texture & Line : 1980s Abstraction from Charles Nodrum Gallery’, Burringa Cultural Centre, VIC
2018 ‘Liz Coats, Sophie Quinn, Merryn Lloyd’, Tributary Projects, Canberra
2017 ‘Sydney Contemporary 2017’, Carriageworks, Sydney, NSW
2016 ‘Drawing Room’, Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth, NSW
2016 ‘Cornucopia’, Utopia Art Sydney, NSW