Lara Merrett

Born: Melbourne, VIC

Lives and works: Sydney and Bendalong, NSW

Artist Statement

Waterlyness, 2023
Ink and Acrylic on cloth and linen.

Waterlyness evolved from my exploration of canvas beyond traditional boundaries. What began as a protest tree sit structure has transformed into an immersive device for embodied experience. The frame supports a painting of ocean blues viewed from below, as if floating underwater, looking up. Playing with measurements like the fathom - the span of outstretched arms - it creates a physical encounter with water's dimensions. The ocean invites us in physically, mentally, emotionally - dissolving boundaries between body, mind, and the marine world.

About the Artist

Lara Merrett currently lives and works between Sydney and Bendalong, New South Wales. Her practice interrogates the relationship between painting and its surrounding architecture with site-specific work that invites the viewer to enter and navigate its folds. Merrett’s larger scale commissioned work has involved public participation through touch, movement, cuttings, and its relationship to the built environment. Merrett works expand the field of traditional painting; working often on a large scale, the artist layers and pours water-based materials onto textile surfaces, the outcomes of which are impossible to anticipate.

Merrett studied painting abroad at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, before completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales and graduating with a Master of Arts (Painting). Merrett’s recent solo and group exhibitions have been presented nationally and internationally, including at Town Hall Gallery, VIC (2022); University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2018).