Cummings & Poulet

Cummings & Poulet presents recent works by Australian artists Elisabeth Cummings and Al Poulet, who both reside and make art from the Wedderburn artists’ community. Situated on the outskirts of Campbelltown in south-west Sydney, the community began in the late 1970s when Barbara and Nick Romalis gifted four hectares of land to their artist friends who were in need of living and working spaces. Elisabeth Cummings was one of the first artists to move into the camp, initially pitching a tent until her bush cottage was built.

Amongst the original group of Wedderburn artists, which included other notable Australian artists Fred Baart, Joan Brassil, Roy Jackson and John Peart, it became known as Widden Weddin meaning, ‘I came, I stayed.’ Cummings has been working in Wedderburn ever since, where the surrounding landscape and the artists studio, as well as sketches and studies from her travel, provide endless inspiration. Works such as After The Fires (1994) and Across The Gully (1996) illustrate an intimate and fluid connection between artist and environment.

Arriving at Wedderburn in 2018, Al Poulet is part of a new generation who have found fertile artistic terrain in the landscapes of Western Sydney. Poulet describes how processes of deep immersion and the practice of walking directly informs his painting. He explains, ‘It is this moment of departure from the observer to the landscape. (These) painting are immersed in traversing forms of ocular light, colour, space and time: a record of the paths created within this interior landscape.’

Cummings & Poulet speaks to the tangential relationship between these two artists, and their shared ability to draw out an emotional response to their physical surrounds.