Translucences / Danger and Purity - George Paton Gallery
George Paton Gallery is currently hosting two solo shows; Translucences by Soyo Paek and Purity and Danger by Leena O’Luu. The gallery, situated in the University of Melbourne’s Arts and Culture building at the Parkville campus, is run by the university’s student union (UMSU). Work is chosen via a proposals process and only current Uni Melb students can apply. George Paton gallery fills a strange niche at the university, in that it doesn’t feel like a student gallery, and that it’s so separate from UniMelb’s Southbank VCA campus - which is where all of the creative arts students are situated. George Paton feels more aligned with the professional side of the university, rather than the student side, even though it’s definitely student work on display.
Greeting me first when entering the space are six large-scale works on canvas by Soyo Paek. Facing one another - three on each wall - I was drawn into the midst of them instantly. I didn’t know where to look first, my attention pulled taught between all six mixed media paintings. The mark making feels frantic yet restrained at the same time, almost a new form of action painting. While I picked up the room sheets on the way in, I didn’t read the accompanying essay Is Language Transparent until leaving the space. This essay changed my understanding of the work, by knowing the word-like mark making isn’t from any language, but is instead asemic writing, the paintings feel less abstracted when framed with this in mind.
Language is often considered a tool through which we project and convey our experiences. To say that language is transparent is to believe, in some way, that the words we speak or write can deliver meaning with minimal loss. … This belief in transparency turns language less into a window opening onto experience and more into a frame that aligns perception. The seemingly clear language makes it easy to forget the subtle, unseen mechanisms at work beneath it.
In this context, translucences become for me an alternative way of thinking about language. Translucences emerge in-between concealment and revelation. Light passes through, bending and refracting; shapes emerge, but indistinctly. Bathed in the subtle glow threading between warp and weft, the various materialities at play intersect and pass through one another, generating temporal flows that defy linearity.
Soyo Paek graduated from the VCA painting department in 2025. I don’t remember seeing their work in the graduate exhibition, but I think that says more about the overload of a grad show than it does about Paek’s work - because I am so drawn to these canvases. They feel serene, but chaotic at the same time. They hover in this space of juxtaposition that is so enticing and juicy to me.
Danger and Purity by Leena O’Luu sits at the back of the gallery. O’Luu’s installation is haphazardly intentional. There's a white piece of fabric stretched over an oddly shaped frame, the light drizzling through the thin material. There’s wax sculptures of folded towel swans, the texture of the towel and odds with the materiality of the wax. There’s a blue timber frame constructed into a grid, a pile of wood shavings beneath it. These feel like snippets of something larger, yet they don’t feel quite like a finished thought. Presented as a collection, these works feel exploratory and incomplete, like snapshots of different ideas that haven’t been fleshed out, yet have been jumbled together.
O’Luu’s works feel starkly contrasted to Paek’s canvases. Presenting two solo shows in the same space like this creates a dialogue between them, whether that be intended or not. I’m going to be straight up and say I don’t like these two shows presented together. They feel like they have nothing in common with one another except a vague colour story. I think it’s in comparison to Paek’s canvases that O’Luu’s installation feels unfinished - if these shows weren’t presented together then O’Luu’s work would feel more refined. Maybe that’s the curatorial intention at play here though; juxtaposing these shows against one another. If this is the case, instead of strengthening the work through the comparison, it feels weakened.
Both shows are on at George Paton Gallery on UniMelb campus in Parkville until February 27th.