Al Fresco, Autumn 2026
Final showing Saturday 2nd May, 12-5PM
Al Fresco — Fine Arts Outdoors
35°19'06.5"S 149°00'35.3"E
Yale-Columbia Refractor Ruin,
Mount Stromlo Observatory,
Kamberri/Canberra, Australia
>Link to Map
>Floor Sheet
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“Good/Bad” is an exhibition of new paintings by Canberra based painter James Rowell, obliquely addressing the artist’s deep concern for the natural environment. As an avid gardener, Rowell enjoys the way nature delivers experiences of wonder, of the sublime, and of happiness.
This new series of works on canvas depict alternating viewpoints of World War II bomber planes paired with pilot headgear and paintings of ears, along with a series of mandalas, studio failures or ‘flops’, and paintings that reference the Enlightenment philosophers Immanuel Kant and John Locke.
The extended title for the exhibition —“An artist is someone who has something to say…so there is good art and there is bad art”—is meant to be funny, and like any good joke it is morally ambiguous. It is intended to reveal the tensions at play between right and wrong, sense and nonsense – between humour and seriousness.
Rowell often contrasts opposing subject matter or divergent ideologies, such as Western and non-Western cosmologies, war technologies and vegetables, scientific instruments alongside quotes from canonical philosophical texts.
“Good/Bad” continues, prompting us to think about how we come to construct moral laws, and general ideas or collective concepts. With the lack of an impartial judge, a ‘common superior’, or because ‘God is Dead’, what makes something right or wrong? How do we decide on moral and scientific laws? What is it that gives us the right to separate ourselves from the things that we think about, to separate ourselves from one another, and from the natural world.
Rowell has a deep concern for the natural environment, such that anthropocentric viewpoints—which prioritise the needs of the human species above the intrinsic value of other living beings and ecosystems —are totally incomprehensible to him. The mindlessness with which we exploit the environment and our accelerating systems of extraction and greed, for the artist, just don’t make sense. As Rowell states:
“I believe in plants and animals, I know that….humans? Well they are something different.”
This is the “state of nature” as John Locke conceptualised it, a state of peace and mutual assistance, contrasted by Locke with the “state of war”. This state of crisis and war resonates today, witnessing not simply a temporary breakdown of international law or diplomacy, but the prevalence of a certain moral and legal condition, a constant “state of enmity and destruction”, totalitarianism, foreign conquest, tyranny and the abuse of power, which is also, the right to revolution.
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Born in Sydney in 1963, James Rowell moved to Canberra in 1968, before leaving to studying painting at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, from 1984-87. In the past few decades, he has exhibited consistently in solo and group exhibitions within Canberra.
Recent solo exhibitions include “Ideas Worth Sharing”, Canberra Contemporary Art Space (Platform), 2023; “Sciency Pictures”, CCAS (Platform), 2019; “Images that have been redeemed through painting”, CCAS (Platform), 2017; and “Psychedelia & Sexuality,” CCAS (Platform), 2012 ‘“A look at aboriginal culture arranged around the philosophers name John Locke”, Canberra Contemporary Art Space (Platform), 2023. Rowell’s work has been acquired by the Australian National University Art Collection, Canberra Museum and Gallery, and numerous private collections locally.
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“Good/Bad” photography by David Paterson
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Al Fresco — Fine Arts Outdoors
35°19'06.5"S 149°00'35.3"E
Yale-Columbia Refractor Ruin,
Mount Stromlo Observatory,
Kamberri/Canberra, Australia
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