Kevin Lincoln emerged as an artist of note in the mid-1960s—indeed, a work depicting a rocky shoreline executed in watercolour and ink was one of the very first artworks acquired for the Gallery’s collection in 1965, when the NGV’s Curator of Australian Art, Brian Finemore, recommended it to John Leslie OBE. Fifty-seven years later, Lincoln has built an astounding legacy of landscape art, much of which has its basis in Gippsland.

Evoking Gippsland draws together artworks spanning large-scale painting to intimate drawings bound in the artist’s travel books, created over a period of more than forty years.

In many ways a minimalist—though he has carved his own path without affiliations with any groups or collectives—Lincoln’s artworks are less a literal description of a specific place, than a hypnotic veil of breaths and whispers. He provides only the basic elements of landscape, permeated by strange and silent presences that denude his scenes of extraneous detail to the point of near abstraction.

Gippsland is the starting point for these journeys into metaphysical space, with actual locations including Wilsons Promontory, Tenby Point, Wattle Point, Lindenow, Kilcunda, and Grantville, and natural features such as the Mitchell River, Powlett River, and the rolling hills of South Gippsland. Lincoln records impressions at each site, which become the basis for studio paintings where time, distance and memory come into play. The artwork titles are simple, unelaborated place names, with the exception of the telling Kilcunda Memory (2021). Several works here rate among Lincoln’s most visionary, such as the elemental and elegiac Thatcher’s Lane, Lindenow (2021).

Kevin Lincoln: Evoking Gippsland—Paintings & Drawings, 1981-2022 has been curated by our Associate Curator Dr Sheridan Palmer, and we thank Sheridan and Kevin for bringing this exhibition—some years in the making—to fruition. A fully illustrated catalogue will be available from the Gallery.

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Feature Event

Talking Kevin Lincoln: A Conversation

With Sheridan Palmer, Gordon Morrison & Elizabeth Cross

Saturday 4 February, 10.30am

To celebrate Kevin Lincoln’s exhibition Evoking Gippsland—Paintings and Drawings, 1981-2022, we have invited friends and specialists in Kevin’s art, Dr Sheridan Palmer, Gordon Morrison and Elizabeth Cross to discuss works in the current exhibition, which has been thoughtfully curated by Sheridan.

This is a unique opportunity to hear from a trio of established art curators and writers, each of whom have worked with Kevin Lincoln at different times, and each having a specific perspective and appreciation of his work.

Light refreshments will be provided by the Friends of the Gallery on Level 2, following the talk.

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Kevin Lincoln is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Dr Sheridan Palmer is an art historian, curator, and a senior ARC research associate at the University of Melbourne, and a Fellow of the Centre of Visual Art, Victorian College of the Arts. She has been involved in the art world since the 1970s and has worked in state, regional and commercial galleries.