Eline Vansteenkiste: Under the Shade of a Coolabah Tree

Tim Van Laere Gallery is pleased to present Under the Shade of the Coolabah Tree, the second solo exhibition by Eline Vansteenkiste. The exhibition builds on her previous solo show, in which Vansteenkiste unfolded her own Mappa Mundi: a collection of landscapes from an imaginary, composite world. Whereas the viewer previously seemed to drift past these landscapes, the artist now invites us to move further inward. Vansteenkiste enters the landscapes between the trees, within the dark forest, and beneath the earth. The viewer is no longer positioned at a distance, but drawn into a terrain in which multiple events unfold. 

The exhibition’s title is drawn from Slim Dusty’s rendition of Waltzing Matilda, evoking a sense of wandering that runs throughout the paintings. Groups of women, solitary figures, and animals move through vast and shifting environments. Their destinations often remain unclear; what matters is the act of moving through the world and the unexpected encounters that occur along the way. Vansteenkiste does not begin with a fixed composition or predetermined narrative. Her paintings develop gradually, often beginning with the sustained act of painting trees. Images then enter from art history, books, films, newspaper articles, family photographs, memories, or chance encounters during a walk. These fragments are absorbed, transformed, and recombined until they become part of the artist’s own visual language. Greek mythology, historical painting, manuscripts, sculpture, cinema, literature, and personal experience coexist within this pictorial universe. Artists such as Patinir, Henri met de Bles, Bruegel, Goya, Hokusai, Géricault, and Caravaggio form part of its visual genealogy, alongside filmmakers including Andrei Tarkovsky and Werner Herzog. One particularly persistent presence in this series of works is Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, animals, and the wilderness, whose associations with forests, movement, and the untamed world resonate throughout the exhibition. 

Under the Shade of the Coolabah Tree presents a world in constant transformation. Landscapes grow over time, seasons shift, storms gather and pass, and figures continue onward without certainty about what lies ahead. Bringing together myth and memory, art history and personal experience, beauty and danger, Vansteenkiste invites the viewer not simply to observe the landscape from a distance, but to enter it and, somewhere between light and darkness, perhaps lose their way.

Tim Van Laere Gallery 
Antwerp–Rome