source: emmacoulter
The investigation of painting in the expanded field and its’ medium specificity, as it intersects between the history of art and the proposition of architectural space, is a continual objective of Coulter’s practice, with the aim to innovate, extend and add to this body of knowledge within the discourse of contemporary art.

Her practice utilises acts of painting to transform, construct and alter environments, objects and surfaces. Simultaneously, negotiating between the formal and the kitsch and the concrete and the ephemeral, here boundaries are challenged and connections are made between the high and the low, history and currency, and the intellectual and the ornamental.

Through the process of colour, which is accessed as a common vehicle to navigate between these opposing forces, the parameters of site, situation and spatiality are examined, delineated and repurposed to construct new realities, to question the distance between place and painting. In her practice the act of illusion extends far beyond the frame and into tangible space, as it collides with the history of painting.

Having exhibited both nationally and internationally, Coulter holds a Master of Contemporary Art from the Victorian College of the Arts, (2015) and a Bachelor of Visual Art, (1998) and a Bachelor of Built Environment (2000) from the Queensland University of Technology. Selected solo exhibitions include, Beyond Painting (2015) VCA, Chrominance (2015) Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne, Chromo-spatial (2015) CHASM, New York, Threshold (2014) Five Walls, Melbourne, and Viscerality (2011) Kunstraum Tapir Gallery, Berlin, as well as numerous group exhibitions, including, Colour Imperative (2015) Rubicon ARI, Faux Fair (2015) c3 Artspace, No Werk (2014) Trocadero Artspace, Melbourne, Abstractions, (2013) Janet Clayton Gallery, Sydney, and The Space Between (2011) Neukolln, Berlin.

Coulter has been the recipient and finalist in a range of awards and prizes, including being the recipient of the Linden Art Prize (2016), the Fiona Myer Award for Excellence (2015), an Australian Artists Grant (2015), the Jim Marks Postgraduate Scholarship (2014), as well as being a finalist in the Windsor Prize, (2014) and the Sydney Artmonth emerging artist 20/20 program (2013). Her work is held in collections at Artesian Capital Management, Citigroup Wealth Advisors and Tower Books, as well as numerous private collections in Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.
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source: theheartofdesignandartwordpress
Northern Irish, Australian based artist Emma Coulter creates large scale colorful illusions that break the boundaries between painting, sculpture, installation, and interior design. Her work, being painted or installed directly on the walls, are site specific, allowing each vibrant piece to exist as a reaction and assessment of it’s environment. She notes that “spatiality in painting has long been a problem in the history of art.” Her process allows to her “utilis(e) space as a raw material,” challenging the traditional approach to figure out and investigate the issue of space and light. Her use of color and geometry employs a distortion of the space— creating illusory elements that both add and destroy previous conceptions of reality. Within in artist statement, Coulter explains:

“I see colour as an object or material to be manipulated through placement, proportion and adjacency in response to space. I am interested in challenging our assumptions about colour. It is a commonly misunderstood material, that is often associated with not being critical or serious. Through my systematic approach to colour and the spatiality of painting, I hope to reveal something new about the practice of painting and its potential to blur boundaries and adapt environments.”

Her use of color, big, bold and bright, is a nice wink to conceptual minimalist artists such as Sol LeWiitt; her work captures that same notion of a somehow clean experimentation. Truly a contemporary take on difficult and endless artistic quandaries.