Broadbent Sisters: Current Sea in The Barlow Room

The Broadbent Sisters’ latest body of work is largely created with Royal Blue archival ink on board, as well as paintings on canvas finished with the blue ink. The monochrome palette might recall Picasso’s Blue Period, and as with Picasso, The Sisters have created work that is a direct response to the upheavals of the age. They subtly juxtapose the social with the satirical, and the political with the playful. The tension that arises from these pairings are part of a broader motif that they call “complementary opposites.”

While restraining themselves to create work in just one colour, they realized that blue in fact provides a whole universe of tones, from the blackest blue at the bottom of the sea, to the lightest blue of the morning sky and everything in between. Regardless of the subject matter, The Sisters rely on blue for the soothing and calming quality that it adds to their visual language.

In the body of work presented in this exhibition, Current Sea, the viewer will recognize a visual language that borrows from and transforms the subject matter and motifs of contemporaries like Matthew Barney and Gilbert & George, as well as predecessors like Francisco Goya, Henri Matisse and Georgia O’Keefe.