Ash Keating: Museum Langmatt documents the Melbourne-based artist's transformation of a Swiss museum park into an immersive, site-specific environment — where fire-extinguisher-applied paint met Impressionist interiors in a charged public dialogue.
About This Book
In August 2023, Ash Keating converted the former caretaker's house at Museum Langmatt's park into a three-dimensional painted structure, scattering new works through the grounds and setting them against the French Impressionist collection housed within the museum's historic interiors. The result was a collision of scales and sensibilities: Keating's fluid, vertical colour gradients — shaped by chance, improvisation, and the physical dynamics of pressurised spray — reading alongside canonical European painting. This publication documents that exhibition and surveys the broader arc of Keating's practice, situating his abstract public works and performative painting within an international context while tracing their roots to the light and colour of Australia.
Key Features
- 80 pages documenting Keating's site-specific installation and park-based paintings at Museum Langmatt, alongside survey material from his broader practice
- Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2023
What You'll Discover
- How Keating deploys fire extinguishers as a primary painting instrument, using pressurised application to produce fluid, vertical gradients that preserve chance and improvisation within large-scale abstract works
- The conceptual stakes of placing contemporary performative painting in direct dialogue with a French Impressionist collection in a historic European interior
- The influence of Australian light and colour on Keating's palette — and how that sensibility translates to works made for public spaces on an architectural scale
- The transformation of an entire building into a three-dimensional artwork, expanding the definition of painting beyond the canvas and into the built environment
About the Author
Ash Keating has built an international reputation through large-scale abstract paintings applied directly to entire buildings and vast walls. He has developed a distinctive technique using fire extinguishers to create expansive works in public spaces, where the unpredictability of the medium is integral to the outcome.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 80
- Dimensions: 17.1 x 23.7 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783775755160
- Publisher: Hatje Cantz Verlag
- Publication Date: 2023
Perfect For: Collectors and curators interested in contemporary Australian art and public painting practices, and those drawn to the intersection of performative abstraction with historic institutional contexts.