EUAN MACLEOD – Fool on a Hill – 21 July-14 Aug, 2026

Sydney-based artist Euan Macleod, has maintained regular connection with Aotearoa New Zealand since moving to Australia in 1981. Family and professional links continue to draw him back but so too does the place itself. He is a man of two homelands and while in his Sydney studio, he frequently re-imagines Banks Peninsula, or the stormy southern coast, or alpine routes and ridges. This is Macleod’s sixth exhibition at PG gallery192. The main gallery is dominated by a magnificent, 4 metre wide, panoramic mountain-scape titled Fool on a Hill. It vibrates with creaking glacial energy. Sun catches snow and rock, mist partially obscures sight lines. Mountain slopes push upwards and outwards to canvas edge. The epic scale and Macleod’s gestural brushwork yield a feeling of human smallness within the grand sheme of nature, a recurring theme which he also pursues in smaller paintings.

In the side gallery we move from the alps to the coast. Figures step into caves and through rocky tunnels,  sometimes forthrightly, sometimes with caution. Light appears as a mysterious shafts and we know the tide will soon wash through. Many of Macleod’s paintings mix imagined space with remembered experience. His scenes are mutable, never quite pinned down. Figures appear unconfined by the specifics of time and place, allowing the option of mythic or metaphoric interpretation if viewers so wish. Interiority is a constant. These images roll with the weather and traverse vast geographies plus more intimate psychological terrain.

ARTIST TALK: Wed 22 July, 12noon