The Floor Is Lava June 13th - 20th 2021. Sydney Road Gallery Balgowlah

‘The Floor is Lava’ is the first of the ‘Fast and Furious’ series held at Sydney Road Gallery and the fourth solo exhibition by Wollongong based emerging artist Daniel Breda. Breda’s painting process examines organic and mechanical space in both medium and subject matter through the juxtaposition of synthetic coloured hard-edge abstraction and representations of nature.

In this exhibition, Breda extends on his practice of installation and traditional painting in the gallery space through the adaptation of childhood thematics. Nostalgically a childhood game, The Floor is Lava is an imaginary game where players pretend that the ground is made of Lava, or something of equal detriment like poison. Traditionally, players are to be mobile and are required to avoid the floor by diverging with the rooms' furniture or architecture. Much like mobility in the gallery space - gallery attendees are required to avoid the touching of artworks. In this exhibition, participants will guide themselves through the space, observing the traditional paintings on top of the lava floor, where they become at ease with walking on the artworks, or lava and adjust to the proposed anti-sentiment of paintings fragility. Within his practice, Breda aims to transition the community engagement intentions and aspects of site specific public art, to the gallery setting. In doing so, we can begin deconstructing the spectacle of site-specific public art and substitute it with the spectacle of human action and movement in space. ‘The Floor is Lava’ will execute these intentions, with another fun adaptation of architectural space, in the vein of enjoyment and experimentation in the white wall gallery.