Dream Paintings
Veronica Kent and Sean Peoples 

The ‘Natural Philosophy’ of the Atomist Democritus, fifth century BC Greek thinker, suggests that images or idols make an impression on our senses from which sensation and thought emerge. He proposed that these emanations could enter the pores of a sleeping person, creating dreams. These images are objects in and of the world, not coded messages from the unconscious as Freud would have it.

During a recent Australia Council residency in Barcelona, Veronica Kent and Sean Peoples performed 20 days of Dream Telepathy to test this idea that images and ideas are tangible things. Every evening before they went to sleep (at opposite ends of the apartment) they would put something in an envelope and place it under the other’s pillow. After dreaming on this all night they would meet in the morning and recount the nights remembered dreams to see if the image inside had seeped into or influenced the dream.  Sean and Veronica’s favourite dreams became the subjects of the collaborative paintings exhibited in Dream Paintings.

Veronica Kent is a Melbourne-based artist who studied at the Victorian College of the Arts and holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her practice incorporates painting, installation, digital imaging, and performance. A recurring theme across her work is the visual representation of invisible forces such as telepathy, love, and wonder, and her practice incorporates wide research and investigation into myriad periods of art history and visual culture. Kent is also one half of The Telepathy Project, an ongoing collaboration with Sean Peoples exploring telepathy as both metaphor and method. Their work has been exhibited and performed in Australia, India, France, Spain, Germany and the USA.

Group exhibitions include Dreaming the Arabian Sea, 2013, (en)counters Festival, Mumbai, India; Speech Objects, 2011, Musée de l'Objet, Blois, France; Telepathy and Love: The Spanish Apartment, 2011, OZCO Barcelona Studio, Spain and West Space, Melbourne; Material Conversion, 2011, Grimmuseum, Berlin; andTableLampChairBigPainting, 2010, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne; Recent solo presentations of her work includeFold Me, 2012, Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne, Funny Face, 2012, Ryan Renshaw, Brisbane andHeadhunters, 2010, Fehily Temporary, Melbourne 2010.

Kent has been the recipient of numerous awards, grants and residencies including the Australia Council for the Arts 2011 Barcelona Residency and ArtStart grants, 2011 Melbourne University travelling scholarships to research at the Freud Museums in London and Vienna, the Dowd Foundation travelling scholarship in Athens, The Australian Post Graduate Award and Arts Victoria and City of Melbourne Presentation grants. Her work is held in private collections in Australia, the United States and Europe.