Painting in graphite, acrylic and oil on burlap from 2025 by Australian artist Joel Plunkett - part of a body of work called "The Squeeze".
Nb. the title of the work represents the number of days the artist had been alive at the time of its creation.
dimensions
height: 42cm
width: 32cm
depth: 5cm
weight: 990g
canvas
height: 40cm
width: 30cm
Painting.
Graphite, acrylic and oil on burlap glued to canvas.
Wooden frame.
Artist notes on "The Squeeze".
The starting point for this body of work is very simple: a frame and a sphere. Normally, the frame defines the edge of a painting, but here it migrates inside the image, where it locks, presses, or slides against a recurring sphere—part sun, part moon, part signal.
These two forms don’t quite fit together. They interlock and overlap, they resist, they create friction. I’m interested in what happens in those spaces of contact. Sometimes the forms share a space. Sometimes one defines the boundary of the other. Sometimes a new shape emerges between them. I think of this as co-presence: each form has its own space, but together they generate something in-between. Even the negative space surrounding them is reshaped by their tension.
The materials echo that sense of strain. I work on burlap and leave areas bare. Graphite lines stay visible, marking off raw cloth from painted surface. Sometimes spilling into the weave, layers of acrylic colour fill the shapes and are then smothered with rough black and white oil to condense the work.
The colour feels pressed outward, squeezed to the edges, or caught where the forms collide. For me, the works don’t try to resolve the tension—they hold it. A frame that can’t quite contain, a sphere that won’t center, a composition that leans into its own instability. Rather than seeking resolution, the works sustain the tension—contained, deliberate, unresolved.
See our full selection of work by Joel Plunkett.
Joel Plunkett is an Australian artist living and working in Tokyo, Japan since 2001. His work is about the capturing and distilling of one’s time and experience.
Read more about Joel Plunkett.