Dream Sketcher

Ryan McGennisken spent most of his childhood on the road. While travelling around Australia with his parents, surviving off fire-cooked meals and sleeping in huts made of sticks were common features of a life constantly on the move. With an upbringing as dreamy and fantastical as that, it’s little surprise that Ryan has grown up to be an artist. His delicate ink and watercolour drawings combine symbols of childhood and adulthood to blur the lines between nostalgia, fantasy and reality. Telling stories of “survival, intrepidness and the journey of lost souls on the quest to find a new livable environment away from a deconstructed, over used planet,” Ryan also reflects on contemporary environmental and social debates. Over forty works in handmade frames created from salvaged red gum timber will be hanging at Ryan’s first solo exhibition, if it’s between death and magic, opening at 6pm this Saturday at Latrobe Contemporary Gallery in Morwell, Victoria.