Directions to infinity
Seq. 1: Yellow square, red square, green square. Seq 2: Blue square, pink square, black square.
Repeat and replicate as follows: Seq. 1, Seq. 2, Seq. 1, Seq. 2, Seq. 1, Seq. 2, Seq. 1, Seq. 2, Seq. 1, Seq. 2, Seq. 1, Seq. 2, Seq. 1, Seq. 2, until time exhausts itself.
Sometimes the gap between infinity and a single square is paper-thin. Indeed, the best way to envision an incomprehensible infinity is to first grasp its smallest piece.
Yellow square, red square, green square. Blue square, pink square, black square.
Repeat and replicate,
until time exhausts itself.
Pattern languages are the foremost method to speak the tongue of infinity; their endless tessellation provide blueprints unbound.
Inherent in every pattern-prone visual landscape is the tension between the controlled sample of a single sequence and the incomprehensible idea that, through soothing reoccurrence into an endless sprawl, that single sequence could be equal infinity.

Lachlan Stonehouse’s paintings exist neither entirely in the infinite nor entirely in the singular. Rather, they percolate in that paper-thin gap in between, in the interplay between limit and limitless. Imbued with quiet contradictions, these works percolate with frictions between what can be known and what must remain unknown.
It is impossible to name or know every colour, just as it is impossible to account for every countable number.
In these works, small, coloured squares incised into a perfectly imperfect surface repeat in a manner that, though constrained by a frame, could theoretically resist restraint and unfurl into uncountable scores.
The application of controls–frugal materiality, linear geometries, repeated methodology–create precursors for results beyond control.
Similarity provokes difference. Repetition produces irregularity. Intention prompts discovery.
In this sense, the limited becomes limitless, unknowns become known, and the pattern repeats and replicates, on and on and on, until time exhausts itself.

CLAIRE SUMMERS, 2023
Images courtesy of The University of Melbourne