Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Tree Line - Level ARI Brisbane

In January this year I undertook a 12 week residency at Level Artists Run Initiative in Brisbane, the following images are from the resulting group exhibition posted here with excerpts from the exhibition essay.

http://levelari.org/

Tree Line: an encompassing area of inhabitable land for plants, animals and other interdependent species as dictated by environmental elements. A naturally occurring boundary, while appearing solid from a distance, a tree line is created through a gradual transition in most places.

The tree line exists as a natural reaction between landform and life, an amalgamation of cohabitants drawn together through nature’s elements such as winds, tides, time and in some instances re-vegetation through fire. Life and creativity forge new ground, evolution through the relating of elemental forces thrown together, responding to tensions, defining themselves with and against the ‘other,’ collectively complimenting one another’s needs, creating cohabitation through a symphony in symbiosis.

The resulting works expressed a tendency toward themes related to connectedness, or a longing for it, a means of defining oneself in relation to a context whether that may be a place, a time or a community. The themes that emerged in the artworks were strongly connected to those relating to a set of challenges in conceptualising the project and the nature of collaboration itself. It is interesting to see that the concerns of the initial hypothesis have informed the artists focus and the overall makeup of the exhibition in this way, especially when considering that the thematic direction was completely open, intentionally leaving space for self definition within the context of the gallery walls and the group’s individual trajectories.




Utako Shindo


Utako Shindo, in referencing the poem ‘Tintern Abbey’ by Wordsworth, shares the experience of the author in returning home after many years in absence. The poignancy of such universal themes are highlighted as this experience transcends time and place, defying any cultural implications of the text by the English poet written in 1798, printed on the delicately translucent Japanese paper. The text is framed by Shindo’s photographic portraits and the local Japanese landscape, layered over the mind’s eye of its inhabitants as the work reflects on a connection to memory and its presence in the experience of the present.



Saskia Pandji Sakti


Saskia Pandji Sakti’s photographic portraits speak of the emotional displacement of people living with chronic and long term illness and the implication of marginalization imposed by un-wellness. The images take strong cues in representation familiar to fashion photography with a certain seamless studio finish, this however only proves to heighten the lackluster of her subjects and their personal struggles experienced every day, ultimately illustrating a sense of displacement and disengagement from a broader cultural sphere.




Trudi Brinckman


Trudi Brinckman’s hanging sculpture, an ode to home, transience and homelessness is constructed with plastic bags, homeless blankets and wire, materials collected from the streets Paris during a previous residency. The permanency of the plastic materials directly contradicts the ephemeral quality of the brightly coloured, weightlessness of the hanging sculpture with its subtle responsiveness to the air currents generated by any movement within the space. Hanging within a small, frail house frame on the floor, a single lit domestic light globe sits as a warm reminder of the need for a sense of home within our inhabited spaces and communities.




Nicola Page


Nicola Page’s works, painted behind glass present a window into an imagined space, the unreality of the ideal specifically in relation to home and environment and a local history. There is a push here between hope and idealism against its potentials and pitfalls as defined and measured by reality and tested through time.





Lucy Griggs


Lucy Griggs presents a series of small finely detailed water colour paintings depicting everyday images from her new home in Almaty, Kazakhstan, a country transitioning from Soviet communist rule and newly coming to terms with ideas of democracy, capitalism and personal freedom. Her images capture this moment in history with all its contrasts and contradictions, whilst the works possess elements of hope and beauty along with generous nostalgia for the past, the images in all their subtlety also hint at a darker, more shadowy side to life amidst the soviet legacy.



Linda Tegg

Linda Tegg’s DVD and installation work ‘Tortoise’ explored relationships between the space of the gallery, the artwork and its audience. Concepts repeated in Tegg’s practice, but in this instance she has played choreographer in coordinating a group of people moving as one organism, constructed out of mirrored shields that neatly conceal the human mechanism of the creature within. The reflective planes work collectively as a liquid none space or blind spot in the gallery, while the physical presence of the shields define a barrier, the witnessing of which flickers between real and unreal, tangible and completely fluid.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Worm Mountain at C3

A few details of my painting _ painted in acrylic behind perspex.












Installation shots of the gallery



My paintings on perspex



Dane Lovett's portrait of Rick Rubin


Dane Lovett


Jordan Wood's Sculpture centre


Me, Lucy and Linda L to R



Linda Tegg - video work


Lucy Griggs


Amber Wallis



Andy Hutson

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Worm Mountain - Exhibition in Melbourne opens 23 June


Worm Mountain a little conText

OPENING 6 - 8pm Wed 23rd June runs untill the 11th of July

Amber Wallis, Andy Hutson, Dane Lovett, Jordan Wood, Linda Tegg, Lucy Griggs and Nicola Page.
Worm Mountain presents new works by seven emerging artists exploring the theme of natural history.
Nature is an entity unto itself before and beyond us, endlessly moving in synergetic cycles of death and creation, ebbing and flowing in it’s own chaotic patterns of evolution and destruction, through time spans beyond the human grasp. The cultivated perspective is really one of comprehension as we come to terms with our own time and place within this chaos to deal with natural elements beyond our control, whether we are harmonious or contrary.
These artists cite nature and the sublime as concerns for their work, as they draw inspiration from their environments reflecting an internalized space, more so than the exterior landscape, one where value is not added but processed and experienced. This may manifest in many forms such as, the decorative, historical, scientific, sociological, spiritual, auto biographical or nostalgic but most often a unique fusion.




New work for a group show, Worm Mountain.


plus



A four panel painting going to the Waterhouse art prize opening at the Adelaide Museum in July, it will look something like this after it is framed.


Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Paintings, Oil, Acrylic and Mixed Media






New works for 2010 studio artists show at Rearview.
These are very much in the realm of vanitas art going beyond still life. I have been looking into themes on the spectrum of life and abundance with, I suppose, a kind of ideal of natural purity, polarized with, corruption, decay and urban/cultural decay.


Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Herbaceous Order


Paintings - Oil on Canvas









Works on Paper -Guache and Drawings












Thursday, August 13, 2009