Currently on view at Brenda May Gallery in addition to the solo exhibitions by Sybil Curtis and Michael Edwards is a small collection of work by our Represented Artists as selected by the Gallery staff. The work ranges from Melinda Le Guay’s ‘Linework’ drawings from 2002-2004 to the major urban landscape painting by Robert Boynes from 1995. The small show featuring Robert Boynes, Jim Croke, Sybil Curtis, Melinda Le Guay and Lezlie Tilley will be on view until Saturday 29 September.
Sybil Curtis’ current exhibition Cylinders Cones and Spheres uses shapes found in industrial settings to create vivid or quite moody paintings. Curtis imbues a sense of warmth and beauty in stark landscapes and objects of construction through her use of colour, placement and light.
Presenting quotidian objects with ironic captions and possessing an oxymoronic balance of critical and playful engagement, is painter Michael Edwards. This exhibition uses the guise of the traditional still life while subtly suggesting more overtly political ideas. Both exhibitions will be on view until 6pm on Saturday 29 September.
In other news, Todd Fuller and Robert Boynes have been awarded major fellowships, with Boynes’ accolade following on the heels of an acquisition of a major work by the NGA, Canberra. Fuller won the 2012 William Fletcher Travelling Fellowship to Rome which he will undertake in the first half of 2013. Robert Boynes was awarded the Capital Arts Patrons’ Organisation Fellowship with his painting ‘Eclipse’ which was part of the body of work exhibited in Language of the Street in the Gallery earlier this year. Huge congratulations to both artists!
We are also delighted to announce that Waratah Lahy has joined the Gallery as a Represented Artist. She is currently undertaking a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and will be holding her next solo exhibition in the Gallery in May of 2013. Welcome Waratah…
A final reminder that the 2 Danks Street Spring Equinox Opening is tomorrow evening, Wednesday 19 September. All of the Danks Street Galleries will be open until 8pm followed by a special $45, two course menu offered by the Danks Street Depot – we hope to see you here.
Please join us for drinks with the Artists
Saturday 15 September 4-6pm
Michael Edwards Artist Talk, 15 September, 3:15pm
Sybil Curtis Artist Talk, 15 September, 3:40pm
The new body of work by Sybil Curtis, Cylinders, Cones and Spheres, considers the geometric shapes found in grain silos and other agricultural structures. Curtis greatly admires Cézanne who in his later years, “attempted to give underlying structure to his landscapes by rendering them in terms of cones, cylinders and spheres”. But instead of attempting to apply this theory, Curtis found actual landscapes that contained these shapes, looming like gigantic monuments out of the vast western plains.
In the still life paintings by Michael Edwards, he takes an in-depth look at household objects. As related by Edwards, “Household objects can seem emotionally neutral; we often overlook them because they are so commonplace and unobtrusive. Seen on their own they appear to tell us little, and they lack the grandeur and punch of more overtly social or political subject matter in painting. But despite that they can tell us a lot about people’s home and their lives.”
Don’t forget to also come along from 11am Friday 7 September for the Silver Room’s first week long celebratory Spring Sale! For this short time only, all the jewellery on display will be 50% off the marked price!
Click each thumbnail for a large image and artwork details. Artists included in this collection: Robert Boynes, Will Coles, Sybil Curtis, Fiona Fenech, James Guppy, Waratah Lahy, Al Munro, Patsy Payne, Lezlie Tilley and Peter Tilley.
A gentle reminder to visit the solo exhibition by LEZLIE TILLEY and the group show MAJOR ARTISTS, MAJOR WORKS before they both close on Saturday 3 March.
The angular and abstracted forms of Lezlie Tilley’s current exhibition were created by connecting the ‘a’s’ on a page from a novel. The shapes have then been laser cut in predominantly bright red, coloured acrylic which makes for an amazingly dynamic show. Due to the ongoing nature of the concept of the ‘a-less novel’, further works can also be commissioned in a wide range of materials including timber, metal and ply.
From Senden Blackwood‘s sensual, one tonne basalt sculpture to the minute watercolour figures, deftly hidden in Mylyn Nguyen‘s found chairs, the Major Artists, Major Works exhibition highlights the diversity of talent present in the Gallery‘s stable of artists.
Our next exhibitions during Art Month, will feature work by represented artists, James Guppy and Will Coles, from Tuesday March 6. If you are already on our notification list, we will send you an email as soon as the work arrives in the Gallery.
Brenda May Gallery is proud to present the second Artist Profile about Sybil Curtis from our series of films featuring each of the represented artists.
The Profile was filmed in the Gallery among the paintings from her February 2011 exhibition, Inside Outside, a series of urban landscapes from Cockatoo Island.
The series is produced and directed by Simon Baré and the interview is conducted by Jeanavive McGregor.
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| Left: Preparatory photograph by Sybil Curtis for ‘Sweet Grass’ Right: Sybil Curtis, ‘Sweet Grass’ 2010, oil on linen, 35 x 35cm |
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| Sybil Curtis, ‘Strike A Light’ 2011, oil on linen, 35 x 35cm |
The detailed painting ‘Strike A Light’ by Sybil Curtis presents a silent moment within a deserted industrial building on Sydney’s Cockatoo Island. Curtis’ ability to find the beauty in and give warmth to factory scenes and other areas of construction is displayed in this image through her use of tone and light. Despite her employment of hard lines and solid shapes, softness is achieved through the teal features and blue undertones.
The salient feature is five roadwork bollards huddled along a wall, providing a point of contrast. As they jump from the otherwise calm colour pallet, they become personified. The arched windows and streaming light, that are a focus of ‘Strike A Light,’ give this industrial setting a Cathedral-like presence. As Curtis explains, she is interested in the energy created when different structural elements are interfacing, such as “…when two colours or textures meet, or a curve intersects with a straight line.”
‘Lots of Steel’ by Sybil Curtis is a new addition to the Gallery stockroom that hails from the Inside Outside series and features her technique of layered perspective. Her compositions document without being literal and her work preserves the industrial spaces that are quickly disappearing. Within the contemporary visual arts, these buildings have particular relevance as they are often reclaimed as venues for public display with the famous example being the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, London and local examples of the Biennale on Cockatoo Island and the Danks Street complex in Waterloo. In her recent exhibition, Curtis displayed paintings of the buildings on Cockatoo Island used by the Biennale (pictured left) within the Danks Street complex, establishing a metaphoric layering of artistic space much like the perspectival layering within her works.
Sybil Curtis, ‘Lots of Steel’ 2011, oil on linen, 100 x 100cm
A reminder to visit the shows by Sybil Curtis and Morgan Shimeld before they close on Saturday 12 March.
Drawn from the industrial buildings on Sydney’s Cockatoo Island, the architectural paintings by Sybil Curtis establish a linear rhythm between light and shadow. Executed in precise detail, her interest in texture within the urban environment is conveyed; with the tonal range of the deep blues and greys imparting atmospheric qualities to the rigid, geometric structures.
Morgan Shimeld‘s third solo exhibition at Brenda May Gallery marks the first inclusion of colour in the linear sculptures of positive and negative space. The collection is balanced between solid monolithic shapes and ‘traced’ forms of bent mild steel, outlining the volume of the sculpture with each work becoming an individual study in abstraction.
As part of Art Month Sydney, sculptor Morgan Shimeld gave a tour of his studio and outlined the evolution of his work, creative processes and techniques to the attendees. ‘Converge‘ marks the first inclusion of colour into his sculpture and is the first show to omit glass, the material he studied at the University of Sydney. Colour was introduced by Shimeld to differentiate the sculptures from the shadows they cast upon the wall. He highlighted his method of constructing the studies through the process of ‘sketching in styrofoam’, which is then translated into outlines and planes of negative space or contrastingly, into a solid configuration of abstract shapes.
The floor talk by Sybil Curtis encompassed her entire body of work held at the Gallery, culminating with her current exhibition ‘Inside Outside‘. Curtis began her investigation of industrial architecture with the buildings of the
coal industry. 
She was drawn to the the sculptural qualities of these structures. The traditional landscape does not appeal to Curtis, she believes there is little to add to enhance natural beauty and prefers urban scenes, which allow her to present her own, unique perspective to the viewer.