EXHIBITIONs

This year features the work of Senden Blackwood, Mark Booth, Walter Brecely, Robert Bridgewater (courtesy Niagara Galleries, Melbourne), Ewen Coates (courtesy Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne), Will Coles, John Cox, Jim Croke, Marguerite Derricourt, Corrigan Fairbairn, Todd Fuller, Kelly-Ann Lees, Angela McHarrie (courtesy Perth Galleries, Perth), Emily McIntosh + Marcus Dillon, Mylyn Nguyen, Leslie Oliver, John Petrie, Jimmy Rix, Fatih Semiz, Vanessa Stanley, Benjamin Storch, Oliver Tanner, Peter Tilley, Carmel Wallace and Jacek Wankowski.

This annual event was established by Brenda May in 1998 and continues to be an important platform for the promotion of sculpture.

Nulla dies sine linea = never a day without a line


A constant image that has followed me throughout my career has been the ‘telephone doodle’ in all its simplicity and complexity. My recent connection with Euclid’s geometry has fired my interest to explore other forms of that universal image. In this instance, my drawings are dragged between the extremes of sketchy and finished, spontaneous and measured. The linear images can be viewed as maps, pathways, or a system of writing time itself.

'Major Artists, Major Works' will feature a significant artwork by each of the fourteen artists represented by the Gallery.

Size is relative. For some, ‘major’ may simply mean ‘bigger than a shoebox’, whereas for others it can entail the use of a crane and the removal of the Gallery doors!

Artists include Tanmaya Bingham, Senden Blackwood, Robert Boynes, Will Coles, Jim Croke, Sybil Curtis, Todd Fuller, James Guppy, Melinda Le Guay, Carol Murphy, Mylyn Nguyen, Leslie Oliver, Lezlie Tilley and Peter Tilley.

Are we and our junk reaching critical mass? If all our junk is made in China, we will have nothing worth digging up in the future.

The trivial and shallow now represent the peak of Western Civilisation. The internet brings the entire history of human achievement into our homes, but we are watching ‘reality’ TV.

Welcome to the age where nearly everyone grows old, hates the young and is so busy being scared of dying that they have forgotten how to live. Stop, take a deep breath and step back.

The figures in these new works are dredged from James Guppy’s unconscious to throw light onto the cold darkness of rationality. Guppy has always been comfortable in the world of fairytales and myths. As a child living in the north of England, these fantastic stories were his way of understanding the land he grew up in. It provided a poetry and passion that prosaic history could not give.

Animals were another starting point for these new paintings. Guppy was not interested in the domesticated creatures that inhabit our lives, but in the way their untamed forebears move within our psyche.

Through these paintings, Guppy continues the examination of myth and powerful women. These are not the predictable, nourishing earth mothers, but rather those types that society traditionally feared and marginalised: the witch, the virago and the furies. These are the strong women, the extraordinary women who offer the possibilities of other lives.

No one sees themselves the way the world sees them, as one’s reflection is, of course, seen in reverse. This show is an opportunity for the artists to share their unique view of themselves and to redirect the focus from the celebrity of the sitter, back to that of the artist. Not limited simply by traditional representation, unfettered by medium, 'In the Mirror' will endeavour to offer a different view from the portrait as defined by and typically selected for the Archibald Prize.

Artists include Deborah Beck (courtesy Wilson Street Gallery at Danks), Tanmaya Bingham, Will Coles, Todd Fuller, James Guppy, Stephanie Jones, Manisha Lee, Barbara Licha (courtesy Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney), Mylyn Nguyen, Nic Plowman, Elizabeth Pozega, Oliver Tanner and Greg Warburton.

This is the third exhibition in our Introducing... series. It is a small group show designed to provide artists who are new to the Gallery with a chance to create a more substantial body of work.

As a teacher of young filmmakers from around the world, I have recorded short interviews with over 1,000 students. The form of the interview has not changed in 15 years. I ask them to recount a time when they fell in love. I have the generous permission of many current and former students to use these interviews to build a small video installation. I will accompany the video with a collection of small abstract sculptures on the same theme. This show is on view as part of the Head On Photo Festival.

This is an exhibition of three contemporary photographers new to the Gallery. The artists will create a small body of work that best represents their artistic practice. This show is on view as part of the Head On Photo Festival.

imago |ɪˈmeɪgəʊ|
noun ( pl. imagos , imagoes or imagines |ɪˈmeɪdʒɪniːz|)

1. Entomology the final and fully developed adult stage of an insect, typically winged.

2. A ceramic exhibition exploring change and body form, referencing story books and social media.

darn it the zip’s broken,
i am beautiful butterfly trapped in this ugly caterpillar’s body,
if you peel back the layers you will find me,
butterflies are free,
miss free love but none wants her.
but where am i.
i am lost.
bunny,
kitten,
submissive.
through the looking glass. it’s broken. i am bleeding.
if one eats cake ...one grows bigger.
drink me
can you live on cake alone.
i am alone.
more tea...
squelch,
i am changing, but what into,
i wonder.
find me.

Carol Murphy, 2011

'Metamorphosis' investigates ideas of perception, of known and unknown things that engage the forces of nature, of change and growth – and challenge our understanding of what we believe.

My sculptures are mostly made in steel. They range from large scale, outdoor pieces to smaller, intimate works – a play between the small and the large scale, between intricacy and simplicity. Inspired by observation of pattern and form in the natural world, they embody movement and anticipation, and often a sense of unfolding, of unwrapping – an opening in anticipation of something to be revealed.

These works pursue that moment between balance and flight where the precise distribution of mass, form and space activate the sculpture – a creative engineering that aims to imbue a potency of energy, of aerial lightness, or alternatively of crushing weight.

My work evokes the sounds, sensations and body postures found in our urban spaces – the language of the street. Are we as viewers, simultaneously the observer and the observed – stepping in and stepping out of the frame? A body, traced or sprayed like a tattoo on the wall of a narrow laneway, leaving the skeletal remains and memory of a dance. It is the conversion of noise into motion, into fractured image and crackling light.

Robert Boynes, 2011

Chiaroscuro is the treatment of light and shade for dramatic effect in drawing, painting and printmaking. It is the effect of contrasted light and shadow created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction, on something or someone.

Chiaroscuro is thought to have originated before the Renaissance; this exhibition seeks to show the work of contemporary artists using this traditional practice.

My work is still concerned with memory, preservation and both the psychological and physical aspects of the human condition. This new body of glass sculpture intends to examine these layers of intricate and complex systems and magnify some of these astonishing processes that occur within us, constantly to manage our complex world.

Emily McIntosh, 2011

Originally, the shapes and motifs within my work were influenced by imagery from outer space, which as they evolved, became part of my sculptural language. In my current body of work the process has been immediate, with each sculpture resonating parts of the one that came before it. I think this has created a strong lineage in the work which shows a methodical evolution of ideas.

Corrigan Fairbairn, 2011

I continue to use environmental textures and forms as the material of the body. The body is a transparent screen fabricated from steel, so the form is both fragile and intrinsically strong. The interplay of positive and negative spaces metaphorically balances the dichotomies that are part of the human condition. The body, identity, sense of place, dislocation and detachment are themes that continue to feature strongly. How does the insignificance of a life span relate to the vastness of geological time as played out in fields and textures developed from sublime sky or mountain landscapes?

Like the Dadaists of their time, this exhibition will seek to define the undefinable — with prints, collages, artists’ books, zines, posters, typography and more.

Akky van Ogtrop graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, majoring in printmaking and has a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Sydney University, with her Thesis on Dada. As director and manager of major arts events, Akky has many years of experience as an arts administrator and creative manager with extensive contacts and national and international project experience.

Akky was the Founder and Executive Director of the Sydney Art on Paper Fair and is an approved valuer for the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program in International and Australian works on paper (prints, drawings, watercolours and artists books) after 1900. Akky is also currently serving on various boards, including: President, Print Council of Australia; Member Cultural Committee, Manly Art Gallery & Museum; President, Sydney Chamber Music Festival and is a Foundation member of the Art Gallery of NSW.

My work continues to explore the Still Life and its place in contemporary Australian painting. I focus in particular on the sort of objects that might be found in the home. Sometimes this is because they are interesting in their own right, and other times it is because these objects act as symbols that suggest more ambiguous or contradictory meanings. Either way, there are rich traditions to build upon.

In this current series of work I look at the way the miscellany of things found in the household environment can comment on everyday life in Australia, from the small triumphs and tragedies, to all the ordinariness that lies somewhere in between.

Among the artists I most admire is Cézanne. In his mature years, he attempted to give underlying structure to his landscapes by rendering them in terms of cones, cylinders and spheres. As a pale homage to the Master, instead of copying his style or even attempting to apply his theory, I have found real structures that are in fact made from these simple geometric shapes. They are the grain silos and other agricultural and industrial structures that rise like gigantic monuments out of the vast western plains.

This exhibition will consider the representation of food within the visual arts and beyond the standard still life tableaux.

The consumption of food is a universally shared experience, enabling people viewing the exhibition to connect with the issues surrounding consumerism, food production and cultural identity.

'Art + Food: Beyond the Still Life' will be on view during the Crave Sydney International Food Festival.

Scale is often disregarded as a consideration when making sculpture when it shouldn’t be, as it is just as vital as things like subject matter, materials and composition. These sculptures are not maquettes but are works that, hopefully, are comfortable at the size they are.

The decision-making process in these works is just as intense as it is with a larger piece; however, working on a small scale enables me to complete sculptures relatively quickly and thereby receive the rewards that a sense of completion provides. I’ve certainly enjoyed constructing these sculptures and I hope others enjoy seeing and experiencing the final works.

This body of work is a privately constructed environment that is a juxtaposition of unlikely objects; collectively a symbolic arrangement that both illustrates and defies the ordinary.

A characteristic quality evident is that the works are imbued with a certain stillness or calmness, not necessarily subdued or impassive but pensive and contemplative. There can be a sense of emptiness suggestive of the transient nature of life. A range of thematic ideas and formal strategies are employed, derived from a visual vocabulary that is readily understood. The objects, imagery and underlying narrative are universally common yet multi-layered in meaning, significance and complexity.

Peter Tilley, 2011

This is a journey through the everyday in the hope of finding the little magic that I used to carry with me on the train, in my backpack and the reserved special spot on my desk. But, the more I work; the Company car, the Company responsibility, the Company phone and the time spent on, in, and immersed in the Company, I can not seem to find the bear that I packed out of the way.

This is about the tiny little bit of moss that sits in the crack of the concrete footpath outside the office that reminds me that one day, I should stop working and go find bear.

Somewhere in between the active and the still,
the imagined and the real,
between light and shade, truth and tale, and of course
hope and defeat...
Between resting and at flight,
and somewhere between duty and desire,
that is where he stands,
this is where we find him.

I continue to make work which references aspects of the human body.

Using process as an end and a means, and allowing for elements of human error, vigilant hand-eye co-ordination will underpin the performative nature of the work reflecting rhythm and movement.

When we consider objects, we identify them by their purpose. Having worked as a ceramicist for the last ten years, the making of objects for the everyday has been my life.

The idea of looking at objects and turning them into something else has always excited me. By playing with size, scale and function, we may find something that seems familiar, a little bit odd. Anything that is not where it belongs or where people normally think of it as being, can change perceptions of how we view things.

'Object, Odject' is the deconstruction of the everyday to challenge viewers to interpret something in a way in which it was not normally intended to be understood.