Archive : 2013

This collection of performance footage was undertaken in the San Gorgonio Pass, near Palm Springs and located at the entrance of Coachella Valley, California. One of the windiest places in the west, the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm, along with having sacred native significance, provides much of the energy for Southern California. A series of performance works were filmed amongst the fluctuating noise levels and forceful winds generated from the turbines. 

The video contains footage of the artist adorned and draped in a material object, however the object is not ‘worn’ in its traditional manner but rather playfully and intentionally morphed. Through this physical challenge to nature, the adornment is forced to act as security/comfort, a mask, coverage and at times a menace. 

Chantal Fraser uses adornment as an aesthetic and conceptual tool for material exploration and production. The work explores the creation of cross cultural connotations and representations through silhouette and the embodiment of adornment, and more significantly cultural adornment. Fraser's practice explores ornamentation as an aesthetic resolution to identity and individuality. 

Fraser is a Brisbane based multi-media artist with a BFA (Honours) from Queensland University of Technology. Fraser has exhibited nationally and internationally at various institutions and galleries. Recently Fraser held solo exhibitions at Artereal Gallery in Sydney and Spiro Grace Art Rooms in Brisbane. Fraser is currently represented by Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane. 

Media Release

Fur and in particular, fur coats are seen as a luxury item, usually purchased by rich men for their women. Fur of course has many Freudian references, but in this instance, Janice Gobey has subverted this use as a luxury item and by reversing the coat, the most valued fur part is turned to the inside, the outside revealing the hidden skin. 

Gobey has a particular interest in women’s issues, particularly violence against women. Often women are most vulnerable at the hands of their partners’, in their homes where there is little protection available. The fur suit is stitched in a crude way, using traditional female skills of hand sewing in an attempt to create some sort of refuge. By then lining the walls of the gallery with fur, this then provides another level of protection. 

Janice Gobey is a Melbourne based artist working in both painting and installation. Her undergraduate studies majored in Psychology and Sociology, leading to an interest in people. Growing up in South Africa has influenced her practice and combined with a residency in Berlin led to her current interest in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Gobey graduated from the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts with a Masters in Visual Art.

While it’s perfectly acceptable to alter or manipulate most photos these days, there’s still something sacred about family photos. They depict who we are and where we come from, contributing to our sense of identity and preserving our history. Telia Nevile is fascinated by photography’s ability to alter memory, so when she found this collection of family photos on ebay she was eager to see what it would feel like to visually invade someone else’s life. Pasting herself in amongst, and in some cases, over this family, has given Nevile an alternative history and a new set of ‘family memories’. But is this re-writing of history one manipulation too far? 

Telia Nevile is a writer, performer and photographer who graduated from RMIT in 2012 with a First Class Honours in Fine Art. Her visual arts practice centres around photography’s ability to preserve, alter and create memories, and the (too often) blurry line between fantasy and reality. 

Website: http://telianevilephotography.virb.com

This project peers into the condition of nature, environmental degradation and humanity’s perception and relations with nature. Doubt and debate surround us, generated by the media, politics and environmental groups, on many varied environmental topics. 

Present in the works are elements of chemical symbols, distortion or manipulation to nudge the viewer out of the comfort zone of the familiar and expected in nature and explore the different ways people choose to “see” the natural world and the state of the environment. On show will be etchings, drawings, photography and overlayed, etched perspex plates. 

In 2000, Kasia graduated with a B.A. Fashion Design (RMIT) and after two unimpressive years in the rag trade, decided to pursue art. Between 1999 and 2010, painting was the main medium, exhibited in various group exhibitions around Melbourne and Gippsland. In 2008, she was selected as a finalist in the John Leslie Art Prize. 

2010 marked a shift in the chosen media towards a more graphic aesthetic. In 2012, she completed a Master in Visual Art at Monash University in printmedia and has been pursuing both print and drawing since graduation. 

Website: http://www.kfabijanska.com.au

The most powerful natural explosion in recorded history occurred on 30 June 1908 when a meteor burst through the atmosphere above the Tunguska River in a remote area of Russia. Detonating with the power of 1000 atomic bombs the explosion knocked down an estimated 80 million trees over an area covering 2150 square km. Despite its magnitude little scientific study was done at the time, mostly due to geographical isolation and the impending world war. 

Haunted Future is an alternative history of the modern world following the Tunguska impact event. It is imagined that the meteorite shook reality in strange and unpredictable ways causing a series of after-effects that would continue for decades to come. 

The paintings in this exhibition act as a visual record of this fictional world. They are arrived at through a process of painting via digital collage, in which originally unrelated historical photographs are subjected to a series of modifications in order to be forced into the service of the narrative. The result is the vision of a haunted future, viewed through the prism of the past. 

Brad Rusbridge lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. 

Website: http://bradrusbridge.tumblr.com

Jack Rowland and Tom Vincent express an ongoing inquiry into the nature of consciousness and our perception of reality through the themes of psychedelia and spirituality. 

Transition Period presents a series of paintings, which demonstrate two different interpretations of this common interest. Rowland focuses on the notion of altered perception through representational landscapes with an intense palette of hyper-real colours. In contrast, Vincent creates subtle coloured geometric abstract paintings that explore concepts of Sacred Geometry, illustrating that shape and form are the underlying principals of all manifestation. 

Jack Rowland is a Melbourne based artist whose practice focuses on landscape paintings that explore the notion of altered perception. He has completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) at RMIT University in 2009. Since graduating, Rowland has participated in a number of curated group exhibitions at galleries including Flinders Lane Gallery, Blindside and Melbourne Affordable Art Fair. He is represented by Anna Pappas Gallery, where he had his first solo exhibition Unfamiliar in 2012. Rowland has been commended in the Hawkesbury Art Prize and awarded the RMIT Tolarno Art Prize. He has recently returned from an artist residency in Berlin. 

Hailing from Melbourne, Tom Vincent's first experiences of the art world were through street art and graffiti. Whilst painting train corridors and laneways as a teen he uncovered the concept of 'sacred geometry', a science that gives a multi-faceted understanding of our reality. Through the study of this science, Vincent was prompted to move his practice into the studio and hence began a detailed investigation of the patterns of this world.

Like micro-organisms evolving in a culture tube, the absurd agitations of a group of humans is being examined. From her distinct perspective, Katrina Stamatopoulos observes the others, wryly capturing an essence of ordinariness. Using her camera as a microscope she investigates the body as a place of reflection, a space that can be comprehended in relation to the bigger space that surrounds and is contiguous to it. Figures she chooses to photograph are unaware of the cameras presence, lost in their own thoughts and efforts to become samples in her own collection of culture tubes, specimens of a collective condition. 

Katrina Stamatopoulos is a Sydney based artist working predominantly with images. She has recently completed her Undergraduate studies at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, and is the 2011 recipient of the Australian Centre of Photography Scholarship Award and the COFA Dinosaur Designs Prize. 

In 2013, Katrina has participated in Liquid Cities and Temporary Identities, Espoo, Finland, Liquid Borders, Bari, Italy, and the 2nd International Exhibition: Media and Visual Arts, Izmir, Turkey. She has recently returned from a residency at the BigCi, in Wollemi National Park, NSW, Australia and is soon to participate in MiniArtVideoFest, Barabas Villa Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. 

Website: http://katrinastamatopoulos.net/

Part social experiment, part catharsis, part fairy tale, in this work Kelvy explores the interior dialogue and symbolism of conflict - the anger and energy, the burden, and the cleansing. The aesthetic of the work draws upon consumer culture, reality TV, and pop psychology symbology. The performances are influenced by 70’s and 80’s body artists – with the themes recontextualised through a more self-reflective and personal viewpoint. The different modalities of audience involvement and interaction are designed to allow chance to entre and activate the work. 

Klara Kelvy is a Melbourne based Artist. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at The Victorian College of the Arts in 2009. Her work is immersive and interactive, using performance, installation and video. Through her practice Kelvy explores the intricacies of our personal lives: from the mundane to the profound or comic. The work Kelvy makes is often based on mimicking her surroundings and sometimes actions of other people in an earnest attempt to make sense of the fundamental nature of humans. 

Website: http://www.klarakelvy.wordpress.com

PERFORMANCE TIMES:

Performance #1 FIGHT: 
Date: 2nd October (Opening Night) 
Time: 6.30pm-7pm 
Space: Gallery 2, small space 

Performance #2 HOLD: 
Date: Saturday 12th October 
Time: 2pm start 
Space: Gallery 2, large space 

Performance #3 CLEAN: 
Date: Saturday 19th October 
Time: 2pm start 
Space: Gallery 2, both spaces

This work is not only critical realism but also an exaggeration and distortion of the image in order to disrupt the way we see the world. The animal series is concerned with the relationship between our bodies and the bodies of a nimals and aims to give credence to the inner world of animals. The female body series looks at the way women experience their bodies in a domestic environment, which appears safe but cans sometimes be threatening. These themes bring forms out of the darkness to disturb us and to shine a spotlight on our fears. 

Denise Hall is a Victorian based artist who graduated with a Master of Visual Art’s, Monash University, 2012. She had previously completed a Bachelor of Art’s with Honours, Visual Art, at the University of Lancaster. Her work contains elements of critical realism and she is interested in the history of the grotesque in art. Denise has exhibited in many group exhibitions in and around Melbourne, including Roar Studios and William’s Town Fine Art Gallery. One of her major residencies was at Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon Trust. Her work is included in many regional and private collections in Australia and overseas. 

Media Release

What is in a line? The recent work of Gareth Jenkins is concerned with the reduction of concept in painting. In the past his work was developed from urban culture, man made structures, the walls and spaces of the architectonic environment. Through his work he demonstrates how line in its simplest form can be used to convey a sense of object while asserting spatial structure within a non-figurative format. Gareth’s natural progression for the idea of these paintings is demonstrated by his move to the three-dimensional, which he considers by highlighting the edge of the painting as well as the painted surface. 

Gareth Jenkins is a Darwin based artist originally from Wales in the UK. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Art painting degree with first class Honours in 2008 at the Limerick School of Art and Design, Ireland. In 2010 he successfully completed a Master of Fine Art postgraduate research degree in painting at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. 

He has exhibited work both nationally and internationally and is the recipient of numerous awards. His works are in private/public collections in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Croatia, Ireland and the UK. 

Website: http://garethjenkins.info/
Media Release

Freney-Mills’ work is an investigation into the visual aesthetics of text. He draws words in a process of repetition during which letters can merge or fragment, conveying a flow of consciousness. For the artist ink is the most responsive medium in combination with Japanese papers such as Kozo, Tengucho, Musashi and Awagami, which have varying degrees of transparency or absorption that allow for different layers in a work to be seen simultaneously. For Freney-Mills these qualities represent clarity of thought and best serve the philosophy that drives his arts practice, which is that art should be a contemplative experience that allows consciousness to expand. 

Melbourne based Freney-Mills completed a PostGraduate diploma at Victorian College of the Arts in 2005 –where he produced his first text- based work on canvas. He has staged exhibitions at STEPS Gallery, PB Gallery-Swinburne, Trocadero Art Space, Five Walls Projects and Carbon Black Gallery. Freney-Mills’ extensive travels through Japan act as the basis for ongoing research into techniques from contemporary and traditional Japanese drawing, painting and dye art practitioners. 

Website: http://davidfreneymills.com/

Created while on residency at Hill End, NSW, Back of Murray’s is a multidisciplinary combination of three interweaving items: painting, animation and performance. A highly energetic work with exaggerated brush marks and mark making, it consists of three life size paintings used as a platform to create an animation. The animation and paintings are about the artist’s physical interactions with the two-dimensional world, drawn from life, her physical play and reciprocal action with it. Through the time- consuming process of stop animation and video echoes, the work fractures and multiplies temporality. The result of all this activity is work that connects with the viewers’ own expression and experience of the body in the world, giving voice and acknowledging the importance of bodily experience over layers of time. 

Vanessa White is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the perception of bodily experience through physical energetic works involving performance, animation and painting. Trained as a painter and animator she also pursues professional development in performance. White received the Artstart Australia Council for the Arts grant (2012). Recent solo exhibitions include Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney (2011), Art & About Festival, Sydney (2010) and video installations at Pier 2/3 Sydney Biennale Bar (2012) and Firstdraft Depot (2011). She has also participated in residencies at Gunyah, NSW (2011), Hill End, NSW (2010) and studio residencies at Anyplace studio, Sydney (2011) and Firstdraft Depot studio, Sydney (2010). 

Video: https://vimeo.com/66450173

These colourful and vivid photographs by Peter Lambropoulos are a surreal journey into a parallel yet familiar world. The ethereal space in this work is the product of an on-going sculptural and photographic investigation into material, form and colour. For this exhibition, micro-sculptures made from blobby soft metal are presented as hallucinatory characters in an abstracted and super-saturated environment. Transformed into obscure critters, these hand-made micro-sculptures allow for a fanciful re-imaging of the world, which although no longer natural — is still mediated by real objects. 

Peter Lambropoulos is a Melbourne based artist. He graduated from the Queensland College of Art and has a post-graduate degree from the Victorian College of the Arts. His primary medium is photography and he has employed various extensions to this practice including performance, sculpture and video. He has exhibited widely in Australia in a variety of contexts including artist run initiatives, public and commercial galleries since the late 1980s. 

More of Lambropoulos's work can be viewed on-line at http://petlamb.com.au.

Featuring six artists: Jayne McSwiney, Penelope Hunt, Siying Zhou (VIC), Talitha Kennedy, Jonathon Saunders (Indigenous) and Simon Cooper (NT), Envisioning Gods presents a broad perspective and diverse voices examining the subject of spirituality and beliefs in modern societies. It draws attention to and re-appraises the value of wishful thinking, heroic culture, biotechnology, Zen and Christianity through six individual works: a drawing of a personal memory on a religious event; a sculptural installation that offers a ritualistic experience to the audience; a metaphoric photographic image; a stencil painting that reveals the mundanity of the daily lives of superheros; a family of small organic leather forms; a series of blueprints on boards that depict half human hybrid creatures. It intends to engage audiences both visually and physically. 

Siying Zhou (curator)
Born in 1980 in China, Siying Zhou is a multi-disciplinary artist and an independent curator. Zhou’s art focuses on subjects such as Zhou’s current research subjects include: spirituality as reflected through food culture in nomadic communities; the dialectic relationship between nature and humans; the meaning of nationality in multicultural societies; and art movements that engender creativity in the community. Zhou completed her Master at Sydney College of The Arts, the University of Sydney (SCA) in 2005 and was employed as Program Manager at 24HR Art: Northern Territory centre for contemporary art (now known as Northern Centre for Contemporary Art) from 2007 to 2013. Zhou is currently studying Masters of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne.

Natural Wonders presents elements of human condition utilising the figure and contemporary music. The burlesque puppets become misguided by their uniforms, as conflict arises the girls are faced with moral dilemmas in their micro world. Social behaviours digress with some unexpected outcomes in the fight for freedom of speech. Exaggerated twists on the norms and stereotypes of life entice the viewer to engage in questions between the relationship of fiction and reality.

Rebecca Agnew is a New Zealand born painter and Stop Animator based in Melbourne. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne with an MFA in 2012 and the University of Otago, Dunedin with a BaFA in 2004. Recent exhibitions include 'I'm just here for the atmosphere', NONO Gallery; Substation Contemporary Art Prize, Substation and 'Femmes and Hommes', John Buckley Gallery. She was included in Australian Art Collector’s 2013 Undiscovered Artists series. Agnew had her first represented exhibition with Tristian Koenig in September 2013 and is part of Sydney Contemporary 13: International Art Fair, and Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile. 

For me, this show is the beginning.  This is the most head-on way so far that I’ve been willing to explore the fragility of the human body and the psyche on a symbolic level, and it’s the beginning of where I want my work to go.The balls are a metaphor for growth, transformation, regeneration and decay – they began as simple sketches of circles on a page that soon grew into increasingly large multicellular organisms until reaching the scale and complexity that they’ve developed today.  Although the balls are bright and colourful, it was very much the way that the nail polish and spray paint ate away at their skin - sometimes quite a vicious way - that really captured my imagination, simultaneously undermining and strengthening their playful and joyful nature.  Strange as it may seem, I chose to create a full scale installation out of children’s craft materials precisely because of how much of a challenge it was to even let myself purchase materials like play doh and feathers with the intent of making art out of them in the first place – a clear sign that within that idea there was something I needed to challenge.

Along the way these balls have come to symbolise the growth of my artistic practice and where I want to travel with it.  When they arrived inside the skin of the people in my drawings in such a confrontational way I knew that this was where I needed to go.  In the drawings they’ve become a vehicle for me to explore what people are capable of doing to themselves and what they can be subjected to, and that’s the beginning of quite a rich vein of a subject matter right there.

Catriona Hutchison lives and creates her art in Melbourne. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2010 but fostered her love of drawing growing up in Canberra during the many hours she spent exploring National Gallery of Australia. This is her first solo exhibition. 

http://catrionahutchison.moonfruit.com/

Discarded building sites with their randomly created abstract forms have been the catalyst for this body of work. 

My engagement with these unexpected spaces and the abstract forms I find in them or in Proust words “that material object” sets up a poetic dialogue between my inner and outer world. 

For me the random abstraction within these abandoned spaces acts as a trigger and potency in evoking memories previously hidden. These memories and sensations are a constant source of inspiration for me and inform my abstract paintings in this show. 

“The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it.....” 

‘Remembrance of Things Past’, Marcel Proust

Definitions: 
Chaos- Complete disorder and confusion. 
Deterministic Chaos- Physics the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions. 
Khaos- (Greek, Latin and French origins ) Gaping void or chasm. 

Complimentary exhibition titles: 
1. Chaos and the garden. 
2. Chaos in a bedroom, with directions. 
3. A last sculpture. 

Rosina Prestia born in 1990, completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at Monash University in 2011. She is currently undergoing an internship at West Space Gallery and has her practice based in North Melbourne.

In ice9squared Gray builds abstract forms from the chemistry of liquid paint and congealing material on canvas. Overlaid with vast spaces of white, that obfuscate past marks. Gray’s paintings are reminiscent of a scarred landscape shrouded in a blanket of ice. The painted surface becomes geographical and glacier-like in its final frozen image, evocative of the imagery within Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s seminal novel ‘Cat’s Cradle’, from which the title of this exhibition is taken. 

Alizon Gray grew up on the Mornington Peninsula and now lives and works in Melbourne. Gray has a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in Painting and a Bachelor of Fine Art – Honours from the Victorian College of the Arts.Gray has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally since 2003, and has been a finalist in numerous art prizes. Her works are in private collections in Australia, New Zealand, England, Germany and Switzerland.

Laura Skerlj’s work concerns a provocation that every image of the landscape, in effect, collapses it. This collapse could be thought of as a process of re-arrangement or reconfiguration of an original subject (the natural world). In this case, it involves the artist using collage and sculptural methods to invent versions of landscape before articulating them through painting. Painting becomes an important process that pushes the reference point away from reality and towards an imagined vision, presenting landscape as a place where the organic and synthetic intersect. 

The works in Preciousless approach landscape and terrain as base geological forms—be they mountain ranges, gold or gemstones. Through the process of reconfiguration, these elements are extracted from a state of preciousness (the grandeur of alpine territory, the richness of gold…) and presented as euphoric assemblages of their former selves. 

Laura Skerlj is a Melbourne based artist and writer. Her practice is primarily concerned with painting, with a parallel interest in sculptural and drawing tableau. She has degrees in Journalism, English and Art History, and is currently completing a Master of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. Laura also works as a freelance art writer.

www.lauraskerlj.com

Portraiture aspires to summon both physical and essential likeness. Described as “the meeting of two subjectivities,”i the portrait is more than an illustration of a person’s physiognomy: it draws upon the ‘originality’ of both the artist creating the work, and the sitter. However, it was perhaps the sitter’s role (and expectations) that dictated the function of the portrait historically. First appearing as images of ancient Egyptian kings and queens on sarcophagi, or in the funerary paintings of the 3rd and 4th centuries, the portrait traditionally favored the wealthy, royal, and esteemed. In the late Middle Ages, portraiture became a distinct genre, and members of various social groups began sitting for artists. During the Renaissance, interests in the natural world and classical cultures . . . . . . . . http://rubiconari.com.au/Laura-Skerlj-The-Obscure-You

Interested in how things appear and how they can be hidden from us, James Bonnici’s current work explores the process of disclosing concealment: the in-between, a glimpse of what lies beneath the surface. Through the representation of subject in motion, distortion is created which hints at the subject’s psychological state. The subject’s mood is captured and the viewer is given an insight into their subjective reality through the layers of rendered abstraction, distortion or filtration. 

James Bonnici is a Melbourne based artist who works from Blender Studios. After graduating from RMIT, he slowly developed his style, one culminating in a cohesive body of psychological landscapes and portraits which reflect his attitude towards the contemporary environment. He now exhibits regularly around Melbourne, most recently appearing in Dark Horse Experiment’s group show ‘Confine’. He was one of Art Melbourne director, Tamsin Roberts’, top picks at Art Melbourne 2012, and has featured on ABC TV’s Artscape program, Subtopia.

I have ploughed the family archives to create a series of portraits using adhesive dressings (‘band-aids’) as a primary medium. The band-aids approximate flesh tones and are applied to describe the form and contours of the body. Via the symbolic and metaphorical connotations band-aids can evoke, I aim to charge each portrait with psychological weight, exploring and amplifying interpersonal dynamics. 

Savina Hopkins is a graduate of The Victorian College of the Arts (BA Fine Art – Painting) and The University of Newcastle (Post Graduate Diploma - Scientific Illustration). She lives and works in Melbourne. Her recent art practice is predominately collage based, with a focus on using unconventional and salvaged materials. Her work is held in various collections including The National Archives of Australia, Museum Victoria, The Royal Society of Victoria and Lowensteins Arts Management.

Neil Shurgold uses the figure in everyday situations as the source material for his paintings. Observing people during his daily travels throughout the city where figures by way of gesture, their clothing or a ‘prop’, often becomes a tableaux for Shurgold’s work. 

Neil Shurgold is a Melbourne based artist and musician who is the Director of Rubicon ARI and is currently completing a BA in Fine Art at Curtin University.

Simon's practice is sampled from the everyday. Like an apocalyptic joyride through the news, accessible images are gleaned from contemporary mass cultural image dumps. Starting at such a general, familiar point encourages us to explore our current contemporary psyche through the two dimensional space of the reproduced images it consumes and is consumed by. 

Talking about the present, using out-moded technology of the past, Simon is able to explore personal as well as shared anxieties about how our physical and social environments have changed and how they will continue to change in the future. 

We are used to seeing these reference images in the media most commonly to describe something negative. The technology induced ectoplasmic forms suggest a corruption or intervention in the way we view the image which challenges the initial face value and assumptions we attach to familiar scenarios and suggests alternative readings.

(Between Bands) is made of found materials to confuse memories and imagination. These tampered interpretations are intended to serve as reference points with no clear narrative as we open the door for viewers to continue to dismantle or build upon the existing in order to create a new identity. 

Throughout this work I continue to destabilize the role of photography as an index of reality using destruction, distortion and abstraction. 

Tom Mackie is a Wellington based visual artist working across the field of sculpture, installation, printmaking and collage. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking with first class honours at Dunedin School of Fine Arts in 2008.

Kirsten Turner's paintings are predominantly figurative images based on personal snapshots - depicting ambiguous scenes to explore rites of passage, notions of being 'present' in a moment of time and the banality of the everyday. Recent works show private rituals performed during the creation of a face to display to the world, which although carefully cultivated, remains impermanent. 
Kirsten Turner graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Art in Painting from the VCA (2004) after completing a Diploma of Visual Art at RMIT (2001). She has exhibited in various group and two-person shows including Anna Pappas Gallery, Project Space, Red Gallery and TCB art inc., for which a NAVA Visual and Craft Artists' Grant was jointly awarded. Turner has most recently shown at c3 Contemporary Art Spaces (2012) with the solo show 'For this hour', as well as co curating and exhibiting in the ‘The Sixth’ at West Space (2013).

Rebecca Agnew is a New Zealand born painter and Stop Animator based in Melbourne. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne with an MFA in 2012 and the University of Otago, Dunedin with a BaFA in 2004. Recent exhibitions include 'I'm just here for the atmosphere', NONO Gallery; Substation Contemporary Art Prize, Substation and 'Femmes and Hommes', John Buckley Gallery. She was included in Australian Art Collector’s 2013 Undiscovered Artists series. Agnew had her first represented exhibition with Tristian Koenig in September 2013 and is part of Sydney Contemporary 13: International Art Fair, and Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile. 

Fragility, complexity and chaos are arguably defining characteristics of the universe within which we exist. Even on a minute level our lives are ruled by the chaos of the weather, the complexity of social structures and the fragility of the human mind and body. It is these ruling components that are the focus of Gatland’s exploration within these personalized microscopic sanctuaries. Her chief ambition for this project was to produce a series of paintings and paper sculptures on a smaller scale than previous work, further conversing with the ‘micro’ aspects of the duality of the cosmos. 

Hannah Gatland was born in Sydney in 1980 and currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours year at the Queensland University of Technology in 2002 and a Master of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2008. Gatland has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows nationally and in 2011 was awarded Artist in Residence at Level ARI, Brisbane.

Duets explores communication and cooperation, and what happens when these go wrong. O’Carrigan depicts figures in high-stress situations, with no means of clear communication. Removed of speech and context, all that is left is gesture: the viewer is left to interpret the figure’s body language.

By choosing awkward moments, where the subject expresses private feelings between frames and takes, it seems as though O’Carrigan is betraying his heroes. Instead, what O’Carrigan gives us is the moment where the subjects show how they feel when they cannot speak it. 

There are two sides to this show. Duets are taken from ridiculous interviews aptly portrayed with a hint of caricature. In contrast to the playfully nonsensical on-screen meltdowns are foreboding scenes of impending violent conflict. Musicians are suddenly recruiting for the war effort. Slapstick fugitives are in Dresden, or Hiroshima. O’Carrigan gives us altered histories versus Hollywood tropes. 

The combination of these threads exhibited together seems to suggest an escalation of conflict seeded in confusion. What is meant is not always what is heard, or other powers bend the meaning to their will. When words fail us, the pen is no longer mightier than the sword. 

NB: Duets exhibition catalogue can be downloaded at 5mb: 
http://bit.ly/ZTEhpE 

To view on mobile at 500kb: 
http://bit.ly/115JeON

The title of this exhibition suggests the basic notion of power, yet the video piece is a depiction of revealed nakedness or nakedness that is presumed, the artist is filmed in a ritualistic and somewhat vulnerable way. 

She pumps up cooking flour into the air, like she is, wanting to disappear with it. The photograph that accompanies this is far more obvious in its meaning: it is power and the artist’s direct stare at the lens, with lightning inspired graphics overlapping the image. 

There is finally a realization this is no flower generation here. This is today and the slickness and versatility of performance and drama through video.

The premeditated school photograph documents a person in that time but doesn’t normally function in any other way. The ambiguous context in which these images are displayed initially feels uncomfortable. We feel empathetic toward these strangers on display as we have all sat in the familiar school photograph setting yet there is an interesting discordance in the way we are familiar with the school photograph construct yet it is also generic and distant. 

In The Kids Are Alright the source material came from a deceased estate being auctioned on Ebay. The late African American School teacher had innocently collected photos of white children that she taught and documented the name of each child and date on the back. We are used to seeing these reference images in the media most commonly to describe something negative. I purchased these photos around the time of the Sandy Hook Massacre where one of the teachers sacrificed her life to hide the children from the gunman and a collection of cropped school photos were broadcast of the ones who weren’t so lucky. 

This work instead celebrates the people who overcome societal failings in order to give so selflessly and acknowledge something positive. The work challenges the initial face value and assumptions we attach to familiar scenarios and suggests alternative readings. 

simonattwooll.com