Archive : 2014

In Object + Painting = Exaggerated laughter/ unchequered aggression, Nick Berry explores painting as performance, the artifact of the post performance, the physical object / process of destroying paintings structure, found materials, as well as  challenging traditional installation methods.

Treating the canvas as a physical object by cutting it in half or taking it completely off the stretcher, Nick explores the process of destroying the structure of paintings by physically smashing through the canvas or found materials as well as presenting constructions combined with painting. He questions paintings value and its properties as an object, and the boundaries of the object.

His current works consider a sense of playfulness about modes of display and installation, incorporating the canvas stretcher, gallery walls and floor into his methods of display.  

These series of paintings presented here relate to these continuing themes, and reflect a continuing development of Nicks creative act and continuing exploration of paintings about painting. They explore ideas of gesture, humour, colour, and the object, intending to challenge viewers’ ideas of traditional painting practices.

Nick Berry’s practice is painting, drawing and installation based. He demythologizes paintings history and the hierarchies of value encased within the systems of painting . These aspects served as the basis for his completed Masters of Fine Arts degree at RMIT. Originally from New Zealand, Nick completed his Bachelor degree in Visual Art at Auckland University of Technology. During his time there, he developed a great interest in painting as Painting as well as the notion of painting as object. In using methods of display to explore ideas about the art object, relationships to art history and conventions within painting, Nick seeks to subvert traditional conventions of hanging and installation. 

In 2072 Neil Shurgold returned from what was supposed to be an artist residency on P.O.C.A.[1] However, due to an extreme navigational error he missed the post completely, and found himself on an exotic planet of sweet-smelling life forms and pastel-coloured terrain and flora. Resembling a gigantic pink bonbon on approach, he decided to name this curious world Saccharinopia. He then trekked for three arduous weeks through miles of sugary desert before stumbling upon what appeared to be the ruins of an ancient civilization.

Fragments of statues, bones, pottery, hieroglyphs and decorative wall tiles are some of the artifacts Shurgold brought back to Earth, along with many other unidentifiable objects and creatures. In Voyage to Saccharinopia a selection of these relics are exhibited alongside a series of landscape paintings and photographic documents, presenting humankind’s first glimpse of this mysterious planet.

Neil Shurgold is a Melbourne-based artist, musician, curator and gallery manager. His studio practice incorporates video, sound, sculpture, installation, photography and painting. Voyage to Saccharinopia is his first solo exhibition.

[1] Planet of Contemporary Art

Laura_Skerlj_Essay_Sugarland

If celebrity status is acquired only once a person in well known, then media becomes the vehicle for getting them there. I work with the most tactile of these – the ubiquitous gossip mag. Figures that are deemed to hold marketable value by the the paparazzi and press. Framed, captioned, airbrushed…magazines create and disseminate celebrity culture, taking an individual and transforming them into an icon before delivering them: polished and pre-packaged to a newsstand near you.

Compelled by societies lack of interest in established forms of authority drawing from post modern and German figurative painting to deconstruct and dehumanise these celebrities, putting forth a Debordian spectacle of their shiny parts, shimmer, appeal and allure. These works intend to portray the active and fluid nature of the self produced celebrity, as a product for consumption rather than a person of merit. The fast acting interface of global media networks has fast tracked fame, those famous for being famous are in most cases more talked about than those people who are well known for great achievements or talent.

Before the figures are translated onto board, they are first assembled and photographed in a miniature tableau – a type of paper Valhalla. Here, celebrities are juggled together in their jeans and duchesse satin, creating a giddying excess of detail. At this point, however, the flimsiness of the paper causes a physical intervention, prompting the cut-outs to bend and disfigure, thus undermining the stars’ poses.

Barnett received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Canterbury University, School of fine Arts, Christchurch, New Zealand completed in 2010. She has held solo exhibitions and participated in group and community art projects in both Melbourne Australia and New Zealand. 

Love Lifes is a series of still life paintings depicting domestic and hand made objects arranged by couples left alone on play dates in Coppersmith’s studio.

Each couple was briefed to bring a selection of objects from their home and arrange them in a way that they both find pleasing to live with.  These symbolic acts of negotiation within each creative partnership were left for Coppersmith to paint, and in turn became visual markers of compositional and aesthetic ideals for her to articulate while harnessing the creative energy manifested by and unique to each couple’s arrangement.

Love Lifes continues Coppersmith's interest in collaborative still life painting and follows her series Love and Light, where she painted clay nude models of herself as remembered and sculpted by former lovers. Her new series continues to explore her fascination with love as a collaborative and participatory act. By choosing couples that intrigue her with the creative dynamic of their relationship, Coppersmith draws our attention to the way two people inspire and affirm each other’s creativity and lifestyle within a private space. 

Inspired to take action during the creative process, Coppersmith downloaded a dating app. By the final week of creating the work for the show, the artist had been on a couple of dates with a new love interest.  On their third date, she issued an invitation for a studio play date; concluding her project with a still life depicting the playful composition of their two sets of personal objects meeting for the first time.

The artist would like to acknowledge the participation of Meredith Turnbull and Ross Coulter, Ann Fuata and Neil Shurgold, Melissa Loughnan and Simon Griffiths, Anna Crews and Aiden Morse, Justin Hinder and Troy Doran, Adele Winteridge and Dhiren Das, and Michael Weisler.

Casper David Friedrich’s The Monk by the Sea (1808-10) abandons its moorings and seeks another surface.  The paint escapes the rectangular frame, its brushstrokes come to life and seek for somewhere outside painting’s conventional home.  Brushstrokes are made with the action of an arm or a body; here they are not confined to their usual rectangular surface.  Here they are free to cross thresholds and flow over spaces occupied by the body (ie. the floor).  Now the rectangle that once was the painting is just a shell.

Painter and installation artist, Naomi Nicholls, challenges the territory and conventions of the gallery by taking paint beyond the two dimensional plane, spreading across walls, floor and ceiling – asking viewers to move around inside her paintings. Nicholls’ works has been shown in both group and solo exhibitions at galleries and artist run spaces including C3 Contemporary Art Space, Seventh Gallery, The Substation and D11 @ Docklands.  She was also a finalist for The Windsor Prize (2013) and received the Encouragement Award from Hobsons Bay City Council for their Art in Public Places program (2013).

http://naominicholls.com

The deceptive interplay of memory and perception is the foundation of Kat Teede’s current exhibition, Perception. Through duplicitous and duplicated portrait photography and suspended installation, the artist delves into the multiple truths that present themselves within our memories. Conditioned by a lapse of time, memories mask and reveal our pasts and become subject to deterioration or transformation, thereby altering our perceptions.Tracing time and memory, Kat Teede creates a minimalist and haunting aesthetic in Perception that draws the viewer into an ambiguous world. Opening night will be accompanied by an evocative cello performance by Melbourne based cellist Francesca Mountfort, drawing the viewer further within.

Kat Teede is a Melbourne based conceptual artist whose multifaceted practice spans drawing, photography, collage, sculpture and installation. Based strongly in memory and tension, Kat Teede’s work looks to our presence in time and within our pasts; and to the creative tension borne out of opposites.

This project is been funded by the City of Melbourne 2014 Arts Grant Program.

‘It should be possible to build a pagoda of crispbread, to think of nothing, to hear no thunder, no rain, no splashing from the gutter, no gurgling around the house. Perhaps no pagoda will emerge, but the night will pass.

Somewhere a tapping on metal.

It is always with the fourth floor that the wobbling begins; a trembling hand as the next piece of crispbread is put in place, a cough when the gable is already standing, and the whole thing lies in ruins—’

–Max Frisch, Man in the Holocene

‘Rather than examine political culture through specific events, or by means of a history of the ideas that shape them, or by a study of the institutional arrangements (of government, class, law, race, gender, consumption) that support them, I focus on a register of experience – the register of a cultural imaginary – that, although implicated in these other registers, is more amorphous and less directly related to politics. But not, perhaps, less powerfully so.’

 –Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life

Sarah Bunting completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2013 with a focus on painting, and exhibited in the inaugural Windsor Prize and annual SHE exhibition in 2013 and 2014 respectively. She is interested in personal and social systems of power and control, the rituals we manufacture collectively and individually, as coping mechanisms or means of enchantment, and the implications of both for ethics and aesthetics.

As a child of Lebanese parents who migrated to Australia, I began developing a strong interest in comprehending the diverse cultural traditions amongst the varied population in this country. I grew up living in two cultures simultaneously. One, a strong Middle Eastern tradition at home, the other collectively experiencing mores of western influences in my social and school environment. This began a visual exploration of Australian identity.

I am interested in the place from which we look and construct our understandings of the world. Much of my practice concerns the nuanced relationships between East and West. The unrealistic representations of Middle Eastern customs and beliefs we have come to learn through art, literature, music, film, television and advertising.The ways in which these relations are figured and practiced inform our understandings of self and other. I investigate how such vantages are constructed.

Deanna Hitti has been a printmaker for 10 years and is the founder of Rambunctious Press where she teaches printmaking, bookbinding and custom prints for visual artists and designers. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Monash University in 2001 Deanna completed an Advanced Diploma of Photography at the Photographic Studies College in Melbourne in 2004. She has exhibited internationally and nationally in numerous group and solo shows including The Centre for Book Arts (New York) IMPACT8 Conference (Dundee, Scotland), Langford 120, 45 Downstairs and Flinders Lane Gallery.  In 2006 she had a residency at Leiber Yavneh College, Melbourne. Deanna was the recipient of the 2008 Libris Award (National Artist Book Award, Artspace Mackay) and was also the winner of the 2009 Books Beyond Words Award, (Artist Book Award, East Gippsland gallery).

The Détente Integrated sculptures series incorporates national flowers (including non-official) and associated national flags to represent identity and cultural diversity. The interaction with table tennis bats conveys the recreational yet competitive nature of the game and depicts universal communication in the face of cultural difference. A highlight in Chinese history was the “Ping Pong Diplomacy” when China invited American players to Beijing in 1971. This was the first major encounter with China after years of closure to the west. Each country has symbols of its identity. Flowers have been associated with meanings since our existence. Hence, a national flower evinces all kinds of sentiments and the pretty blooms can express what words cannot.

Jenny Zhe Chang has completed a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting at the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne and Master of Computing of Monash University. For the past seven years she has been creating sculptures, paper cuttings, paintings and installations that investigate the interaction between eastern and western, most importantly how we communicate with each other and with ourselves. Jenny has held ten solo shows in Australia and Taiwan since 2008, most recently “Détente Connection” at the Art Gallery, St Vincent Hospital in 2014; “Warm Up, Soar Beyond” at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Taipei, Taiwan in 2013; “Homeostasis: Yin & Yang”, at Five Walls Project, in 2013; “Détente Harmonization” at Seventh Gallery in 2012; ”Détente United”, at Meimen Art Centre, Taiwan in 2012; “Détente Conscience” at the Substation in 2012;  “Détente Reflection”, at Trocadero Art Space in 2011;  “From Micro to Infinity”,  at Techno Park Studios Gallery in 2010; “Forgotten Flowers”, at Mudfest 11, University of Melbourne, 2009 and “East @ West” at George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne in 2008. She has participated in more than 35 group shows in Australia, Japan, and the US since 2001.

Residuum furthers the exploration of Sarah Ritchie's and Glenn Dalton's shared interest in the notion of the residual. In response to this theme, Glenn presents botanical studies that investigate the physical traces revealed during the process of one natural material coming into contact with another. Phantom-like forms of native grasses, belonging to the north-east region of Victoria, are delicately embossed upon heavy weight paper and porcelain; organic forms imposed on a natural yet structural matrix. Through this process Glenn attempts to create images of grace and contemplation, celebrating the often forgotten repose of the natural world around us. While Glenn considers the trace of the physical, Sarah has crafted a group of works that appear to be collections of scraps, unspecified forms and shards sourced from the natural, biological and medical worlds. Ambiguous specimens are contained in glassine envelopes, and other medical debris is fixed in layers on delicate discs of Japanese paper; porcelain ephemera suggests brittle bones, casings, bleached wreckage; and a large map-like work is constructed from semi-transparent layers that both reveal and hide the fragments captured in-between. The painstaking stitching, folding and layering devoted to each work echoes the repetitive natural processes that shape and shift terrain and physical matter over time.

Sarah completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) at RMIT University in 2002 with a major in printmaking. Glenn resides in Melbourne and completed a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts, majoring in printmaking. His background and the aesthetics of the printed image continue to inspire and push him to create work that retains a truth and integrity associated with the printmaking discipline, whilst continuing to explore its possibilities amongst other disciplinary processes.

In “The Business of Dreaming” De Nardi presents us with a series of works investigating desire and the creation of desire. De Nardi’s work explores the ways various mechanisms of our society use our base animal desires as a means to achieve unacknowledged ends. We are manipulated into wanting things, desires are created in order that we consume. Using existing and known images the artist’s intention is to subvert and create new and often uncomfortable relationships between the images within each work, altering the psychological profile of the subject of those images. These new relationships encourage an informed engagement with the psychological landscape of media images.  

Ben De Nardi graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2000, majoring in sculpture. His work uses explored materiality and form and has often incorporated recycled materials. Since graduating he has had several solo shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Since moving to Melbourne De Nardi completed a Masters of Architecture at Melbourne University. This is his first exhibition of collage work.

Brendan Gaule’s often bizarre oneiric visions are a vivid escape from the mundane into cosmic new worlds. These paintings highlight how imagination can transfigure the commonplace and trigger a yearning for the spiritual. Shooting for the Stars is an exhibition about the joys of reckless imagination.

Brendan Gaule is an Irish born artist. Born in 1968 in a town called Sligo on the north west coast. "The land of hearts desires" is how its most famous resident W.B. Yeats described it. Known for its rugged landscape and ancient megalithic tombs it was an environment steeped in folklore and politics. A graduate of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Brendan immigrated to Australia in 1997 and has since lived and worked in Sydney. This is his first solo exhibition.

(Sync)Romanticism is a digital video documentation of synchronistic occurrences and ritual romanticism in the contemporary world. It is a follow up to 2012’s (Nec)Romanticism photographic series. 

Tristan Davies is a Melbourne based photographer and visual artist whose practice explores moments of nostalgia, romanticism, eternity and mystery within the everyday. He has an Advanced Diploma of Photography (Art Major), from the Photography Studies College, Melbourne.

Kinetic painting series is a commentary on the medium of video art, and how its temporal limitations are exposed when contextualized through the medium of painting. That said, this work should be considered a kinetic painting, and not video art.

Travis H Heinrich is a Melbourne based multi-disciplinary artist; particularly interested in video, immersive installation, and unconventional modes of communication. His practice explores escapism achieved through contemporary interpretations of tromp l’oeil; the subjective perception of everyday surroundings; and resisting artistic hegemony. Travis graduated from the ANU School of Art in 2011.

Currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Art at Monash University, Rachel Schenberg is interested in the spaces in-between, in both physical and psychological spheres. Using a mix of lens-based media, sculpture and installation work, she conveys space and form to explore the tension created between opposing ideas. Most recently, Rachel has been inspired by Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and Edmond Burke's conceptions on the Sublime.

This research investigates irrational thought in response to aggression and fear and how this may be visualized as an external skin. It considers historical, psychoanalytical and philosophical texts that discuss the uncanny, repression and shadows. These concepts aim to form the layers of these artworks in relation to irrationality.

Starting at the uncanny, the art works created rely on a metamorphosis and contortion of the flesh. These deformations are intrinsically linked to the feeling s of unease and unfamiliarity. Coexisting alongside this is the repression of past experiences, which manifest as a fragmentation of thought, memory and feeling; which is portrayed in the artworks as a cracking or erosion on the surface of the physical body. As the body transfigures through the unease of the uncanny, it begins eroding away due to repressed trauma and psychological pain. The shadow thus emerges and projects itself as multiple positions around the stagnated body. This is based on the idea of one’s perception and grasp of reality being broken down, where movement and thought are separated. As a result of the feelings associated with the uncanny, repression and shadow, one’s reality begins to distort and allows for overreaction to situations and events through aggression and fear.

Everything has meaning and associations. Everything reveals the thoughts of its maker. Nicholas Mellefont's works employ everything. Based on Mcluhans "the medium is the message", Mellefont combines readymade / found objects with created elements to present spaces in which a sort of non-linear narrative can unfold. These works explore the relationship between signifier and signified. Dimension is added to the message by using mediums as is appropriate, keeping in mind Mallarme's urge for artists to embody the content in how the subject is rendered. A nexus is formed by what is included and how it is arranged, content generates form. Context generates narrative. Mellefont's collages fuse a range of artistic philosophies to document thoughts, and experiences of the everyday in a visual language assembled from everyday things.

Nicholas Mellefont was born in 1980, growing up in suburban Sydney. He studied Graphic Design at K.V.B North Sydney before moving to Northern N.S.W to study Visual Arts at Southern Cross University. He has exhibited Australia wide and his work is held in numerous private collections. He currently lives and works in Melbourne. 

Kirsten Turner's paintings are based on personal snapshots. These scenes explore ambiguous notions of rites of passage, being present in a moment of time and the banality of the everyday. 'Nowhere else but here' depicts faces in a liminal state—exploring the foggy transition between sleep and wakefulness where the mind is far away but the physical presence is near. This continues a long held interest in exploring fluctuation between feelings of connection and separation. Turner paints from photographs; while each person is a starting point for the making of the work it is not where she spends her time—the occasion is the process of translating their photographic representation into paint.

Kirsten Turner graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Art in Painting from the Victorian College of the Arts (2004), receiving the National Gallery Women’s Association Undergraduate Encouragement Award. Having previously completed a Diploma of Visual Art from RMIT (2001), she has since shown works in various group and two-person shows at spaces including Anna Pappas Gallery, Project Space, Red Gallery and TCB art inc., for which a NAVA Visual and Craft Artists' Grant was jointly awarded. Recent group shows have included ‘Limits of likeness’ (2013) at Rubicon ARI and ‘The sixth’ (2013) at West Space, which was co curated with Christina Hayes. Preceding this was a solo exhibition at c3 contemporary art spaces entitled ‘For this hour’ (2012), with portraits depicting the process of privately transforming the facial surface for public view. Most recently, Turner placed highly commended for ‘Rituals’ in the 2013 Belle Arti Prize.

In the N.A. series, photomedia artist Lin Wei explores the limitations of the human body to achieve recognizable yet perceptually peculiar entities in an attempt to enhance the objectification of the body as a sculptural element. Lin works with bodies as the subject and with camera perspective to challenge the perception of the known body. The uncanny through the mystified body is a recurring theme within her work and is achieved through contorted body poses without photographic manipulation.

Lin Wei is a Sydney based Photomedia artist. She is currently completing her Honours component for BDes. Photography and Situated Media at University of Technology, Sydney and has held recent group exhibitions at Boutwell Draper Gallery (2013) and at Parlour as part of Kaldor Public Art Projects (2012).

Natalie Tirant's Exposed #1 and #2 is a series of photographs that explore notions of gender ambiguity, seeking to confront us with a distorted perception of the human form captured in an everyday, recognisable context. The closer we allow ourselves to engage with the fleeting condition, we begin to encounter the glitches of the body, drawn in by the obscure and unsettlingly, imperfect state of the form. The work presents to us a the overlooked idea of an identity being neither exclusively male nor exclusively female – the true nature of the form never truly being exposed. 

Tirant has completed a BFA in Photography at Monash University in 2013, and has exhibited in a number of group shows around Melbourne including Equivocal Constructions (Monash University/CCP/No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne), Sliced (Supergraph Art Fair, Melbourne), Perversion (within Disquiet Encounters, Monash University, Melbourne), and video projection work (displayed at Horse Bazaar, Melbourne).

http://linwei.com.au/home/

A man lay still on his studio floor, is this mere performance, a state of meditation, or has the creative process become terminal?
Hanging around my newly set up studio at home I was experimenting with small sculptural constructions, studio paraphernalia and my own presence within the space in an attempt to generate ideas. I began to be compelled by the idea of absurdity within the studio and the performative nature of studio activity. If I could elevate these otherwise menial moments via their reproduction in paint could I also facilitate a deeper investigation into the boundaries of painting and the human condition? In this ongoing inquiry, the artist’s studio is presented as a place of flux and failure where performative value and mystic possibilities are revealed in moments of banal productivity and futile gestures.

Born in Melbourne, 1978, David has a background in drawing, painting and sculpture. His solo exhibitions include L’Innocents (2010), The Passenger (2011) Galleria Émigré (Pop up), Melbourne, Poison (2013) Trocadero Art Space, Melbourne. In 2012 David was a finalist in the Metro Award Toyota Community Spirit Award and in 2013 he was shortlisted for the Substation Contemporary Art Prize. David has work held in various private collections nationally.

Ruby Brown's practice plays with daily observations, autobiographical experience, and her identity as a Millennial Māori living in Australia. In Finding, Ruby invites the viewer to join her in the simple and addictive act of collecting. Ad-hoc improvisation, light, sound and line investigate environmental detail and tensions in geographical, spiritual & social displacement and the affected self. Inspired by the determined creativity in those who have less - particularly the cardboard towns of Tokyo and trolleys of the homeless in Los Angeles - Ruby sets out to find meaning in the daily ritual of finding, taking and changing objects found in the surrounding streets of her home in Brunswick. In considering the Māori mythology of Te Ao (light & reality, dwelling place of humans), Te Po (darkness) & Te Kore (the void), Finding explores the nothingness & reality of urban environments. 

Ruby Brown grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand and completed her Bachelor of Education at Otago University in 2007. She worked as a Maori language & culture, visual art & general classroom teacher before moving to Melbourne in 2011. Ruby is currently studying at VCA.

http://ruby---brown.tumblr.com/post/91695127186/finding-exhibition-at-rubicon-ari-may-2014

In Dust into Husk, ceramicist Georgia Harvey strays from an early focus on vessels to explore and embrace the realm of intangible function. Parallel to the history of pottery, humans have followed the impulse to form figures, dolls for play and idols for worship, golems (‘shapeless husks’) to be invested with living attributes. The plastic nature of the material allows impressions to be formed and reformed endlessly, each alteration rich with the potential to convey new meaning. Once trapped in place through the act of firing, the husks continue to change in response to their immediate surroundings; they are given personality by context. These simple forms anticipate figure (or parts thereof), yet their stance and positioning provide a sense of character and relationship.

With a background in arts and collections care, Georgia Harvey has recently developed a practice in ceramics. She handbuilds clay forms destined for pyromaniacal processes such as raku, pit and wood firings. A fascination with material behaviour, welcoming the unexpected contributions of the kiln and ‘controlled accident’ are central to her process. Georgia was a finalist in the 2013 Clunes Ceramic Award. Her work is stocked by stores in Australia and the US. This is her first solo exhibition.

“The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity… it has an appetite which is sharp, but very easily gratified”
- Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful (p32)

Curiosity can lead to feelings of uncertainty as one anticipates the discovery of what once seemed unknown. It too can provoke feelings of distant familiarity – of tentative recognition. Yet when this familiarity is beyond reach and the curiosity unfulfilled, what remains is an intrusive awareness of an intangible idea. The photographs in the exhibition uncover this sense of pending recognition, and open up the space between the trigger and the resolve of such a sensation.

Currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Art at Monash University, Rachel is interested in the spaces in-between, in both physical and psychological spheres. Using a mix of lens-based media, sculpture and installation work, she conveys space and form to explore the tension created between opposing ideas. Most recently, Rachel has been inspired by Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and Edmond Burke's conceptions on the Sublime.

https://studiorqes.allyou.net/

Mountain, Heavy Mountain showcases a new artwork from James Little. The artwork is a palindrome of its combined elements, exploring a collaboration between the artist studio and gallery, as well as themes of repetition, obsession and decay.The artwork’s material elements work in opposites, with the underlying drawing having a performative approach to its creation that results in an evident laborious and mechanical outcome. In contrast to this is a thick coating of wax over the drawing that appears mechanical and industrial, and through the application of heat throughout the duration of the exhibition begins to ‘perform’ as it melts off the image, completing the palindrome. 

James Little is a Melbourne based artist. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree at RMIT University in 2011 and has held numerous exhibitions around Australia. 

Website: http://jameslittle.info/

In this series, artist Rebecca Agnew invites you into intimate and surreal scenarios, where lurking figures mesh with architectural, mountainous and domestic spaces that personify ones own self. Using dark humor and subtle triggers, she explores public and private display, the roles of gender, power and the archetypes of tradition and sacrifice. 

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. 

Website: http://rebeccaagnew.com/

Casting their research nets across a multitude of cultural phenomena, the oracles of the design industries compile lists of the important shapes, materials and colours of the seasons ahead. As forecasted colour of 2013 Emerald Green fades away, passing the baton to 2014's Radiant Orchid, it is hard not to imagine that this information is influencing production and consumption. For the last 10,000 years, humans have influenced the evolution of domestic animals through selective breeding, in order to encourage desirable aesthetic traits. Have trend forecasters predicted the future, or is this self-fulfilling prophecy affecting the natural evolution of design? 

Trained as a hand weaver at RMIT, John Brooks has recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Drawing) at the Victorian College of the Arts. With a practice spanning textile construction techniques, collage, drawing, video and sculpture, Brooks uses the interconnectivity of these processes to work through ideas of duality and ecology. Primarily concerned with evolution, speculative fiction and the role, history and future of craft, a perceived separation of humans from the natural world and of thinking from making drives the work to merge alleged binary oppositions and challenge systems of value.

http://www.looming.com.au

Observatory continues Monaghan’s semiotic investigation into the nature and communication of scientificity. Here, a series of sculptural installations comprising mixed media objects and digital images create a play between technical forms of scientific instruments and natural forms of corals, cellular organisms and bodily fluids. 

The work is derived from a narrative imagined by Monaghan: In a post- apocalyptic, post-global- warming-world, survivors make their instruments by hand in order to observe and measure their environment. Observatory is a collection of unusual installations that are somehow both hi tech and low tech; primitive and futuristic. 

Leveraging ideas from science, communication and semiotics, Rebecca Monaghan uses sculpture, digital production and found objects to look at how we interpret meaning from the signs and objects around us. Monaghan is based in Melbourne and is currently undertaking a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. She holds a Bachelor degree majoring in philosophy and psychology and postgraduate qualifications in web technologies. Her most recent solo and group exhibitions include Variations at C3 Contemporary Art Space, CAMPUS at George Paton Gallery, curated by Alison Lasek; and Causal Relations at Footscray Community Arts Centre.

http://www.rebeccamonaghan.com/index.html

Through a series of drawings, Carly Candiloro explores clichés and motifs present in film and literature. Influenced by the work of Charles Bukowski, she became interested in the ‘down and out’ perception of the artist that is often romanticised in popular culture. 

Carly Candiloro is a Melbourne based artist. She is currently completing a degree in Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University and in 2008 she received her Diploma in Visual Arts at Swinburne University of Technology. This is her first solo exhibition.

Travis Vella's new paintings reflect a practice focused on a process, The Rebel series stemming from the Albert Camus’ novel by the same title, develops a play between the conscious and subconscious. Text is an essential element to Vella’s deconstruction of the themes and is a central component of the works’ narrative. Camus’ novel forms the subtext for the composition of both form and color. Vella’s consistent technique and refined methods of mixing paints are disrupted by the use of hypercolour pigments. Altering the view of the same image as the natural light dissipates, creating jagged horizon planes moving between day and night and breaking up the picture plane. The unidentifiable setting between the external and internal world creates a psychological space, rebelling against the expected. 

The figure has remained a constant in Melbourne based artist Travis Vella’s work, but as paintings draw images from diverse sources, focus on paint qualities and relationships within imagery has become a central theme. Similarly, the parallels of the artist’s direct experience with making paints from pigments to working with the tension between the conscious and sub-conscious continue to also be an anchor throughout Vella’s practice. 

In 2004 Vella was awarded a scholarship to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York where he also participated in numerous group shows and joined the Brooklyn Art Collective. Since then Vella has established Twin Skulls studios in 2009 and had his work featured in various venues including the artist zine, Change, Brunswick's Grandview Hotel, Twin Skulls Studios’ gallery (2010) and Red Gallery (2013). Future exhibitions include The Rebel, Rubicon ARI (February 2014) and his first solo show at Editorial Gallery, New York in June 2014. 

Vella completed his BA at Southern Cross University, Northern NSW in 2005. 

Website: http://travisvella.com