Chloe Gray
Gallery 3
18 January - Sunday 4 February 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 18 January
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 4 February
Crises of Content is not a single body of work, it’s a constantly evolving dialogue of self-reflection, and this is its most current evolution. Once it was an alter ego named Collie-K, and then it was Chloe with her pet spider Jeffery. It’s always changing, always searching and always just a little strange. This is how Gray purges her anxiety, a coping mechanism to empty the artists' whirring thoughts and lock them down somewhere so she can move onto the bigger things. When things get out of control, she indulges in self-reflections of cathartic writing and making that, she has branded her Crises of Content.
Image: Chloe Gray, Untitled, inkjet on paper, 2014, 90 x 90 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Brenton McGeachie and Martin Paull
Gallery 1
18 October - Sunday 4 November 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 18 October
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 4 November
A joint exhibition by Martin Paull and Brenton McGeachie, both-long term Canberra based artists, exhibiting paintings, drawings and photographs. This exhibition explores interpretations of landscape and sense of place.
Image: Brenton McGeachie, Untitled, 2018, pigment ink on hehnemulhe paper, detail.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Lucille Carson and Ruth Hingston
Gallery 3
18 October - Sunday 4 November 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 18 October
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 4 November
This exhibition focuses on Ruth Hingston and Lucille Carson’s extensive and ongoing observations of human interaction and activity with and on the landscape. Featuring the local Canberra urban and suburban landscape, both artists observe the swiftness and increased impact of our human footprint.
Image: Lucille Carson, The Flying Fish, 2018. Mixed Media, (detail) 13cm x 6cms
Photo: Tim Brook.
Jeffree Skewes
Gallery 1
27 September - Sunday 14 October 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 27 September
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 14 October
Silk on the Road represents the culmination of combining specific artworks with the artist’s poetry presented as an exhibition of paintings, poetic works, installation and associated book launch.
It is a lucid rendering of an allegorical journey that takes place over an inexact time, across my imagined and fabled lands of the Silk Road.
Image: Silk on the Road - Artist's Book of poetry and artworks - cover piece (detail), rice paper, silk, acrylic paint on canvas.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Bruce Tunks
Gallery 1
6 September - Sunday 23 September 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 6 September
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 23 September
Holding the Line, a collection of paintings and sculptures, is an on-going exploration of line and energy in nature. It is a reaction to the ‘language’ of the landscape and examines the importance of line in structure formation and the relationship of these structures to the space in which they exist.
Image: Bruce Tunks, Aesthete, 2017, steel, 57 x 14cm.
Photo: Benita Tunks, courtesy of the artist.
Justine McLaren
Gallery 2
6 September - Sunday 23 September 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 6 September
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 23 September
Under Ice is a solo exhibition by sculptor craftswoman Justine McLaren. Her wired objects reflect the theme of the limits of existence and the wonder of survival in extreme circumstances.
Under Ice is a visual response to the artist’s research on the sea creatures that live under the Amery and Ross Sea Ice Shelves of Antarctica. Combining traditional weaving methods with contemporary materials such as discarded data cable and telephone wires, McLaren re-forms animals only recently discovered by humans.
Image: Justine McLaren, Andrillamps, 2018, wire, 65cm x 90cm x 35cm
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Madisyn Zabel
Gallery 3
6 September - Sunday 23 September 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 6 September
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 23 September
Reimagined Perspectives is a solo exhibition by Madisyn Zabel that explores the contrasts and tensions that exist between three-dimensional objects and their flat representations through glass and mixed media installations.
Within this exhibition, Zabel creates a dialogue between geometric forms made from glass and their projected shapes in space. Opposing positive and negative forces, this visual collision invites us to rethink the space, the volume and the relationship between virtual and physical shapes.
Images:Madisyn Zabel, Split Detail, 2018, glass paint metal,
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Phil Page
Gallery 1
16 August - Sunday 2 September 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 16 August
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 2 September
Urban Fragments will present paintings which interrogate aspects of Canberra’s urban palimpsest, where the layers of its history have only been partly erased. It will use layered imagery to explore some urban incidents of this relatively young city and the environmental interventions that have made it.
Image: Philip Page, Paris Aerial 2, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 92 x 122cm.
Photo: courtesy of Dorian Photographs.
Clare Martin and Mike O'Kane
Gallery 2
16 August - Sunday 2 September 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 16 August
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 2 September
“Undirected spontaneous play is a vital part of creativity. Our art often starts with a spontaneous undirected type of play, similar to a child’s exploration or make-believe.” The artworks in Just Playing aim to preserve this light, with a sometimes joking, sometimes role-playing, point of departure. Now, what happens when play becomes more dark and sinister?
Clare Martin is a sculptor based in the Canberra region. Mike O’Kane teaches art at Otago University NZ.
Image: Clare Martin, Dream Home, 2018, mixed media, detail.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
M16 Studio Artists
Gallery 1
26 July - Sunday 12 August 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 26 July
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 12 August
M16’s studio artists present their annual group exhibition. Representing a broad cross-section of Canberra’s artistic practitioners, the exhibition highlights the diversity of professional art practice at M16 through paintings, prints, drawings, jewellery and objects produced by both established and emerging artists.
Image: Liz Faul, Distant Sun, 2018, gouache, found image release print, recycled printed material, collage.
Studio Artists of Canberra Art Workshop
Gallery 2
26 July - Sunday 12 August 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 26 July
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 12 August
Canberra Art Workshop is a thriving studio centre for the arts in the M16 Artspace. We welcome all artists, from complete beginners to practicing professionals. Humans have a wide field of view of slightly more than 210 degrees. Members of CAW produce artworks in a surprisingly wide range of genres, mediums and techniques. This exhibition presents a range of work including life drawing, pastel, watercolour, portraiture, print making and others – all made in Canberra Art Workshop’s studio.
Image: Prue Power, Still Life with Cat, 2017, acrylic on canvas, detail.
Photo: courtesy of M16 Artspace.
Artists of Hands on Studio
Gallery 3
26 July - Sunday 12 August 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 26 July
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 12 August
This exhibition showcases works by Hands-On Studio members. The works explore story-telling and were all produced from Hands-On classes in 2017. Hands-On Studio is an arts organisation run by CatholicCare housed at M16 Artspace which seeks to provide people with disabilities access to an art education. One of the studio’s objectives is to provide these artists with as many opportunities as possible to exhibit in mainstream gallery spaces.
Image: Installation shot of Hands on Studio's 2017 exhibition in Gallery 3.
Photo: courtesy of M16 Artspace.
Brian Hincksman
Gallery 1b
5 July - Sunday 22 July 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 5 July
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 22 July
Hincksman's works in Nexus tend towards the abstract in order to suggest a connectivity between humans and all living things in the natural environment. The exhibition will have a dual focus; painting and poetry, with live readings on the opening night. The paintings enter a dialogue of philosophy, physics and psychology simply bu their construction. Technique is therefore as important as the end result, with Hincksman considering composition all manner of things, not just structural or visual; intuition, instinct, emotion and the subconscious mind play more of a role.
Image: Brian Hincksman, The Octopus, 2018, Acrylic on canvas, 90 x 60cm
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Allison Jonas Young
Gallery 2
5 July - Sunday 22 July 2018
‘Project Reflect’ is Allison Jonas Young’s most recent series of artworks. Within each circular panel we find two smaller circles, two parts within the whole. Each of the two smaller circles are mirrors to each other’s missing bits. These pairs are not incongruous, while they may appear quite different from one and other they are in fact a perfect match. Like any good complementary opposite they complete each other, they balance each other out and create harmony together.
Image: Allison Jonas Young, Luck And Openness, 2017, Acrylic on Timber, 30cmØ x 2.2cm, Photo: Allison Jonas Young
Phil Alldis
Gallery 3
5 July - Sunday 22 July 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 5 July
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 22 July
'I like working with found imagery and find something interesting about images removed from their context. The compositions are generated in Photoshop, where I have played around with imagery from different sources, ranging from the obscure to the personal, cropping, layering, flipping and distorting until something which is intriguing to me emerges. I have allowed for intuition to play a central role in the process and the accumulation of image-upon-image.' - Phil Alldis
Alldis focuses on the division of space within composition, and the subtle influences of modernism in his exhibition. He is particluarly attracted, in this exhibition, to the use of text as part of his dialogue with tone, pattern and shape. The artist explores with forms and spaces until a composition achieves 'rightness'.
Image: Phil Alldis, b53, 2017, charcoal and wax on canvas, 71 x 56 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Julie Spencer
Gallery 1
14 June - Sunday 1 July 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 14 June
Guest Speaker: Terence Maloon, Director, Drill Hall Gallery, ANU
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 1 July
In style of the Impressionists, Spencer’s exhibition hopes to capture the sense of atmosphere in the urban experience. The diffused and dappled light of rainy nights transforms the solid city scape in to atmospheric hustle and bustle. Her practice is to '..thinly apply and drip paint like falling rain, as if jewels or stained glass windows and thickly textured paint, scratched back, and overlaid until the canvas is glowing.' The lucid and gestural style of her work reflects perfectly her subject matter.
Listen to Julie Spencer talk about City Lights in an interview she did with Living Arts Canberra. Click Here
Image: Julie Spencer, Rendezvous 9pm, 2018, Oil on Canvas, 56 x 40cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Tim Brook
Gallery 2
14 June - Sunday 1 July 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 14 June
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 1 July
Australian Landscapes is an immersive installation of quiet, slow and contemplative digital video work. Every image is a celebration of the unexpected beauty of that Australian icon, the corrugated-iron fence. It is a close study of surface detail that is intended to evoke memories of the colours and textures of outback experiences. Many of the images involve paint that is dripping, fading or peeling, but the images remain photographic, not painterly. The patterns were formed by random processes until they were captured in the photographic frame—they were not carefully constructed like the paintings of Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists who have inspired this exhibition. After all, it is the delicacy of detail and the harshness of ground that is so characteristic of corrugated-iron.
Listen to Tim Brook talk about Australian Landscapes in an interview he did with Living Arts Canberra. Click Here
Image: Tim Brook, Boulder WA No. 6, 1995, digital photograph, 1920 x 1080 px.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Jenny Blake
Gallery 3
14 June - Sunday 1 July 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 14 June
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 1 July
Blake says her exhibition was inspired by an ABC documentary about excessive landfill. 'The program piqued my awareness of waste. After finding a builders rubbish skip full of pine off cuts, I was compelled to rescue the wood blocks from landfill. Wood is a precious resource and can stored carbon long after the trees has been harvest. My new mission now - to repurpose the off cuts, block by block. Using acrylics and pallet knives, I manipulated the paint, layering, scalping and sanding back to find natural ridges and knots. The wood surface allowed a tough and energetic approach, while exposing the gentle vulnerability in the fine lines nature had composed. The wood lines reveal and mimic mountain ranges and seascapes, while presenting a constant flow of energy.' The artist heroically brings new life to this tragic chapter. 'Block by block the wasted off cuts were rescued and nurtured to embody a new life, a new landscape brought into being as an ode to their previous life.'
Listen to Jenny Blake talk about Block by Block in an interview she did with Living Arts Canberra. Click Here
Image: Jenny Blake, Wave, 62 x 45cm, Acrylic on Wood Assemblage.
Photo: Oliver Armstrong
Chris Holly
Gallery 1
24 May - Sunday 10 June 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 24 May
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 10 June
Things are looking up. To explore the nature and character of a vapour is to be on cloud nine.
The highest level of the sky in numerous cultural traditions and mythology is the 9th level. The idiom “being on cloud nine” is an expression of happiness and delight. The cloud is a physical state of water; that being when the air reaches a condition where it cannot hold water as a gas, the water condenses into tiny drops and a cloud forms. Images of clouds are both a literal and populist interpretation of skyscapes.However, clouds provide a challenging opportunity to explore a subject that is both transient and ubiquitous in its character and nature. It is to attempt to document the face of transience. This body of work is a series of photographic sketches and portraits of clouds and their many moods. Shot over many seasons and across many locations around the world, on both film and digital media, this series is small collection of a larger body of work known as the Biome Project in which I seek to document all aspects of the earth’s biosphere.
Image: Chris Holly, Untitled, 2017, digital type C, 60 x 60 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Manuel Pfeiffer
Gallery 2
24 May - Sunday 10 June 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 24 May
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 10 June
Painted interpretations of pieces of music.
In his exhibition Odd - a Little Manuel Pfeiffer will interpret pieces of music, mostly jazz, by musicians such as saxophonist Yusef Lateef and pianist Keith Jarrett. For every piece of music, Pfeiffer will create two versions: the first interpretation of the music, and a reinterpretation of the first painting - or as a jazz player would say, a ‘second take’.
Image: Manuel Pfeiffer, one, 2017, acrylic and red dust on canvas, 30 cm x 40 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Rachael Bruhn
Gallery 3
24 May - Sunday 10 June 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 24 May
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 10 June
Bruhn’s photographic exhibition documents the portraits of people in the artists life. The show was first exhibited in 1990, and its reprisal will reflect time passing through the ageing of each sitter. The artist will focus on the curation of the room, with the portraits forming a ‘landscape’ of people and their stories.
Image: Racheal Bruhn, Gerard Foley (detail), 2017, inkjet on rag, 30 x 90 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Anthony Fleming
Gallery 1
3 May - Sunday 20 May 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 3 May
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 20 May
“With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is generated by the sea.”
- Sylvia Earle, Marine Biologist
Water covers 75% of the Earth’s surface in the form of ice, rivers, lakes and seas. This body of work explores colour, luminosity and scale through the medium of photography. These photographs use framing and focus to accentuate the abstract beauty of the waters of Antarctica, the NSW Sapphire Coast and the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park.
Antarctica has sublime landscapes and icebergs. The lighting of the Sapphire Coastline has a unique quality giving rise to dramatic sunrises and sunsets that illuminate the abundant waterways including lakes, rivers and creeks. Kalamurina borders the Simpson Desert Regional Reserve and Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park. The desert landscape is vast and ephemeral.
Image: Anthony Fleming, Barragga Bay, 2017, inkjet print 42 x 59 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Experimental Painting Workgroup,
Ross Andrews, Robyn Banks, Robyn Booth, Loli Butler, Jane Dunn, Catherine Ellerton, Michele England, Joanne Mahler Fenderson, Val Gee, Ann Gordon-Smith, Margaret Harrison-Smith, Velda Hunter, Diana Jamieson, Diana McPhetres, Betty Pearson, Annette Rennie, Lori Smith, Julie Spencer, Judy Stevenson, Irena Zarobski; curated by Michele England
Gallery 3
3 May - Sunday 20 May 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 3 May
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 20 May
A group show by some of Canberra Art Workshop’s studio artists that encompasses a variety of methods, mediums and intentions. The only common denominator is the letter ‘X’ which must be the visual or conceptual crux of each piece. The Canberra Art Workshop is an arts organisation at M16 Artspace.
Image: Installation view looking east
Photo: courtesy of M16 Artspace.
Casey Crockford, Chloe Gray, Alex Hobba, Kon Kudo, Josh Owen, Luis Power, Rebecca Worth
Gallery 1b + 2
12 April - Sunday 29 April 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 12 April
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 29 April
In a world of the ‘Insta’, a culture of personalised media to promote activity and event; ‘I was there, that happened, this exists’, Photography has come to exists as fact and evidence of our lives; but what happens when we re-claim photographic reality to depict the unreal? The eclectic combination of photomedia, installation and sculpture, brought together in Unreal, is an investigation of this very question. When the record of light and reality is combined with the creative manipulations of the artist, how much of the photographic reality remains? How is our traditional definition of photography re-imagined to encompass contemporary photography?
Image: Rebecca Worth, Auroral 3, 2017, digital print from medium format negative, 90 x 80cm
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Kate Bender & Janet Angus
Gallery 1a
12 April - Sunday 29 April 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 12 April
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 29 April
Perceptions is a joint exhibition with Janet Angus and Kate Bender, artists who explore the depiction of paradoxical spaces and ambiguous forms and the tensions that are created by multiple perspectives. Traditionally, Angus seeks to reflect an inner state of mind, with the intention of eliciting an emotional response via the materials of oil on board. Bender’s bold and engaging abstract oil on canvas constructions embody the representation of light, and the perception of, and interplay between space and form. Through a similar material the artists achieve entirely different things. For this exhibition Angus and Bender will challenge their usual portrayals of abstract spaces and forms by borrowing a signature motif from the other and incorporating it into their own work. Angus will include softer curvilinear forms and Bender will integrate rectilinear and geometric lines.
Image: Kate Bender, No Words This Time, 2017, oil on canvas, 76 x 84 cm
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Ellen Sleeman-Taylor
Gallery 3
12 April - Sunday 29 April 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 12 April
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 29 April
Bird Years is a solo exhibition that will showcase an enormous, scrolling work that from conception to completion over the one year it has taken the artist to complete (2017-2018). The work forms a portrait of the artists life, detailing a span of events and documenting the people she loves, the places she goes, what she thinks about and what she thinks is funny or interesting. There is a resemblance to a timeline in the format of the piece; the long, continuous roll of paper is dotted with moments from the year. These moments sit in a bed of intricate patterns that morph into one another. Within the endless rolling on of the patterning are bubbles, like tiny windows. Through the windows are scenes of contemporary life. Her subject matter is inspired by Ukiyo-e and woodblock prints and French Impressionism as well as digital collage.
Image: Ellen Sleeman-Taylor, Cheap Vacation, 2016, pencil and pen on paper, 58 x 84 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Phillip Frankcombe
Gallery 1
22 March - Sunday 8 April 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 22 March
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 8 April
This exhibition combines Mother Nature with traditional spirituality. Taking motives and symbols from different cultures and religious, Frankcombe visually represents a creative power that relates to the inner being. This symbolism derives from English, Islamic, Buddhist, Christian and Hindu religion; the common factor being a fascination with the Divine.
Image: Philip Frankcombe, Up We Go, 2017, acrylic and oil on MDF, 84 x 36 cm.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Christine Jarrett, Trevor Lewis, Leanne Jeffcoat, Jacqueline Wilkinson, Jeanette Zvargulis.
Gallery 2
22 March - Sunday 8 April 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 22 March
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 8 April
ArtFlux represents the journeys of friendships and expressions of collaborative art processes captured in a state of flux.
Each artist’s work connects in some way with an other even though diverse media and subject matter are used. This connection could be as a result of the sound of another’s voice in the studio or the brushing of shoulders along journeys of learning and discoveries in making art.
The art results in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, collage, printmaking, mixed media, and representations of diversity of meanings of everyday objects.
ArtFlux will be the Artpath workshop's second exhibition at M16.
Picture: Lee-Anne Jeffcoat, 2017, Good times, etching (detail).
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Barbara Hiscock Laszuk
Gallery 3
22 March - Sunday 8 April 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 22 March
Exhibitions continues until 5pm Sunday 8 April
This exhibition explores the essence of our red earth perceived beyond the physical eye, and produced in a way that incorporates the aesthetic of conceptual realism.
Image: Barbara Hiscock Laszuk, 2017, Red Earth, oil and acrylic on canvas, 100x75 cm
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Carmel McCrow
Gallery 1a
1 March - Sunday 18 March 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 1 March
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 18 March
“…and always there’s a keyhole, which we prisoners call a sky”
Oscar Wilde
Sky…the result of an ancient explosion still in progress. The universe, still expanding, constantly changing, a living environment where sparks continue to fly. Above is the immeasurable scale and complexity of the universe, from which our minds, having immense capacity for thought and imagination, offers a vast array of manifestations. The sense of scale is majestic, inviting contemplation of the infinite, but with air and light movement constantly affecting change in colour, intensity and patterning, can also offer intimate glimpses of what may lie beyond our mundane world, to the sublime.
Image: Carmel McCrow, The sublime, 2017, oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 90 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Keith Bailey, Lex Beardsell, Ian Robertson, Alan Howard, Cherylynne Holmes, Jane Styles, curated by Georgina Griffiths.
Gallery 1b
1 March - Sunday 18 March 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 1 March
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 18 March
A group of Canberra based artists who met during their tenure as National Gallery of Australia volunteer guides in 2012. The group celebrate diversity, collaboration and evolving art practice in thier mixed media show.
Image: Alan Howard, Blue vase, 2018, White stone clay, Chun glaze, 140mm x 80mm
Alan Howard, White stoneware pair of cups, 2018, Stoneware, shino glaze, 85mm x 75mm,
Photo: M16 Artspace.
Keith Bailey
Gallery 2
1 March - Sunday 18 March 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 1 March 6pm
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 18 March
Loss is an oil on canvas exploration of loss of habitats, species of plants and animals, and landscapes globally and regionally, using abstract, semi-abstract and symbolist painting styles.
The works express the Bailey's responses to traveling around Australia and internationally, witnessing destruction of habitat, landscape and threatened species. Additionally, a focus on research and literature has highlighted the artist's call to action.
Loss investigates vast land clearing, and focuses on the dynamic visuals of The Great Barrier Reef, the Borneo jungles and the orangutan populations that inhabit, and Rhinoceri in Africa.
Image: Keith Bailey, Great Barrier Grief (detail), 2017, oil on canvas, 121 x 76 cm.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Alex Hobba, Patrick Larmour, Rosalind Lemoh, Darren Nedza, Timothy Phillips, Leila el Rayes, Camille Thomas
Gallery 1
8 February - Sunday 25 February 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 8 February
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 25 February
This group show of new media, sculpture, drawing and painting brings together artists from the ACT and interstate and explores ways of life and living using objects of material culture. This means still life, fragmentary images, text, the stuff of future archaeology, the stuff of contemporary anthropology. The artists involved use various approaches from detached poetic and humorous collection and cataloguing to more explicitly personal and immediate expressions.
Ways of life and living is a huge and nebulous subject, rearing its head in academic and pop culture just about everywhere from Sex and the City to Indiana Jones and bell hooks to Tolstoy. It describes everything in life that humans do. This exhibition is particularly focused around our relationship to time and the value that objects, collected or created, have for our bodies and identities inside of a connection they have with larger social structures.
The works included explore tensions between permanence and ephemerality. Many have a starting point in the banal and familiar include shoes, knives, eating utensils, quick snap pics, protective equipment and tools. Objects that reflect the fulfilment of simple desire and necessity and are the remnants left behind of a quick decision to hold on to things symbolic of our memories or to let go.
Image: Patrick Larmour, This will keep you safe, 2017, oil on linen, 80 x 108 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Jenny Lyons
Gallery 2
8 February - Sunday 25 February 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 8 February
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 25 February
Jenny Lyons has crafted Osculate from close up footage taken on the Queensland coast; focusing on the spiraling creations and disruption of bubbles in swash. It is thought that a part of the human brain is dedicated to recognising spiral patterns. This work artistically highlights these attractive and disorientating movements, encouraging the audience to decipher the work through an awareness of their own physical responses. As one curving wave collides with another, graceful osculations are exposed in the foam and bubbles of the wash.
Jenny Lyons work contributes to wider conversations concerning the brain and body. Adding to those exploring the shared ideas and techniques between Australian Indigenous and Western trained artists.
Image: Jenny Lyons, 2018, Osculate 2, Image still from video
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Lauren Butler
Gallery 3
8 February - Sunday 25 February 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 8 February
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 25 February
In this collection the artist experiments with unlikely textural and media combinations to create luscious, garish and bizarre artworks that explore the notion of being present with what is. Butler employs a spontaneous and subconscious creation style such that the elements in each work appear to materialise randomly from the monochromatic canvas background. This is achieved by working intuitively, with little deliberation. As a result, the elements feel impotent and unstable. Some are held down with thread. For now they are suspended here, but there is a sense that at any second they might move, morph or subside; the same way 'now' is constantly morphing into 'then'. The strange but visually delicious works draw the viewer into the 'now' as unexpected textures, shapes, shimmers and threads are examined in detail and touched with the eyes. They are made to be viewed and absorbed in the present. They simply 'are'.
Image: Lauren Butler, Untitled #3, 2017, mixed media, 45.5 x 61.5 x 3.4cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Rachel Bruhn
Gallery 1
18 January - Sunday 4 February 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 18 January
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 4 February
Gesture light is a collection of 1000 small watercolour paintings plus animation. The project is based on the changing colour and light that endure over a repetitive sequence. The work presents as an overall pattern and when each piece is seen individually the intimate marks and gestures are seen. The individual circles form a rhythmic articulation of time passing.
The artist has been inspired by formal and minimalist approaches to the production of art making, and enjoys working with ideas of small precious shapes usually overlooked.
Image: Rachel Bruhn, #A001, 2016, watercolour on rag, 19 x 14.5 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.
Corralee Rooney
Gallery 2
18 January - Sunday 4 February 2018
Opening 6pm Thursday 18 January
Exhibition continues until 5pm Sunday 4 February
‘Imagine if you could present your beliefs in a picture, expressed in colour?’ queries the artist. This exhibition is a series of abstract works that seeks to make us question life in a philosophical and abstract sense.
Image: Corralee Rooney, Petri Dish of Colour Theory, 2017, watercolour and ink, 129 x 92 cm.
Photo: courtesy of the artist.