12 ARGYLE PLACE
MILLERS POINT NSW 2000
AUSTRALIA

+61 2 9247 0010
info(at)galleryeight.com.au

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galleryeight is an artist run space situated in Millers Point, Sydney. We are open Wednesdays to Sundays 12-6pm or by luck/appointment.

STILLNESS


STILLNESS

HEIDI ROMANO, ANNALEE FORTUNADO AND SHANA ROSSITER

15th MAY - 1st JUNE 2013



OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTISTS

FRIDAY 17TH MAY 6-8PM


Galleryeight presents Stillness, a group show featuring the work of three artists as part of the HeadOn festival.


Heidi Romano


I started “Frozen Water” two years ago – an idea inspired by the fast dwindling icebergs. I have no means to travel to the Arctic, so I made my own ice landscapes. The more I worked on the project, the more it came down to my fascination with a single atom of water. An ice sheet, natural light, and a macro lens transformed my water into an abstract painting, full of form, texture and hues of colour. Something to explore, discover and dive into. The tiniest shift of focus transforms these images completely. It is captivating to see an image transform from something mundane into an abstract, almost unrecognisable shape. It is this kind of abstraction that enables us to feel we have discovered, and are looking at the essence of “Frozen Water.”

Annalee Fortunado


Women with disability are often invisible. Although there are national policies, international conventions and laws, women with disability are among the more vulnerable and marginalised of society. Over eight months photographer Annalee Fortunado produced Invisible Visible, a book about women with disability who share their story the way they would like it to be told through a series of portraits and narrative. Six of the women share their story for the exhibition, Stillness at Gallery Eight. The exhibition is aptly titled Stillness, the state or an instance of being quiet or calm. It is in this space, these women invite the viewer to see beyond disability, challenge their own attitudinal encounters and see the multi-layers of their story. 

Shana Rossiter


Shana Rossiter’s work originates from her experimental approach to life. She uses photography as a medium to capture the unnoticed and unseen. Milk and Flowers stems from her fascination with light and shadow. Shadows have the ability to create shapes that abstract the viewers gaze and it is these shapes she chose to focus on. Her work tends to focus on the human form and she incorporates nature with the naked body to create a peaceful, calm and still image.

Head On

 

 

EQUILIBRIUM


EQUILIBRIUM


LOUISE ZHANG, CATHRYN DWYER, CLAUDIA BAGNALL, KAREN SPEROTTO

24th APRIL - 13th MAY 2013




OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTISTS

FRIDAY 26TH APRIL 6-8PM


Galleryeight presents Equilibrium, a group show featuring five young Sydney artists taking inspiration from the inherent dichotomies in life. Working across sculpture, painting, drawing and textiles, the artists explore the relationship between knowledge and ignorance, meaning and ambiguity, order and disorder, balance and imbalance.

 

FUTURESPECTIVE


FUTURESPECTIVE

 

 

CLAUDIA HOWARD, CAM SCOTT, JANE HARRIS AND MIREN ZARATE

3 - 21ST APRIL 2013



OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTISTS

FRIDAY 5TH APRIL 6-8PM


Futurespective is the work of four emerging Sydney artists, showing where they’ve been and giving a glimpse of where they’re going. From rigorous investigation and meticulous constructions to improvisational wanderings, each artist uniquely approaches the symbiotic relationship that personal histories and cultural memory have with future actions, making manifest a life that must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards.

 

 

 

 

 

About Face Alex Water


ABOUT FACE


ALEX BIERENS DE HAAN, ELIZA KINCHINGTON, SAMANTHA WOODHILL


13 – 31ST MARCH 2013


OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTISTS

FRIDAY 15TH MARCH 6-8PM


Portraits have the ability to capture a particular moment in time and in the post-Greenbergian art world, portraiture has taken on a new complexity and intensity. As the works in About Face demonstrate, the medium has assumed a role equal to that of the image itself as a tool of interpretation and expression, consciously transformed and moulded by the artist. Photographic artist Alex Bierens de Haan, digital media artist Eliza Kinchington and painter Samantha Woodhill, each manipulate their respective mediums in differing, yet equally intense manners in order to express to the viewer the internal state of the sitter, far beyond the capability of classical portraiture.

 

 

 


TO THE OUTSIDE IN

CATHY TOTTEN, DARREN KONG, OLIVER MAI AND LUCY ALCORN

20 FEBRUARY - 10 MARCH 2013

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

FRIDAY 22 FEBRUARY 6-8PM


This exhibition explores the dichotomy of perception and introspection through the photographic medium. Using their own unique modes of production, these artists look into themes such as the human body, identity, perception and reality. ‘To the outside in’ refers to how we make sense of reality, either through corporeal engagement or quiet contemplation.

 

 

MAKE A GRASP AND DENT IT

Elly Carroll

8  - 17 FEBRUARY 2013

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

FRIDAY 8 FEBRUARY 6-8PM

 

Elly will showcase a variety of traditional oil painting genres from the figurative and portraiture to the still life. The exhibition depicts the artists interest in a varietal depiction of concepts, artistic practice and the use of atelier oil painting technique. The works are predominantly derived from memories or moments drawn from still life and life drawing. The paintings describe a memory or observation. Elements of abstraction and expressionism are present but they are predominantly governed by the developed notions of realism which is to maintain an accessibility and empathy for the viewer; a homage to the moment depicted and the derived relationship of the human condition expressed through art.

 

 

TRIPTYCH

Emanuela Cupac, Phu Nguyen & Sarah Randall

30 JANUARY - 7 FEBRUARY 2013

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTISTS

FRIDAY 1 FEBRUARY 6-8PM

 

The medieval triptych often reflected notions of heaven, earth and hell. Three artist draw upon this frame and natural divisions to explore the notion of sexuality, life and death. Sarah’s work represents the left panel of “heaven”. She uses abstraction and colour to reflect the intangible and transcendent.Emanuela’s work represents the middle panel “earth” by exploring human sexuality and reproduction by depicting earthly delights such as fruit. Phu’s work represents last panel “Hell” through concepts of mortality, beauty and the afterlife by commenting on notions of death and decay

 

 

THINK TWICE

Mason Kimber, Ryan Hoffmann & Conor O'Shea

14 NOVEMBER - 25 NOVEMBER 2012

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER 6-8PM


Think Twice highlights a common thread found between three painting students from the National Art School in Sydney, in which mediated and fragmented imagery have been brought to the forefront. Using themes such as filmic and architectural space, symbols, memory and pattern, these young artists share an attitude towards representational painting that centers on a refusal to depict. In all of the works, a focus is placed on giving off just the right amount of figurative information while leaving the image in a state of ambiguity and suggestiveness. This results in a form of realism that is always self-conscious of its status as a painting. Freed from any formalist constraint conducive to the medium’s past, they adopt an overtly painterly approach that sits on the borderline between abstraction and images.

 

 

SOLID VOIDS

Bess Kenway

28 OCTOBER - 12 NOVEMBER 2012

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

SATURDAY 3 NOVEMBER 6-8PM


Bess Kenway is an installation artist whose work gives physical expression to the dissociative mental processes we sometimes engage with in order to spiritually survive the hyper-realities of modern existence. She uses organic and domestic materials to comment on the fictionalisation of the boundaries between public and private space, on impermanence, on societal decay and disease.

She believes art contributes to collective consciousness in a world where imagination is to a large extent owned by the corporation and the repressive logic of capitalism. Her work is informed by economic theory, linguistics, anthropology and evolutionary psychology. Bess recently completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School.

 


Sue Millson & Libby Van Schaick


2 - 21 OCTOBER 2012

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

FRIDAY 5 OCTOBER 6-8PM


Libby Van Schaick's work continues to focus on the interior world of the still life and the exterior world of the semi trailer. Still life has a lot to do with the domestic but for Van Schaick, while she delights in the beauty of objects and flowers there is always a consideration of what lies beyond the domestic realm and its cloistered environment – that is, what lies on the other side of a suburban paling fence. The fence is a line that marks the possibility of beyond and the semi trailers are the metaphor for that beyond. The semi trailer embodies aspects of the outside world as she has experienced it – large and intimidating but also challenging and appealing,  "I enjoy their geometric formality. In Australia their presence on our roads is constant and therefore their metaphorical capability has been impossible for me to ignore."

 

Sue Millson's paintings spotlight the emblematic Manly ferries, capturing these vessels en route. Their distinctive forms of double-ended construction efficiently skim the harbour, passing vegetated inner headlands and densely populated harbour suburbs while avoiding congested road networks. Fortunate passengers experience travel on these enduring symbols of Sydney’s history as part of everyday life. "While I mightn’t board a ferry as often as I’d like, they continue to be part of the fabric of my existence as I see them on an almost daily basis. The scale within this body of work continues the idea of representing a massive theme in a diminutive size, while marking a shift in subject."

 

 

 

 

COVERT

Carolyn McKay

12 - 30 SEPTEMBER, 2012

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

FRIDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 6-8PM

 

Covert presents a suite of four HD videos created by McKay while travelling around Japan last year. Filmed covertly from behind glass, windows of trains and hotels afforded her the opportunity to be a watchful eye observing the unsuspecting, revealing unconnected episodes of strangers’ lives. What she found particularly appealing about this form of surreptitious spectatorship was that the images revealed people unposed, introspective and natural. However, she sensed that she was secretly thieving a portion of someone’s daily life for her own artistic purposes. The videos appropriate and fix private moments that would normally have remained ephemeral, compelling these strangers, through DVD looping, to repeat their experiences indefinitely. On the other hand, these stolen episodes have gained a poetic resonance that may have otherwise passed unnoticed.

 

 

ANGLE OF INCIDENCE

Lisa Mastoras, Ioulia Terizis, Grant Stewart, Valentina Schulte

15 AUGUST  - 3 SEPTEMBER, 2012

OPENING PREVIEW WITH THE ARTISTS

FRIDAY 17 AUGUST 6-8PM

 

Four artists who approach the ideas of order, chaos, space and memory from a range of different angles join to show their work at galleryeight this month. The artists are concerned with the space between perception and depiction; their works refer to subjective as well as scientific and technical means of capturing, conveying and interpreting perceived experience, and to what is evoked as a result.

 

In Valentina’s Schulte's video work, the horizon line is constant while the glimpsed imagery of the passing landscape passes in a dislocating and disorienting blur. Music gradually builds an impression of coherence and the rhythm of the abstracted journey, interspersed with fleeting glimpses of almost recognisable forms, induces a trancelike state of formless anticipation. Stewart's Drawing Robot is a custom designed and built "drawing machine" which produces delicate, undulating forms over hours, days and weeks with mathematical and mechanical precision, modulated by the eccentricities of the machine. The work is concerned with the translation in data visualisation - as with seismographs, heart monitors and topographic mapping - from theoretical perfection to the result which integrates unpredictable variations occurring during the process.

 

Ioulia Terizis considers the tension between photography, drawing and sculpture, and addresses herself to the collision/connection between these disciplines. Untitled (light shadow) engages the study of light drawing, sculptural intervention and the malleability of perception. In Lisa Mastoras' series of photographic image transfers, silent echoes, the artist extends on her previous work which is concerned with themes of remnant and trace. By mediating the initial recording by  photographic technology through the transfer process, she addresses the ephemeral essence of the past contained within a documented space and creates a new space for inference and nuance in which the viewer's own impressions and memories are as significant as those conveyed by the works themselves.

 

 

 

BETWEEN US

Claire Flannery

25 JULY  - 12 AUGUST, 2012

OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

6PM FRIDAY 27 JULY

 

galleryeight is proud to present Between Us, a photographic installation by Claire Flannery.

 

Investigating contemporary female sexuality through the nude and fragmented portrait. This body of work is a corporeal study of our collaged lives. Fuelled by an intimate gaze, snapshots of female Sydney artists are captured through foundations, exploring the nature of the contemporary woman. With a nod to the Old Masters these disembodied portraits of hair and hands explore the relationship between art and female beauty.

 

The installation investigates how society materialises beauty and fashion, as well as notions of self-defense and manipulations of personal environment. The photographs are extended into figurative oil paintings and plaster sculptures of hands bound with human hair and copper wire. Together forming a haphazard instillation of various media that contrasts the beautified and the natural, inviting the viewer into a fragmented reality of layered existence.

 

Claire Flannery has graduated from The National Art School and The College of Fine Arts, UNSW. Her work is semi-autobiographical and informed by photographic practice investigating candid relationships and her immediate surroundings.

 

 

A-MOR-PHOUS

Ashvini Ramanan

4 JULY  - 22 JULY, 2012

OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

6PM FRIDAY 6 JULY

 

galleryeight is proud to present a-mor-phous by Ashvini Ramanan.

 

Ashvini Ray’s work merges soft, rounded contours with taut, tightly stressed surfaces to produce a materiality which reflects the gradual self-manifestation of natural forms. Through a process of stretching and straining man-made materials coupled with the use of repetition to infiltrate entire spaces, the work gives a sense of organically coming into existence. Pressure and force converge with a defiance of gravity resulting in a body of work which appears infinitely extendable.

 

This flirtation with infinite self-manifestation not only recalls the process by which a cell divides and seeks to re-create itself but comfortably fits within the conceptual parameters of synaptic function in the brain, the pathways created unconsciously by the individual in order to assemble time and place. Ray deliberately focuses on aesthetics, leaving the works conceptually open. It is this conceptual openness which forces the viewer to negotiate their own pathways of association and traverse their own endlessly mutable synaptic function in order to create an individual reading.

 

 

 

topographic III


@ g8 Pop-Up Satellite Space

Shop 2.06, 140 George St, The Rocks

Lucy Rimmer and Ryan Hoffman

19 - 25 JUNE, 2012
OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW WITH THE ARTISTS
THURSDAY 21 JUNE, 6-8PM

A series of site-responsive exhibitions at g8 on george, galleryeight’s pop-up satellite space. Exploring various layers of history, place, uses and misuses of The Rocks area.

 

Rimmer’s magnified dust particles explore the physical traces left by occupants of buildings in The Rocks and their associated histories, both real and imagined. These images are projected amongst Hoffmann’s painted pillars that seemingly bear the scars of maritime weathering.

 

 

 

topographic II


@ g8 Pop-Up Satellite Space

Shop 2.06, 140 George St, The Rocks

SATURDAY 16 JUNE, 6-8PM

topographic: a series of site-responsive exhibitions at g8 on george, galleryeight’s pop-up satellite space. Exploring various layers of history, place, uses and misuses of The Rocks area, through sculpture, installation and performance.

 

Please join us for a one off multidisciplinary performance of 3 artists; dancer Ryuichi Fujimura, multidisciplinary artist Vanessa White with sound by Bird.In.Hand.Lane. The performance starts at 7pm sharp.

 

This performance titled Hintergarten involves a combination of painting, dance, animation, video and sound that explores the experience of body memory and time through a large wall projected video/animation that expands and evolves into live painting and dance.

 

 

 

ORCHIDACEAE ONCIDIUM

Sandy Ho

15 JUNE  - 1 JULY, 2012

OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

6PM FRIDAY 15 JUNE

 

galleryeight is proud to present a new series, Orchidaceae Oncidium by Melbourne artist Sandy Ho.

 

The slivers of gold

Hanging in the purple haze

Explode into bloom.

 

This drawing and paper series is an appropriation of the Oncidium orchid species. It explores colour through light and paper to create an otherworldly experience. Understanding the study of its characteristic purple and yellow hues, this body of work deconstructs the orchid and reformats the aesthetic blueprint of the flower to balance with its metaphoric presence, that of royalty, romance and fantasy.

Sandy Ho is an Honors graduate from the College of Fine Arts, Paddington. Now an emerging drawing, painting and installation artist, her studio work is based in Melbourne. Ho’s practice explores the intensity of the human touch and mind. She characteristically shifts the ratio of colour, light and scale in order to create an immersive environment that heightens emotional and sensual awareness. Her work has also led to many opportunities in the fields of arts administration and management, including comprehensive work in ARIs such as Galleryeight.

 

 

topographic I


@ g8 Pop-Up Satellite Space

Shop 2.06, 140 George St, The Rocks
Open 7 days, 12 – 6pm and til late during VIVID

Mark Booth, Linden Braye, Matt Busteed, Thomas C. Chung, Sophia Egarchos, Kath Fries, Angela Griffiths, Michelle Heldon and Sarah Nolan

31 MAY  - 12 JUNE, 2012

topographic: a series of site-responsive exhibitions at g8 on george, galleryeight’s pop-up satellite space. Exploring various layers of history, place, uses and misuses of The Rocks area; through sculpture, installation and performance.

A sense of history and memory permeates this area beneath the constant renovations and developments on its surface. Several artists in topographic 1 playfully touch on issues relating to architecture – particularly renovation, demolition and abandonment. Others disregard the concrete and take flights of imagination fusing a personal experience of place with fact and fiction.

Curated by Kath Fries and Peter Cramer

 

 

 

 

100 SECONDS

Daniel Sponiar

25 MAY  - 14 JUNE, 2012

Opening Night preview with the artist

6PM FRIDAY 25 MAY

 

galleryeight is proud to present 100 Seconds by Daniel Sponiar, part of the HeadOn festival.

 

For many people, the coast is the ideal place to be. It’s the escape; it’s the honeymoon; it’s the annual holiday with the kids; and it’s the ultimate retirement destination. Nothing speaks more about tranquillity and freedom as that boundary between land and sea.

 

Daniel captures the essence of detachment from space and time, that would allow one to be energized in spirit, and to be free from the constraints that daily life imposes. The images reflect possibility and a way forward, to see a future that’s not built on prejudices or cultural barriers. The sea is the origin of life on Earth, and we are still drawn to it. It has cultivated civilizations and the coast has provided the pathway for the evolution of human settlement around the globe.

 

This body of work highlights the essential beauty of a coastal environment. It also points to a natural life force that is bigger than humanity, but can accept and include our place in the universe.

 

 

 

ENUMERATION

Mary Costello, Ron Pratt, Michelle Tinta

4 MAY  - 24 MAY, 2012

Opening Night preview with the artists

6PM FRIDAY 4 MAY

 

Enumeration features the recent works of Ron Pratt, Michelle Tinta and Mary Costello.

 

An exhibition that celebrates disparate techniques: alternative, toy and digital. And chronicles a diverse range of approaches to image making and photographic practice.

 

 

 

CON·TRA·VEN·TION

7 Recent Sydney Graduates

Elle Comino, Tim Duong, Phillipa Griffin, Elizabeth King, Susanna Obmann, Meeghan O'Shea, Christine Vox


13 APRIL  - 3 MAY, 2012

Opening Night preview with the artists

6PM FRIDAY 13 APRIL

 

con·tra·ven·tion;  a group action in opposition;

action counter to something;

violation or opposition;

coming into conflict with;

group action in opposition. breach, violation, infringement, transgression, infraction, interference, contradiction, refutation, disputation, counteraction

 

A showcase of bold work that challenges and contravenes art school moulds, motives and practice.

 

 

INVISIBLE CITIES

PATRICK FAULKNER


24 MARCH  - 12 APRIL, 2012

Opening Night preview with the artist

6PM FRIDAY 23 MARCH

 

Artist Talk

3PM SATURDAY 7 APRIL

 

This new series of drawings was inspired by the novel "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino (1972). In it Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan of all the great cities he has seen. It transpires that all of these fabulous cities he talks of are really his hometown Venice. Patrick wanted to treat Sydney as if it were a strange, unknown place, combining buildings and places long gone, with those that still exist, located in an imaginary time frame. Like Venice, Sydney is a maritime city, with its maze of old docks, gun emplacements, fortresses, and port buildings. These works also look at Sydney as a penal colony, business centre, factory, harbour and fortress.

 

Patrick’s drawing technique can be termed "bricolage", assembling artefacts from bits and pieces of other things, from unexpected eras and sources, which reflects his background in collage. Visually, Patrick has looked to other Italians as a reference: Piranesi, for his imaginative reconstructions of Ancient Rome and his gothic Prison series; and Canaletto and Guardi for their fantasies of Venetian motifs. For Australian sources, Patrick also references the drawings and prints of Sydney by Lloyd Rees, Lionel Lindsay and Sydney Ure Smith. Patrick’s artworks could also be seen as set designs for a film of an imaginary Sydney that has never been made.

 

 

SCORCH

KATH FRIES


3 MARCH  - 22 MARCH, 2012

Scorch is a exhibition of sculptural installations reflecting on our human efforts to render permanent that which is impermament.
Kath Fries explores materiality, spatiality and archetypical narratives in these works by marking a personal, immediate engagement with time, place and physicality.

Opening night - Friday 2 March 6pm

Drinks with the artist sponsored by the Lord Nelson Hotel

Art Month Sydney Event - Sunday 11 March 3pm

Kath Fries in conversation with Megan Robson from the Museum of Contemporary Art and Peter Cramer from galleryeight
Launch of Kath Fries' new art portfolio website www.kathfries.com
Followed by complimentary craft beer tasting courtesy of the Lord Nelson Hotel
RSVP This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

 

TARDY

KATE VASSALLO


10 FEBRUARY -  1 MARCH, 2012

galleryeight is proud to present new works by Kate Vassallo.

Sir Isaac Newton radically changed the way we think about the physics of light. In his 1704 publication Opticks, Newton documented experiments suggesting white light was made up of straight lines in a spectrum of seven colours.

Kate Vassallo’s Tardy explores the basics of Newton’s theories on light and colour. While not necessary traceable in the final works, the theories offer her a place to explore. Using the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple of the scientist’s system as her colour palette, the exhibition plays with how scientific theories can generate visuals.

This exhibition marks a step in a new direction for Kate Vassallo, an emerging artist well known for her performance and installation work. With Tardy, she aims to show a new side of her evolving practice.  Her work has been presented in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Perth.
 

 

IDENTIFICATION

CLARE COLLINS


20 JANUARY  - 9  FEBRUARY, 2012

galleryeight is proud to present new works by Melbourne based artist Clare Collins.

Clare examines the feminine and the vulnerability of the body through fragmented images and ornamentation applied directly onto the human form.

Ornamentation places an emphasis on surface and materiality providing a counterpoint between interior and exterior, reality and fantasy, authenticity and artifice, as well as a filter, breaking the spell between us and the subject whilst carrying the notion of an interior domesticity and through this feminine sexuality.
 

 

DEMENTIA

TILLY LEAHY


NOVEMBER 18 - DECEMBER 8

galleryeight is proud to present Dementia, a new photographic series by Tilly Leahy.

Dementia is a series of A0 - sized photographs of the artist's grandmother. Tilly uses these confronting images to explore the tragic fate of dementia victims as the disease consumes the mind. Despite the subject matter, the portraits have unsettling beauty about them.

"I want to explore the human body, and how we age and react to incurable illnesses," says Tilly. "Dementia sufferers don't recognise their loved ones, leaving families to mourn for relatives before they've passed away".
 

 

NEW WORKS.

BECKY GIBSON


DECEMBER 12 -  22

galleryeight is proud to present new works by Becky Gibson, winner of the 2011 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship.

With her latest work, Becky is preoccupied with erasure and transition in contemporary urban landscapes. "I'm interested in areas in cities that are void of development and demolition sites that are in a stage of limbo," says Becky. "This interests me because of their vastness within a built up environment and the stark comparison between what they once were, what they are now and what they will eventually be".

Describing these blanks with broad, gestural brushstrokes and saturated colour, Becky finds herself increasingly attracted to these gouged-out spaces and the possibilities they represent. galleryeight is thrilled to be winding up 2011 with a show by this promising young artist.
 

 

AFFINITY

AMANDA HUMPHRIES, AMY GARDNER, BECKY GIBSON, CELINE ROBERTS, DANIELLE TAM, ISABELLA ANDRONOS, JESSICA TSE, KATH FRIES, MANDY SCHONE-SALTER, MAZ DIXON, YVETTE MARIE TZALIAS


OCTOBER 28 - NOVEMBER 17

Affinity is a show about intimacy in all its forms and incarnations involving relationships with the self, the other, places or objects, the physical and the emotional.

Artists have called into question the notion of closeness through a wide range of practices and mediums.

Loneliness, sexuality, the home, touch and emotional vulnerability are all themes explored by the artists involved. The works beg the question – what is the consequence of bringing such a private concept into a public space?

By exposing the concept of intimacy, Affinity invites the audience to enter a private space collectively, sharing their experience of the works together, as companions, provoking the opportunity to touch, feel and interact with the works and each other on a level rarely experienced in the gallery space.
 

 

DAWN AND DUSK

MAZ DIXON


OCTOBER 7 - OCTOBER 27

Maz's work in this show is inspired by the Dawn and Dusk Club, a group of bohemian thinkers and drinkers whose membership included Henry Lawson. One of their more interesting proposals was to erect fake ruins around the country, so that Australians of European descent would have a better appreciation of Australian history.

During her first trip to the outback Maz was surprised by how alienated she could feel in the country she'd spent her whole life in. The landscape felt exotic and disturbing, the exact opposite of home. The fake ruins proposed by the Dawn and Duskers appealed to her as a way of exploring the ambivalence and anxiety that often lies beneath transplanted cultures.

Media plays an important role in exploring this ambivalence. The oil paintings in Dawn and Dusk capture a sense of romanticism and history that ostensibly lies behind the idea of ruins. Collages, on the other hand, illustrate the humour and sense of ridicule that was cultivated by the Dawn and Duskers.
 

 

ALL I HAVE I HOPE TO KEEP

Thomas C. Chung & Amanda Humphries


SEPTEMBER 16 - OCTOBER 6

Everything is experienced through play in this exhibition. It is the first part of a two part show that suggests ideas of the loneliness and detachment raised in an ever ‘sensation- simulated’ world. Amanda and Thomas are threading together alternative worlds to keep pace with the real one, creating suspended, timeless worlds that will never leave you. Using motifs of childhood fantasies and hand-crafted objects, they are taking us on adventures in worlds that are intangible.

All I Have I Hope To Keep creates an alternative universe that envelopes the viewer in a nostalgic utopia. So pack your knitted umbrella, there might be a thunderstorm of birds and battleships to contend with.
 

 

TERRA AUSTRALIA

YVONNE RIBES ZANKI


AUGUST 26 - SEPTEMBER 15

galleryeight is proud to present a new exhibition of photographic works by Yvonne Ribes Zankl.


After working as a physiotherapist for ten years, Yvonne recently took a year off to travel around Australia with her camera. The resulting works are an intriguing meditation on the relationship between physical and psychological and spaces.

"I love urban landscapes and the solitude in the big cities" says Yvonne, "but here in Australia I've been seduced by another kind of emptiness - the vast emptiness of land, the immensity of the sky".

Terra Australis explores the spaces we share, often unwittingly, with others. Yvonne has infused seemingly ordinary scenes with sense of quiet beauty.

 

SPECTATE

SUE MILLSON


AUGUST 5 - AUGUST 25

Please join us for drinks with artist on Friday 5 August at 6pm.

Spectate focuses on sports spectators.

Spectators are often thought of as the passive onlookers in a co-dependent relationship. These paintings redirect attention from the fields of play to the grandstands holding the multitudes. Whether magnified to zoom in on a blurry individual, or a wider panorama of many, the visual display that the spectators provide overlooking the grounds, elevates them to equal billing.

Specific events, environments and subjects are equally anonymous. It is the commonality of shared experience, which is explored as strangers sit shoulder to shoulder for long, quiet and largely dormant
hours waiting for – and in between the on-field action. This series of paintings contains some images spliced together on the picture plane suggesting crowds in the built environment, while other images show the seated masses butted together.

This exhibition reflects an ongoing interest in this particular aspect of contemporary life– at a junction which hovers somewhere between sport and leisure. Spectators are the quiet achievers, deserving to be considered as the spectacle
 

UNCOVERED

JADE SANTO


JULY 15 - AUGUST 4


Galleryeight is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Jade Santo, an emerging artist born on Kudjalla country.

Please join the artists for an Acknowledgement of Country and opening drinks on Friday 15 July from 6pm.

Jade's everyday sculptural objects: aerial dot paintings; drawings of elders and lino prints of food from the land immediately instigate discussion around the social barriers of age, race and gender.

Her deliberate misappropriation of some of our most common everyday objects such as Victa Lawnmowers, English garden roses and cups of various shapes and sizes to the Aboriginal flag provide a chance for viewers to connect with her work.

On the surface, it is these uses of symbolism, irony and literal referencing that demonstrates a quirky sense of humour. But lurking below is the dark tension that surrounds the divisions that exist in our society.

 

 

 

 

 

LEX TALIONIS

DAN SIMON

JUNE 24- JULY 14


Please join us for drinks with the artist Friday June 24 from 6 - 8.30pm.

The exhibition will a ll also feature a live performance and sound sculpture from pianist Jessica Tse.

Through his sculpture and installation work Simon investigates the current stigmatisms behind weapons, warfare and extremism. Typecast weapons and domestic arms are reinterpreted to distract the viewer away from current public perceptions. Simon takes recognisable weapons and manipulates them with alternate materials and forms, often resulting in objects which retain alluring lustres, glows and reflections.

The exhibition title, Lex Talionis, translates from Latin meaning the law of an eye for an eye. Through this new series of work, Dan Simon aims to comment on the current identity of war and the ideas of retributive justice.


 

 

PLACE AND TIME

TROY BEER AND JULIE EISENBERG


JUNE 3 - JUNE 23

 

galleryeight is proud to present Place and Time, a debut exhibition of images by Troy Beer and Julie Eisenberg, as part of the 2011 HeadOn photography festival.

Please join us for opening drinks with the artists on Friday 3 June, 6-8pm.

What images of a place does memory hold? How does time affect what’s been seen?

Julie and Troy discovered they both had been observing and documenting landscapes shifting through and over time, and the idea for this joint show was born.

Julie’s images are intriguingly beautiful distortions taken through aged, sinking glass, freezing people and moments within the boundaries of grand European art museums. An inveterate traveler, she is drawn to the unusual and unexpected. Here, visiting institutions that are magnets for their internal treasures, she looks outwards, through the bubbles and bevels of their windows, creating dreamy, painterly landscapes.

“It’s interesting how the physical form of the building and its ageing can change the story it tells of what and who’s outside it”, she says. “These images from the Louvre in Paris and Hermitage in St Petersburg , though largely unretouched, are surreal and surprising.”

Troy’s works evolved from a project that captured an image each 15 minutes through a single day at Bondi. The repetition of form and changing details build a story about beauty missed in the hours unobserved. The compositions dissect the day, images merge or rise to the surface, exploring how we form our perceptions and memories of a place or time.

“Bondi has got to be one of Australia's most photographed, visited and looked at landscapes. Throughout a day there is noise and movement and spectacle but also places of quiet, natural

 

 

SURREALISM IN THE SUBURBS

PAUL TAYLOR


MAY 13 - JUNE 2


galleryeight is proud to present recent photographs by emerging Sydney artist Paul Taylor.


Originally a painter inspired by the likes of Georgie O'Keefe, Taylor recently turned to photography to explore the idea of making portraits of houses and other urban constructions. Taylor's images are a little unsettling. Dramatically lit structures seem to be something from out of an old Hollywood film, before viewers realise they are looking at familiar buildings in Bondi or The Rocks.

"To my eyes, many buildings have a mysterious look when there are no people about, and i try to capture this quality of strangeness," says Taylor.

"What I'm doing is a lot like painting. Most landscape painters invent a lot of their subject matter. Some painters say they invent in order to capture the 'real essence' of what they see. I'm digitally manipulating these images to achieve the same thing."

 

 

 

LISA CROSS

FAR FROM HOME


APRIL 26 - MAY 12 2011


Galleryeight is proud to present Far From Home, an exhibition of recent images from Sydney based photographer Lisa Cross.


During a recent trip around India and Bahrain, Lisa captured the colour and diversity of these two countries. She found the differences between the two societies startling.


Everything in India happens on the street and in your face, whereas most of life in Bahrain happens behind walls and closed doors,” says Lisa.

In the end it was the simple, quiet scenes and moments around me I was drawn to, which reflected the strange sense of calm I experienced once I had overcome the initial culture shock and perceived chaos of India and dug a little deeper in Bahrain”.


 

 

 

FABRICATION

MAZ DIXON,  SEBASTIAN GOLDSPINK,  DAVID HAYDEN,
BOOPSEDAISY,  ELKE REINHUBER,  SEBASTIAN PELZ
YVONNE RIBES ZANKI, CELINE ROBERTS, DAVID WILLIS
PETRA SVOBODA, YVETTE TZIALLAS, AMBER WALLACE


APRIL 1 - APRIL 21, 2011.

 

Hoax: deception: an act intended to trick people into believing something is real when it is not.

- something intended to deceive or defraud.

 

Galleryeight is proud to present Fabrication, an exhibition of twelve artists from multidisciplinary pra ctices, each exploring their perception of reality and what is real in our world. Australian culture is rife with deceptions and hoaxes, ranging from the Ern Malley afair to William Blundell’s “innuendos”. To coincide with April fools day Galleryeight invited artists to submit their response to the notion of ‘The Hoax’ or the idea of creative "frabrication".

 

 

EDEN DIEBEL

RECENT PHOTOGRAPHS

MARCH 11 - MARCH 31, 2011

"As a very young kid we took a family trip to the coast of Spain. During this trip I fell in love with a crabs’ claw, this huge vivid red one that found it’s way onto our dinner table. I wanted to keep it and take it back to my room. I was seduced by it’s rich colour, moulded shape and shiny black edges. When I woke in the middle of the night it was there by the bed, and it terrified me. It was no longer food, but some grotesque angry shape that reminded me of the nose of Mr Punch from the vividly violent Punch and Judy show. The claw had to go.


This show is partly about animals, not the animals in nature, but the ones found in the supermarket and fish market, the ones we’ve packaged, frozen, caged and netted. To that extent I suppose there’s an ecological theme but not a polemic.

I see all these creatures outside their natural habitat and they look strange to me, equal parts compelling and repellent…and I suppose the pictures in this show may be the same, both compelling and repellent."

 

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

MIKE WATT, FERNANDA PORTO, KATRINA HILL, JUSTIN SCIVETTI,

STEPHANIE GALLAGHER, CECILIA HEI JIN, YEN,

LILY SUN, NANCY LIANG, YVONNE LI, DORA CHEUNG,

JEREMY BONDOC, NADIA LEE, ANASTAZJA KRUSZEWSKA.

FEBRUARY 18 - MARCH 10, 2011

In an environment where we are constantly bombarded with information and trends how can we find the real us, you or me? Who Do You Think You Are? is a collection of contemporary works from a new generation of Sydney based artists. Identity, sexuality, individuality, time and loss are explored through the variety of illustrated and painted works featuring in this show.

 

JOANNA MARSHALL, TANIJA PARKER & RODNEY YE

 

SHOOT THE FREAK

 

January 28 - February 17, 2011

 

Joanna Marshall
As adults we are delighted by childhood memories of fantasy, innocence and excitement. Humans experience matures our perception of the world around us, a transition from the hyper real to the brutal truth. My practice explores my human experience of this transition. The photographs are a series of compelling film-like stills, reminiscent of childhood bad dreams.

Tanija Parker
Part of becoming an adult, seems to i...nclude letting go of your childhood or ‘childish’ habits, yet our childhood makes us who we are as adults. My work takes a playful look at the role of the child within, the sentimentality attached to childhood objects and how we as adults engage with the world.

Rodney Ye
In a world where we chase endlessly at the conventional standards of beauty, where celebrities rule the way we see and feel, magazines inform us of what to wear and what to love, we seem to have lost the ability to see beauty in the imperfections. My work is a personal, as well as social exploration on the notion of beauty in our day and age.

 

KATE FARQUHARSON

BLOODLINE

JANUARY 7 - JANUARY 27, 2011

'Bloodline' is an attempt to resolve a split identity which confronts the confusion and dislocation of one caught between cultures and families, and separated by migration and death. In dealing with a mixed heritage of English, Scottish and Sri Lankan Burgher descent, objects of nostalgia within the context of the personal archive, and the family album are transformed into something more sinister. The original moment in time is obscured, and these memories become a means of dissecting past narratives and personal histories. Bloodline is the rumination of the obsessive collector, encapsulating the desire to inevitably grasp knowledge of the past.

 

LUKE STAMBOULIAH

PERSONS OF INTEREST

December 17, 2010 - January 6, 2011

Inspired by the Justice & Police Museum’s City of Shadows exhibition in 2006, Stambouliah has created a world in which celebrities from the 21st century pose as 1920’s criminals. These gritty tableaux form a striking contrast to the polished paparazzi shots associated with celebrity.

 

Stambouliah’s project has attracted the cream of Australian stage and screen. Each actor happily submitted themselves to the interrogations of Stambouliah’s lens. “With this work I’m asking if there’s a correlation between the famous actor and the infamous criminal who seeks fame,” explains Stambouliah. “When you see celebrities being photographed within an inch of their lives, it’s hard to escape the idea that they’re experiencing a form of imprisonment”.

 

Stambouliah is a graduate of the UNSW College of Fine Arts (COFA), with an impressive body of work he imbues photographic artistry with a cinematic sensibility. Persons of Interest is his debut solo exhibition.

 

JAMES MCMAHON DALE

DARK HARBOUR

November 26 - December 16, 2010

Welcome to Dark Harbour, a fictional series of works based on Sydney’s waterways.

Purposely void of human activity these works focus on prominent or not so prominent buildings, structures and scenes that maybe found within Sydney’s waterways.

Through the use of repetition, distance and space James McMahon Dale has created backdrops for these objects to sit within that enable each works subject matter to take on it’s own personality.

These works play on the relationships and attachments that people develop over time with local landmarks and familiar surroundings and the personalities that these landmarks and places in turn adopt.

 

JACK CONDON, ISOBEL PARKER PHILIP, IRIT POLLAK AND DARYL PRONDOSO

SLIP

November 12 - November 25, 2010

 

An exhibition of photography and sculpture by Jack Condon, Isobel Parker Philip, Irit Pollak and Daryl Prondoso that plays with the edge and collapses the periphery. A ‘slip’ is a fleeting event, occurring in the briefest of instants. We are not aware of the slip as it happens. It is too fast. It is only afterwards, once we are back on our feet, that we realize what has happened. Distilling the instantaneous, the artists in this... exhibition attempt to catch the slip – the metaphorical slip – as it occurs.

Where Condon collides the real with the surreal, Pollak grafts three-dimensional forms from two-dimensional images, slipping between the tangible and the intangible. While Prondoso’s attention slides into the voided abyss, Philip uncovers the narratives that lie dormant in the space between images, teasing association out of disassociation. These works lead the viewer through paradoxical and uneven ground over which they must tread carefully, lest they themselves slip and fall.

 

LACHLAN ANTHONY

WHAT CAN YOU ASK OF ME BUT FOR THAT TO WHICH YOU DON'T ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER?

October 29 - November 11, 2010

What does contentment mean? More than emptiness? Can I use rationality to find happiness? Maybe I don’t care, I’m not sad and this is not necessarily autobiographical. I do get scared but it’s always an itch I can scratch. The television flickers, my biceps ripple. Is there such thing? I doubt it. That’s where it all crumbles really isn’t it… doubting? I should stop smoking, take up yoga, maybe buy a dog or something, Italian greyhounds are hip. uhhh, non-smokers die every day too, pff i'm confused… about Friday, has it ended or begun? I thought it was Monday, I can’t really tell because the lamp is fading in and out. Ah the old in-out, real savage, bit shallow, Rick roll, dirty mole. I’m better than them, much better. The sea sung and the birds hum, never before coffee should a man be hung. Espresso… maybe martini? It might be more fitting, like the pants I’m not wearing, the life I love living. I’ve only been awake for ten minutes but already this day seems like forever again, the clock is a liar but it’s not a bad thing.
10 000 frowns make a wrinkle, put on a smile, are you afraid of dying? Pan said it would be an adventure. Stop whinging, bench-press 150, pop a Xanax and ride kaleidoscopes of caramel light through eternity.

x  x  l o k i

 

After an adventurous installation exhibited at First Draft in March exploring the capacity for fluorescent lighting to modulate behaviour in the workplace, Lachlan backs up with his 2nd major show of 2010 at galleryeight.  Maintaining a fascination with programmatic living and behaviour, he brings an experimental body of sculpture and performance that looks beyond the office, into to the franchise gym and back to the homogenised bedroom via the mall. Lifestyle, consumption and mortality are carefully intersected with both the cosmetic and utilitarian in a series of dark object remixes that take contemporary corpo-reality into liminal space. This new range of work is informed in part by 6 months of covert, interactive research into mainstream gym culture as member of Fitness First.    http://fitnessfisting.blogspot.com/

Be at the gallery by 6:30 to see a live performance by Lachlan, his father and grandfather.

Gin & Tonic + delectable orderves till 8pm

Lachlan’s practice interrogates mainstream lifestyle programs and environments through a vernacular sculpture that is best understood as form of physical remixing. The form and functionality of common utilitarian objects and systems are sampled, hijacked and transfigured to a state of deliberate liminality. Contextually these objects and systems are products as they are purchased brand new. Here, Lachlan’s role as an artist is consciously mashed with the presumed role of a retail consumer. Purchasing consumer products with deliberate intention to liberate their prescribed, functional meaning is a subversive process that explores the politics of sculptural action.

Lachlan graduated from COFA in 2008 with First Class Honors, he now lives and works in wonderful Melbourne.

 

ELKE REINHUBER

I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!

October 15 - Octoberr 28, 2010


On our path through life, we have – at turning points, again and again – to decide, which path to take. But the difficulty to reach a decision can hardly be expressed in terms; much less visualised....As soon as different possibilities are offered to us, our dilemma begins. Which is best way to reach our targets?

The panoramic landscapes follow the tradition of veduta. But here they turn into illustrations of different species of decisions; nature so becomes a sculptor of the ideal path. Sometimes the paths are almost similar; in other cases there is the narrow and the wide, the left and the right, the easy and the steep path to see - which we already know from the myth of Hercules, who had to choose between virtue and vice.

A series of drawings shows different categories, into which forking paths could be classified. Supported by maps and aerial
views, I investigated intersections at places which I was visiting and took photographs on-site. My imagination often differed from what I found on the spot; due to bad weather conditions in winter, some bifurcations were hardly visible or sometimes blocked by construction sites. Therefore, new temporary paths appeared, visible as footprints in the snow. The drawings are presented together with satellite images and on location photographs.


 

KEVIN BAVA, JULIE BURKE

& YVETTE TZIALLAS

EMBODIMENT

September 24 - Octoberr 24, 2010

Galleryeight is proud to present EMBODIEMNT, a group show by Kevin Bava, Julie Burke & Yvette Tziallas. 

A body tells a thousand stories. Every line, gesture or movement communicates not only the internal but culture and time. From primitive art and ancient myths, the body continues to define and reflect the human spectrum of emotions and imagination.

Kevin Bava’s work is inspired by ancient Greek and European myths, and encapsulates the universalism of human emotion. States of being, as true now as they have been from the dawn of... human thought and feeling, are expressed through the media of sculpture. The scenarios and characters chosen provide a window to the past, attempting to evoke a recognition of the ties that bind us.

Julie Burke works predominantly with the process-driven, traditional and tactile medium of drawing, She often combines large-scale drawing with video and installation. Her work often punctuates the notion that journeys- geographical and temporal, become circular reconstructions through memory.

Yvette Tziallas draws from her imagination to create detailed decorative portraits with distinct and varying personalities. Her work has a tribal edge and appropriates symbols, patterns and themes that reflect the abundance of cross cultural influences in Australia today.

 

CATHY DREW & JENNIE HOLTSBAUM

TRACES OF NATURE

September 3 - September 23, 2010

Galleryeight is proud to present TRACES OF NATURE, a joint show by Cathy Drew and Jennie Holtsbaum.


We tend to think of decorating our homes as a frivolous act without much meaning beyond our personal tastes. But for these artists, the act of using Australian motifs in the context of interior decoration is an act loaded with meaning. It can be an instrume...nt of preservation – or an act of subjugation.

Jennie Holtsbaum sees pattern as a way of preserving Australian flora and fauna. Using the idiosyncratic shape of local plants and animals, Holtsbaum creates new forms that combine local shapes with European decorative forms. Her work asks if these plants and animals are going to last. With changes in our environment, will the only evidence of the existence of these plants and animals be a ‘trace’ in the form of a fossilised outline, or a decorative pattern?

Cathy Drew also looks at Australian nature through the filter of decorative arts, but for her the act of rendering Nature as decoration is an act of control, stemming from the naivety of early European settlers. Decoration is associated with the comfort and status of a good home. By combining Australian nature with Western decorative forms the Northern and Southern Hemispheres collide, making bizarre and unfamiliar animals seem harmless and distant to newly settled European Australians.

 

EDEN DIEBEL

AGAINST NATURE

August 13 - September 2, 2010

Galleryeight is proud to present a new exhibition of recent photographs by Eden Diebel.


AGAINST NATURE starts with a memory.

As a very young kid we took a family trip to the coast of Spain. It was there that I experienced the violent bashing of an octopus by a gang of teenagers.  At the time it seemed incomprehensible that anybody could be so cruel to one of gods creatures. It was many years later that I realised the kids were tenderising the beast by pounding it against the rocks, creating a delicacy for the dinner table.

It makes sense now, a custom that was so normal to people who still knew what a real animal looked like looked, appeared to be brutal torture to a kid who saw animals as either pets or anonymous bits floating around in mums ‘cowboy stew’.

On the same trip I fell in love with a crabs’ claw, this huge vivid red one that found it’s way onto our dinner table. I wanted to keep it and take it back to my room. I was seduced by it’s rich colour, moulded shape and shiny black edges. When I woke in the middle of the night it was there by the bed, and it terrified me. It was no longer food, but some grotesque angry shape that reminded me of the nose of Mr Punch from the vividly violent Punch and Judy show. The claw had to go.

AGAINST NATURE is about animals (apart from one picture of an onion), not the animals in nature, but the ones found in the supermarket and fish market, the ones we’ve packaged, frozen, caged and netted. To that extent I suppose there’s an ecological theme but not a polemic.

I see all these creatures outside their natural habitat and they look strange to me, equal parts compelling and repellent…and I suppose the pictures in this show may be the same, both compelling and repellent.

 

JOSEY KIDD-CROWE

SUCCESSIVE

June 25 - July 8, 2010

Galleryeight is proud to present a new exhibition of recent paintings by Josey Kidd-Crowe.


Josey Kidd-Crowe begins his paintings with a loosely painted landscape, often simplified in design to a ground and a sky. The motifs seem to be built out of or grown from these indefinite spaces in which they are placed.

Each painting is like an idea that comes at a certain moment and then leaves. It is usually only the first impressions of an idea that we see. This gives the paintings an alluring and mysterious quality.

Kidd-Crowe does not revisit his paintings, he does not re-vision the image for reworking or clarification. When the painting has enough suggestive quality it is put aside and the next painting is started. The exhibitions title refers to this sequential working method, where each painting (image) succeeds and breaks away from the last.

Josey Kidd-Crowe is emerging artist who graduated from La Trobe University, Bendigo in 2009 majoring in painting. He has also studied in Lismore and Mildura. Kidd-Crowe has participated in Group shows in Regional Victoria and Melbourne. This will be his first Sydney exhibition.

 

MATCH BOX PROJECTS

ENCOUNTER.........New York

June 12 - JUNE 24, 2010

At galleryeight Match Box Projects invite you on a visual journey through New York City. They will present a body of work incorporating photographs, mixed media and video - a result of their performative project  "Time Capsule" carried out on the streets and subways of New York in 2009.

 

Match Box Projects (twin sisters Leanne Shedlezki and Naomi Shedlezki) are a Sydney based conceptual artist duo who work across disciplines including performance, installation, digital-media and collaborative exchange. Since 2006 Match Box Projects have been creating long-term, socially engaged interdisciplinary projects/interventions exploring notions of identity, place and the archive. Using public space as a site of enquiry and research, their projects initiate conversation, negotiation and exchange with individual strangers and impromptu audiences around the globe. Match Box Project’s audiences are simultaneously the subjects and collaborators of their work.

Match Box Projects have presented their work in Australia, Japan and the United States and have been awarded various grants for their practice including from Arts NSW, City of Sydney, Japan Foundation,and NAVA.

 

matchboxprojects.com

sydneyariguide.com

 

CATHERINE CONNOLLY & SALLY TAPE

RECENT PAINTING AND INSTALLATION

MAY 28 - JUNE 10, 2010

Opening on May 28 is a new exhibition from Catherine Connolly & Sally Tape.

 

Drawing on elements of film and architecture, Connolly and Tape re-present them in the form of painting, installation, objects and video works.

 

Connolly's video installation work examines representation in and the hyperbolic language of popular culture, particularly in cinema and music, and the ways in which this enforces, subverts or complicates ideas of gender, performativity and space.

 

Working with ideas of contemporary painting Sally Tape’s work delves beyond a surface seemingly implicit to a formalist vernacular. She is interested in the psychological effect an object can produce. Accordingly, she works to layer specific objects within her paintings and installations to reshape and reformat a viewer’s mental space. She achieves this with a keen sense for exhibition design, consideration for the mechanics of vision (perception) and imagery that has been considered simultaneously organic and industrial.

 

 

JULIA SCHAUENBURG

COUPLES

MAY 14 - MAY 27, 2010

"Through my photographic practice, I am exploring the boundaries of gesture and romance, I am interested in humans and in life as it happens."
Julia Schauenburg

 

‘Couples’ is a series of photographs taken in 2009 and 2010 of friends of mine who were recently engaged or married. In times of individuality and self-realisation, marriage seems to be the most profound thing to give, the biggest sacrifice to make. Julia Schauenburg is a German artist and photographer who is based in Sydney, Australia.


juliaschauenburg.com

 


STROBED Posting on the Couples Exhibition:

http://www.strobed.com.au/2010/05/julia-schauenburg-galleryeight

 

VALENTINA SCHULTE

PHANTOM DETECTION

APRIL 30 - MAY 13, 2010

Phantom Detection is a new photographic collection by emerging Sydney based artist Valentina Schulte and is part of the Head On Festival for 2010.

 

This new work celebrates the idea of the Shinto belief that there is a Kami or spirit in all things relating to the natural world. From the smallest creature to the largest fixture in the landscape some include water, rock, tree and mountain, there are hundreds if not thousands of natural elements that have a kami. This work is inspired by the spirits of natural elements represented in the Miyazaki animated film Spirited Away. Within the setting of a traditional Japanese bathhouse radish, wind and river spirits are given personality and physical form and can go to relax after a hard days work. It centres around the idea that the kami can be watched in their natural environment similar to a nature documentary. We watch them in acts of their everyday happenings but are unaware of our presence.

Schulte's work has been collected in Hong Kong, Norway and Denmark as well as around Australia.


valentinaschulte.com