STROBED
a calendar for emerging artist exhibition openings in sydney + a few exhibition reviews
Underbelly Arts [Kensington Street]
when: Underbelly Arts runs from 8-17 July 2010. Lab Saturday is 10 July 2010 and The Festival (ticketed) is Saturday 17 July 2010.
cost: Public tours throughout the Lab are FREE. The Festival on Saturday July 17 is a ticketed event. By purchasing a ticket you will be invited to view work throughout the afternoon and evening across a range of spaces along and around a closed Kensington St. Tickets are $18/$22+bf presale.
where: The Lab – FraserStudios, 10-14, Kensington St, Chippendale. Lab Saturday - The Clare Hotel, 20 Broadway Ultimo (on the cnr of Broadway and Kensington St).
From Underbelly Arts:
Underbelly Arts: Public Lab + Festival is back in 2010 with a new home in Chippendale. From July 8 – 17, in various spaces next to the site of the old Carlton United Brewery on Broadway in Chippendale, over 100 of Sydney’s most exciting, experimental and emerging artists, will develop works and performances that will be presented on Saturday July 17 at the ticketed Underbelly Arts Festival.
Part fringe festival, part band-camp; this is your chance to get behind the scenes of art in the making.
From creating pop-up gallery spaces along Kensington Street to transforming the Clare Hotel into a theatre, Underbelly Arts Lab + Festival will offer a rare opportunity for people to scratch the surface of Sydney and discover some of the art and ideas that are ripe in warehouses, bedrooms and makeshift spaces throughout the city. Expect interactive installations, a DIY 3D film project, brutal 1900s street dance, voyeuristic engagement with the online world, random performances by a mass a cappella choir and much more!
In the lead up to the Festival, the public can get behind the scenes of the creative process with daily tours of Fraser Studios and even get involved by attending Project Participation Sessions for artworks that require public input.
On July 10, the Lab Saturday Program will take place from 2-7pm, putting artist, audience and process under the microscope.
Just 5 minutes walk from Central Station, Underbelly Public Arts Lab + Festival will take place in the thriving arts precinct around Chippendale.
See www.underbellyarts.com.au for details of the Underbelly Arts Public Lab Tours, Project Participation Sessions and updates for the Lab Saturday Program.
Tickets to Underbelly Arts Festival are strictly limited so don’t miss your chance to let Sydney’s creative underbelly seize your imagination.
Forecast – Carmel Byrne [Kudos]
when: Opening night Tuesday 13 July 2010, 5-7:30pm. Exhibition continues until Saturday 17 July 2010.
cost: Free.
where: Kudos Gallery, 6 Napier Street, Paddington.
From Kudos:
Landscape and maps are a rich source for metaphor yet the perception of maps as Cartesian representations of the grid include all the implications associated with power, ownership and colonisation. For this series of paintings the perspective is raised to the space above land where climate and weather shape it.
White Silence [Pavilion]
when: Tuesday 13 July 2010. 6pm-8pm.
cost: free.
where: Pavilion Gallery Bondi. Queen Elizabeth Drive, Bondi.
See the Facebook event here and Mark’s website here.
Mark Rowden; acrylic on linen 2010.
In his first solo exhibition, artist Mark Rowden presents an exciting collection of works based around his passion for snow. Inspired by the artist’s childhood memories of winter in England as well as his exploration of the Australian winter landscape as an adult, “White Silence” combines prints, paintings and sculptures that take you on a journey through the innocence, majesty and remoteness of snow.
My own little root [Hardware]
when: Tuesday 13 July 2010. 6pm-8pm.
cost: free.
where: 263 Enmore Rd, Enmore.
See the Facebook Event – click here.
See more info at Hardware Gallery’s website – click here.
from Hardware Gallery:
Janette Hanrahan – From Roots to Riches (front gallery)
Janette Hanrahan’s versatile artwork is a series of documentation of her travels from her home in the Southern Highlands to the city and to the Northern Territory. Hanrahan’s artwork debates the shift and effects to natural environments in the course of development in our ever-expanding society. Her works illustrate how this once utopic wilderness is slowly diminishing, as developers endeavour for affluence.
There is a clear intimacy with the artist and her subject. There is particular personal reflection to the dying River Red Gums along the Murray River and outback Australia in her exhibited work. The beauty of the natural scenery and view of this changing world is the crux of Hanrahan’s creative release. Hanrahan’s work unquestionably reveals her love, appreciation and respect for her own environment.
The artist’s focus is on Australia’s raw vegetation where she has previously drawn particularly on the eucalypt that is so commonly found in the Southern Highlands region. The eucalypt serves as a metaphor for strength and explores the idea of growth from roots of the past and expanding branches into the riches of the future.
There is a consistent flow of concept, subjective response and stylistic innovation throughout her body of work. Organic, neutral and lineal imagery within Hanrahan’s work record the change of natural inhabitants. The artist experiments with different textures and effects to produce an original surface and piece of artwork. The artist has amalgamated abstract watercolour works on paper on canvas with linocuts, woodcuts and artist books. The individual works vary in scale, and as a complete body, Hanrahan’s work expels an earthy quality, detailed with sharp defined edges and ‘visually strong graphics’.
The artist states; “I have been a practising artist for over 30 years, specialising mainly in the area of printmaking, in particular linocuts & woodcuts…I also love using gouache, watercolour & acrylic in my exhibiting artwork.” Thus, making Hanrahan’s works of art attractive in their aesthetics and captivating in depth of concept.
Gregory Godhard – My Own Little Worlds (main gallery)
Gregory Godhard’s artistic practice is an extension of his childhood love of amateur model-making, combined with his adulthood passion for film-making. His new exhibition, My Own Little Worlds is a collection of miniature dioramas: fictional geographies of his own imagining, in which witty and whimsical narratives emerge, and hence unravel.
The diorama is a unique creative model in that it is capable of concurrently bridging and inhabiting the space between various physical and immaterial binary oppositions: namely art and craft, and fictional narrative versus recounted event. Godhard’s background in animation and film is made self-evident, as he playfully remixes these examples into carefully considered and subtly deranged mis-en-scenes.
He refers to his father’s architectural practice as an early creative influence, concerned as all design is with measured and precise representations of proposed plans and ideas. But unlike his architect-father (who necessarily utilised industry-standard modeling materials), Godhard has not-yet eschewed the kinder-ergonomic, material principles of his youth. Choosing instead to embrace the lo-fi aesthetic of “child’s craft”, he melds this with a now-mature sensibility for material, form and composition in snapshot-animations of imagined action, drama, horror and comedy.
The miniaturisation that occurs during the process of ‘diorama-fication’ has the dual-effect of distancing and drawing the audience. We delight in the distortion of scale and are drawn into the works as a result – yet we are distanced by our designated role as voyeur upon a series of staged proceedings. This is partly offset by his informal choice of materials: seashells, driftwood and sand conjure a space of leisure, rather than one of interrupted intimacy.
In re-contextualising the faux-aestheticism of kitsch paraphernalia and do-it-yourself model -making, the parallel realities of My Own Little Worlds materialise as self-enclosed domains, where stasis – both physical and narrative – is imposed by invisible, outside forces.
In allowing us access to these eclectically assembled objects, Godhard highlights his various roles as artist/director/animator/set-designer, and invites us to engage with and embark upon an investigation of his creative development thus far.
Posted in Upcoming Events | Comments OffKindling [Plump Gallery]
when: Opening night Tuesday 13 July 2010, from 6pm. Exhibition continues until Saturday 31 July 2010.
cost: Free.
where: Plump Gallery, 240 Enmore Road, Enmore.
From Plump:
I am the proud new owner of a new contemporary Art Space called Plump Gallery. A new contemporary Art space full of Juicy concepts and ripe ideas.
I would like to invite you to the first ever exhibition in this beautiful, luscious new space. The property is old and charming but the project is a budding new blossom on the branch of a much greater tree of amazing people and places around this area that I am proud to be part of. Please come along this coming Tuesday and be part of the beginnings of something unique. The first exhibition is going to be a group show called KINDLING. It will be a mixture of mediums that will include of paper works, painting, photography, installation and sculpture. I have not chosen a theme but rather asked the Artists to nominate works that sum them up as an Artist.
kin·dling–noun
1.material that can be readily ignited, used in starting a fire. 2. the act of one who kindles.
kin·dle1 –verb (used with object)
1. to start (a fire); cause (a flame, blaze, etc.) to begin burning. 2. to set fire to or ignite (fuel or any combustible matter). 3. to excite; stir up or set going; animate; rouse; inflame: He kindled their hopes of victory. 4. to light up, illuminate, or make bright: Happiness kindled her eyes.
It is situated in what used to be Vintage Glamour, that Antique shop just past the Warren View down the hill a bit if you are traveling away from Newtown. The show will run from the 13th to the 31st of July and will be open Tuesday-Friday from 10am-6pm and Saturday from 10:30am-7pm.
I want Plump Gallery to be a space where anything can happen and nothing is censored. A place for unheard and unconventional Artist to have a voice. I want to exhibit work that is thought provoking, interesting and important. I want to challenge the preconceptions and conventions of what a Gallery can be. To provide a stage for all those words, images and thoughts that are on the tip of the untapped tongue. A common ground where people can share ideas and make connections with like minded people or even better ones who are not like minded at all.
Being an Aboriginal woman and an Indigenous Urban Artists I am all so challenging the very limited general view of what Aboriginal Art can be.There will be a constant thread of contemporary Indigenous Art thru out the Gallery calender and Galleries consciousness.
Plump is also going to hold one off events and regular nights. These will include Spoken word nights, Music events, possibly Clubs as well as small often solo Performance Art viewings and Creative workshops. I sincerely hope that these will include somehow working with and helping disadvantaged minorities such as Koori youth, migrants, cancer survivors and people living with Autistism.
KINDLING, at Plump Gallery,
An Exhibition of local Artist who I respect and who’s work reflects the nature of the Gallery I am trying to create. It will be an opportunity to warm up the space before the first solo exhibition in August featuring the brilliant Tan Safi and for people to start to become familiar with the gallery.
Some of the Artists
Alice Williams, Wade Marynowsky, Clair Conroy, Jess Pickford, Ears, Bec Sheedy, Rachel J.Park, Maggie Aydin
More surprises to come as well as maybe a little something from yours truly. These are humble beginnings but I think Plump is going to grow to be a place as significant as it is exciting. So if your intellect and creative attention is ripe for the plucking then please join me as I set sail on this wild adventure.
Willurei Kirkbright
xx
Not with a Whimper but with a Bang: The Impulse to Disturb [Poly]
when: Tuesday 13 July 2010, 730pm-9pm.
cost: free.
where: PolyGallery. 7/82 Enmore Rd, Newtown.
From PolyGallery:
Not with a Whimper but with a Bang
The Impulse to Disturb
(Guest Curated By Hayley Abblott under the Poly Young Curator Program)
Throughout history we as a human race have been subjected to horrific atrocities. We are a world plagued by violence and war. Jung divulges that our collective unconscious imprints these experiences into the dark side of our personality known as the “Shadow”, we are consequently attracted to what unsettles us. Our morbid curiosity draws us into strange and illuminating situations; we end up in traffic jams as a result of attempting to catch a glimpse of a fatal accident. Catastrophic events are plastered across the news on an almost daily basis. Violent video games and evocative films are frequenting our lives. How can we ignore what is ultimately what we’re accustomed to?
We’ve seen it in Duchamp’s Fountain. We’ve been repulsed by Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ and outraged by Damien Hirst’s series of dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. Shock value is and always has been, a way to provoke. More commonly in art, the impulse to disturb serves as a political, religious, social or subjective commentary to evoke an intense reaction. However, for others it serves a technical function for the artist to express themselves in a safe environment.
Polymorph is hosting ‘Not with a Whimper but with a Bang: the impulse to disturb’, a 3 week exhibition that explores art that provokes a reaction of shock through a range of interesting mediums. Works that are confrontational and that evoke an intense reaction whether it be disgust, anger, fear or even the indescribable are all on display. This exhibition opens on the 13th of July.
