Sydney Exhibition

Lynley George, Melinda Hunt, Isabella Millner-Cretney, TC Overson, Kaye Shumack, John Stanfield, Luke Thurgate, Oliver Watson, & Belinda Yee

Experimental Drawing from Masters students at the National Art School

Opens Wed 25 November
Runs 26 November – 6 December 2020

CONTINGENCE explores the nature of drawing in an expanded field of research and points to the vibrant state of drawing as a stand-alone practice in contemporary art. 

Exhibiting artists are National Art School Master of Fine Art candidates and staff that work across an expanded field of drawing encompassing diverse methodologies, concerns and formal outcomes. What they share is a concern for exploring the nature of drawing and that drawing is central to their practice.

The Artists

Lynley George  / My body as narrative 

Lynley is a multi-media artist that works through a female lens, expressing through her body, her mortality and life stories. Lynley’s work revolves around the abject, the intimate, the happenings related to the female organism as confessional memoir. Using paper and collage, creating 3-D images, she aims to expand the boundaries of drawing. 

Melinda Hunt

Within the parameters of Melinda’s MFA studies at the National Art School, her work is contingent upon an ongoing enquiry into the manifestations of time, specifically the interrelationships between time, memory and the practice of archaeology. Her process involves experimenting in the intersections between printmaking and drawing strategies to reveal how memories – collective and personal – are transformed by the passage of time.  During the exhibition run Melinda will create a drawing in situ that responds to memory as a theme. 

Isabella Millner-Cretney

Through the practice of drawing and painting Isabella uses still life as a lens in which to explore empathy and empathic experiences. Working purely from observation and with varying subject matter she aims to articulate the intensity of reciprocal relationships between artist, subject/object, and space. Her practice fuses together elements of drawing, painting and printmaking, to develop a personal vocabulary that invites viewers to feel their way through her imagery.

TC Overson

TC Overson’s MFA project focuses on posthuman concepts of geological deep time, looking at the cycles of cataclysm and renewal that have been the journey of one small blue planet.  She brings a diverse range of disciplines to Drawing, that enables experimentation across an expanded field of how drawing is perceived today.

Kaye Shumack

Kaye’s drawing practice explore traces and motifs from the urban landscapes of Sydney’s public spaces. “These may be linked to events past and present, configuring and extending our collective and individual sense of connection. They are often grounded in memories of lived experience in the city and its urban contexts. Public spaces are part of our collective experience of Sydney life. They are significant places that shape our sense of place and inform our understanding of time passing.”

John Stanfield

A National Art School staff member, John is a Sydney based artist working across mediums with a focus on drawing. He takes a question & response approach to the disambiguation that can be found when he applies the notion that ‘drawing is thinking’.

Luke Thurgate

Luke’s recent work explores the cultural mechanism of mythologisation. He’s interested in how stories and storytelling conditions our experience of the world and through his practice responds to various formal and narrative signifiers used by cultural institutions to define power, transgression and otherness. These institutions include the film and television industry, the church, and news/social media. He has a specific fascination for the construction and deconstruction of identity and the way myth becomes a ‘Trojan Horse’ for values. 

Oliver Watson

Oliver works with fragments of found objects that reflect either personal or community concerns, events or attitudes, and presents them as contemporary archaeological artefacts. 

Belinda Yee

Belinda’s work is primarily concerned with the practice of drawing and how it can be a vehicle for exploring notions of time, or more specifically, how we experience time.

“My works aim to instantiate various temporalities, that is, I use time as a medium. Through focusing the viewers’ attention on philosophies, notions or scales of time, temporal flows and durations, the aim is to allow the viewer to situate themselves in time and bring their awareness to this moment.”