Group Exhibition
Melanie Gray / Margaret Dix
Scott Sinclair / Angie Contini
Rachael Helmore / Allan Arcilla
Tobias Clack / Maddy Rowley
Aliki Yiorkas / Tony Wong Hee
Carmel Byrne / Paul Mallam
We end the year with In/House, a group exhibition of associated artists and our annual Party to wrap up 2019. Instead of an opening event we’ll have a closing event that coincides with our annual party. All welcome but come early in the exhibition run if you want first choice to buy an artwork. We have a great line up of artists for the show.
Runs 28 November – 8 December 2019
Party and Closing Event 8 December / 4 – 8pm / BYO
Margaret Dix
Kimberley Series 2019
When Margaret Dix returned to her urban studio after a 4000 kilometre journey through the Kimberley in Western Australia, she urgently wanted to capture the beauty of the region, the temperature of the environment and the tranquillity she experienced in the vast landscape. Dix is aided by watercolour sketches made on the road and notes she scribbled at the end of each day but relies heavily on memory when she paints. Her ambition is to capture the feeling of this place she found so affecting and while in some paintings she offers recognisable landmarks, in others she is simply trying to share the joyful experience of swimming in the camp creek at the end of a hot day.
Tony Wong Hee
Over the past few years I have worked with the idea of human displacement, and this latest body of workcontinues to explore my feelings on this global disaster.
Working in direct plaster allows for the raw, spontaneous expression of the emotions I want to convey, and hopefully helps to illicit a response from the viewer on a visceral level.
The form of the singular, detached human figure speaks to me, allowing for a connection however fleeting.
Angie Contini
Angie Contini is an emerging experimental multimedia artist and scholar living in St Peters, Sydney. With her PhD awarded from the University of Sydney in 2018, her research and arts practice engages with the complex relation between human existence and the natural cosmos, animal ethics, and the holistic, healing purpose of art in daily life.
Angie’s surrealist photographic artworks are created through improvisational, experimental methods of capture, without the intervention of post-production digital manipulation techniques. To view full audio-visual archive, go to: https://www.behance.net/angiecontini.
Melanie Gray
My latest works are contemporary landscapes that combine, expression and construct, love and life, depth and space. I abstract the landscape to its essential elements and observe the space for its narrative. Expressing the flickering shift of the landscape on long drives, the landscape is defined by what we see, feel and experience.
The the combination of fluorescent colours emphasize the fleeting experience of the sensation of bright colour in the landscape, with a traditional palette to express depth and space. The titles of my paintings are lines from Bridge of Clay by Marcus Zusak.
Carmel Byrne
The human condition and the question of existence are the two main themes in my work. Figuration is perfect when considering the human condition, and landscape works for the broader question of existence.
For both themes the process is primarily expressed through line and value in the initial drawings, and colour and brushwork in the oil paintings. The underlying tonal structure and composition provide strength and support to the complex process of layering colour.
Paul Mallam
I am interested in celebrity, appearance and constructed identity. The two works in this exhibition reflect this interest.
Frida Kahlo is depicted in the desert as if undertaking a magazine photoshoot, but she smokes a cigar, while the seated dog – in Western art typically a symbol of family loyalty– is Laika, the Russian dog that orbited the earth in a Russian satellite. These symbols suggest Frida’s feminism, ambition and independence. The folk style of the image reflects Frida’s own use of folk art to inform her work, as well as her leftist politics.
The portrait of Kim Jo-Yong, the sister of the current North Korean leader, reflects on her role as an ambassador and advocate of North Korea. Like Frida, she has a carefully curated image of aloofness, beauty and intelligence. However, this celebrity is harnessed for dubious ends – the advancement of a brutal and authoritarian regime. The work becomes a meditation between appearance and substance.
Paul has a Bachelor of Fine Art from the National Art School and has been a finalist in many of Australia’s major art prizes, such as the Archibald.
Aliki Yiorkas
Much of my work is a record of life, and at the core of it is drawing the human figure. Drawing the model is an intense encounter which involves looking and being looked at. This edition titled, “Returning the Gaze” explores the profound sensation that the model is being looked at and challenges the viewer when the exchange is mutual.
Rachael Helmore
After moving to south-west Germany in early 2019, Helmore’s practice has increasingly focused on ideas of place, the experience of being a newcomer in a foreign country, and looking at her homeland with new eyes. Collecting old German photography books which focus on the Black Forest region and Australia, she uses these found images as the basis for her works. In some works, images are juxtaposed through collage; in others, particular elements are blocked out or highlighted with the addition of text or drawn elements. The works exhibited as part of IN House take us to Sydney, Queensland, Uluru, Paris, Herrenalb and into her living room in Bruchsal, Germany.
Tobias Oliver Clack
Tobias Clack’s drawings are an effort to represent the human figure as an entity shaped by its internal reality. To him the work, and the way it is made, is a metaphorical parallel for the nature of human existence. Just as the experiences that come through living transform and shape us every day, Tobias shapes the work with decisions to accept the marks as they are, as steps taken towards the final piece.
The visual result is human but mostly without distinct physical features so the focus rests on the obscure; an interior perception. There is no subject for each portrait the heads or half figures have evolved from the direct exploration of drawing. Each is the result of mark making without fear and pushing the paper to its limits by repeatedly drawing, scratching and erasing. As a form begins to take shape it is then almost destroyed by the next effort and only when the final work is glimpsed is enough control used to reveal the figure within the marks.
Scott Sinclair
The performer is brave, masked and armoured yet also hollow, cracking and on the verge of transformation.
My work explores the body: it’s physical limits and possibilities. The body as a vessel for expressing emotion and relating to space.
Maddy Rowley
Maddy Rowley Jewellery is an emerging one woman business based in Sydney’s inner west. The debut series contains amulets of sterling silver teeth, galvanised pendants and opalescent brass. Inspired by the ever moving outcrops where land meets the sea, the series resembles treasures found beside oceanic rock pools, salt-spray, and ocean creatures.
Maddy Rowley Jewellery strives to be as sustainable as possible, working with 100% Australian recycled silver, brass and copper.
