Previously showing at Brenda May Gallery

In another space,
a place far away that is,
a man forged from charcoal and from clay stands silently.
Taking breath, and taking step,
the drawing dares to move.

Todd Fuller 2010

   Desire. Longing. Craving. Lasciviousness. Lust for flesh. Lust for power. Lust for money. Lust for life. Lust for food. Lust for freedom. Lust for art.
   Lust is that powerful emotion hidden deep within your heart. It can propel you in many directions positive or negative. Are you willing to surrender to your cravings? Are you willing to bare your soul and achieve that secret longing?
   Artists throughout the ages have embraced this emotion to produce extraordinary works. This exhibition takes raw passion into a contemporary context, highlighting our diverse lustful inclinations.
   Surrender to your unbridled desires.

This series of drawings explores the transition from childhood to adolescence and the dualism of integrating fantasy and reality. The work draws from the narratives of Seventeenth Century French Contes de Fees (fairy tales) and children’s games that have elements of magical transformation, fantasy, violence and the macabre.

The narrative in the drawings has an uncanny aspect of being familiar yet strange, incorporating the notion of child or adolescent morphing into an animal.

Embellished and stitched tapestry motifs punctuate the paper and the figure, with the combined purpose of being decorative and aggressive, suturing memory and inserting self.

Fiona Fenech, 2010

The linear and geometric forms of Lyndal Hargrave’s wall-mounted sculptures are constructed with found elements, objects of the everyday. The familiarity of the material invites the viewer into the work to consider, investigate and to reinvestigate through repetition.

The structured lines hum with movement as the eye travels along the interwoven contours of the sculpture. A dichotomy is established through the contrast of the rigid form and the soft, emotive qualities of colour. The white of the sculpture’s surface, coupled with the blank palette of the wall, provides a platform for the study of the reflected light and colour.

Lyndal Hargrave, 2011

Crystallography is the field of science which studies the arrangement of atoms within a solid. Prior to the development of x-ray techniques in the early part of the 20th Century, this was primarily based upon the geometrical analysis of the symmetry of geological crystal’s faces and axes.

My work takes as its starting point a number of crystallographic diagrams which function as descriptions of the natural world in terms of mathematical code, but which, like any code or language, can be spoken and written in unintended ways.

Al Munro 2010

My research and work has become increasingly concerned with nurturing, healing and protecting the fragile and vulnerable.

My work currently hinges on the physical and psychological susceptibility of the young female - when issues to do with identity sometimes culminate in self-harm, or body image disorders. A time when self-protection and retreat dominate thinking and negotiation in the world.

Still immersed in materiality, my work is not generated by conscious thought but is experiential and process driven. In my own vulnerability, I also need to withdraw into an internalised space to find stillness and order to keep hold of the thread.

Melinda Le Guay 2010

This year we return with the third in the Art + Humour series following the inaugural show in 2005 and Art + Humour Too of 2007. The exhibition contains a range of artworks from sculptures and paintings to an installation of a cardigan-wearing tree.

Humour will elicit a response from all ages and cultures although the actions to induce it will vary from person to person. Historically, comedy has had an important place within the arts dating back to the dramatic form of Ancient Greece, but currently receives very little critical attention in the contemporary visual arts.

With your amusement in mind, please join Joanna Braithwaite (courtesy of Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney), Julia Burns, Maureen Clack, Will Coles, Louisa Dawson, Mimi Dennett, Todd Fuller, Ghostpatrol, Irianna Kanellopoulou, Megan Keating (courtesy of Criterion Gallery, Hobart), Noel McKenna (courtesy of Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney), Simon McLean, Philippe Moreau, Helen Mueller, Mylyn Nguyen, Janet Parker-Smith, Jimmy Rix, Sue Stewart, Janet Tavener and Emily Valentine for a serious laugh or at the very least a bit of a giggle...

... early memories from the movie, the gladstone bag under a glass dome, a book in the pram, the baby in the bag, my first contact with surrealism? flowers at the cemetery under glass domes, my first garden, mud, the treadle sewing machine, the sweet smell of daphne, holding on to memories, old clothes, dress ups, love of music, old records, dancing, making and losing things. leaving, the misfit, humor, drawing, photography, living in studio spaces, ‘je ne regrette rien', the collection of objects for the security they provide, (too many episodes of Steptoe and Son?) sculpture, the clutter of existence, my chickens, using tools, growing things
- and living a life in earnest.

Carol Murphy 2010

My experience within the Australian punk subculture is explored through my recent sculpture. I am creating sculptures that relate to recordings made by my band, The Bigots, in the late 90s and early 2000s. These songs are fast, loud, raw and unpolished. For a long time they have inspired my sculptural aesthetic.

In 1999 I also documented my interest in rat-motorbikes with a collaborative one-off zine titled Rat Bike. This was produced with Tim Bigot (the other member of The Bigots). Reflecting upon imagery from the Rat Bike zine, I am recreating this punk attitude and aesthetic in my sculpture.

Along with sculptural works, I will be presenting CDs with select Bigots songs and will reprint the Rat Bike zine. As a performance piece related to my sculptural work, The Bigots will perform live at 6pm on the 19th of March.

Joel Bliss 2011

I judge visual art first on abstract standards: mass, lights and darks, rhythms, tonality, technique, the use of detail to form a whole that is aesthetically and emotionally compelling. Shadows and reflections are so complicated that their real appearance may be abandoned and replaced by ones that enhance a composition.
The internal dark spaces of the industrial buildings on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour and agriculture structures illuminated by strong sunlight are the sources for this body of work.

Sybil Curtis 2011

I see my newest bronze sculptures as a series of abstract still life studies. They are strong and grounded monolithic shapes, using perspective and precisely angled planes. I have worked to take away and add segments, creating channels, tunnels and facets that have a quiet and still presence to them. These channels and facets act to draw the viewer into the work and often opposing sides will have quite a different sense of balance and perspective.

I then observe these objects and recreate them in wire, sometimes altering them or inverting some of the shapes during the process. This work challenges the viewer to see the solidity of the shape through its emptiness. If it is viewed from one angle the lines can appear to flatten causing the shape to collapse. However if you engage with the piece and walk around it, viewing it in motion, the surfaces of the planes begin to emerge. Differing from solid objects, which can only be seen one way, these illusory shapes can be seen in different ways in terms of their positive and negative spaces.

Morgan Shimeld 2011

Sculpture 2011 continues the tradition of opening the Gallery year with an exhibition devoted to the best and most interesting contemporary sculpture. This year features work from emerging to senior artists selected from around Australia.

This regular event was established by Brenda May at Access Contemporary Art Gallery in Redfern in 1998 and continues to be an important platform for the promotion and exhibition of sculpture.

My artwork explores issues of identity and transience through a sense of play.

I use everyday images and objects, often collected on my travels, to explore emotional associations within our immediate environment and memories ? real and invented. I am interested in focusing on the micro and bringing our attention to the small details which are often overlooked and ignored. This microcosmos, at times humorous and bizarre, highlights the transformation and personification of such images as a means of making sense of our surroundings, our environment and ultimately ourselves.

Working with modules and components allows me to develop relationships between forms and in turn investigate the life of an object outside of its original intent and purpose. The work takes on deep personal symbolism as it personifies imaginary dialogues and relationships, drifting in and out of an augmented reality. Different characters and personalities are captured in a fleeting moment to reveal a network of masked identities, fragmented conversations and hidden emotions.

I have always found sanity a wonderfully elusive mist that continually fails to hide the far more interesting things experience can suggest.

In my last exhibition the fairy theme began as a tribute to my mother and the demented Victorian fairy painter Richard Dadd. In my new work, the visions of Dadd?s insanity combine with the poetic logic of fairy tales and mythology to provide another way of seeing the world around us. This is the irrational world of strange forces and passions our contemporary culture has no place for. We dismiss such quaint experiences as imperfections left over from our primitive beginnings. They are fit only for anthropology or the pathology of psychosis.

In the geology of experience, there are many layers... some apparent and some quite hidden from the normal view. We look, yet often miss the laminated nature of things and activities surrounding us. Simple routines are not what they seem. I begin to see that the simple tableau we take for reality is, in fact, 'peopled' by a much richer and stranger crowd of others.

I want to wake up one day and find magicool beams sparkling from my finger tips; nails painted in rainbow colours.

I want to walk to work, ride the crowded train and get my everyday mocha with a bigger than huge green grass bear leaving footprints of daisies, grass and dirt.

I want every Friday to be dress up day, every second day of the month will be musical day and every fifth day will be a special day where the ants that visit my house are invited to visit my office; making everyone in their suits and heels crouch on the floor, to watch their famous silent carnival act.

I want one day to be brave enough to stand up in front of a packed out train carriage and show everyone the magicoolness that hides in the vent between the fluoro light and the window; sharing a piece for every cupped hand, shirt pocket or pant cuff.

After my last exhibition there was time to pause and reflect on the level of risk and excitement that was created by the process. The ambition of the work created many logistical problems which were only solved after some real effort.

The resulting exhibition, in hindsight, was really almost one piece. It occupied a small space physically but because the pieces were few in number it felt to me like I was looking at a cohesive whole.

This show will be very different in that each work will clearly have its own identity but will obviously be linked by my approach to sculpture and sensitivity to materials, space, weight, light, form, line, shape, volume, mass etc. A lot of decision making has and is going on in order to make this work. I trust the quality is there because, as Clement Greenberg said in Homemade Esthetics, “quality in art appears to be directly proportionate to the density or weight of decision that’s gone into its making.”* In regards to the density of decision making, this show is very weighty.

* Clement Greenberg, Homemade Esthetics: observations on art and taste, Oxford University Press, 1999, p.48

I continue to focus my art practice on the way that technology mediates between experience and understanding and also creates the codes with which we represent ourselves and our environment. Scientific imaging technologies have allowed for visual interpretations of the interface between the visible and invisible.

In this new body of work, edges and boundaries are presented as permeable, allowing the inside out and the outside in and suggesting interconnections that exist between and across bodies of knowledge. Environmental textures and forms become the material of the body and the body has become transparent. The meaning of these works is found in the spaces within the steel structure. Shadows are created as light passes through the interlaced metal form and give as much material presence to the body as the structure itself. The interplay of positive and negative spaces metaphorically balances the dichotomies that are part of the human condition.

This exhibition is a continuation of themes developed in a small impromptu show called Precusor held in 2009. For many years I have explored traditional women’s craftwork such as weaving, knitting and patchwork, albeit often using traditionally male materials like steel strapping, timber architrave and the inner tubes of tyres.

From this intensive exploration, the square format evolved and this new body of work will again consist of a series of small square canvases, all identical in size. When installed, however, they will be more like a single kaleidoscope of abstracted shapes and colours.
I am interested in creating paintings that work on a number of levels: as individual entities and as elements within a much larger framework.

My work revolves around ideas of memory, preservation and both the psychological and physical aspects of the human condition.

In the process of laying down memory, signals move through individual nerve cells as tiny electrical charges. These electrical charges form the basis of our memories, thoughts and feelings. They are repeated when one recalls an event, image, emotion or even a scent. As we age or sustain trauma, this procedure can fail but frequently accessed memories can last indefinitely.

These processes constitute the starting point from which I will build, assemble and nurture this new body of work.

My work continues to examine the relationship between culture and nature at a time when these issues are beginning to jostle uncomfortably for room. The naive perception that ‘nature’ is a construct of our own is long past and a cultural shift that acknowledges that we are a fairly minor and extremely vulnerable part of our physical environment needs a greater cultural airing.

It is both humbling and salutary to look back over millions of years of earth’s ‘history’ and place our creative efforts within that context. My contribution attempts to explore narratives that draw on deep time in order to see ourselves within this larger frame.

My painting is strongly influenced by the conventions of cinema, which allows me to put together fragments, cuts and dissolves delivering a “movie” in several frames. This is one of the reasons why I work with figures in motion – to create the implication that something has come before and something will happen after the event. Each scene is a fragment of time in the action – a privileged moment in a continuum.

Each image contains the implication of a narrative. This is conveyed by the motion of figures, the way in which they relate and the “noise” of urban colour, surfaces and signage. However, in the end, I want the work to provide a space for contemplation. I aim for a stillness that comes from an arrested moment that is able to continually engage the viewer. My paintings do not reveal themselves quickly; ideally, they are an invitation to bring one’s own experiences to the work and influence its meaning.

I am intrigued by my own vanity as an artist and the motivation that drives me; the narcissism that makes me think I can sell my realised thoughts; the arrogance that holds me to the idea that my thoughts are valuable to the world and the self-importance that my opinions and philosophy are still relevant in this age of consumerism.

This body of work moves towards a more compatible alignment of material and conceptual content. The porcelain forms I’ve made for some years have always been underpinned by concerns for an environment at risk. As a consequence this show attempts to address my use of resources in object making.

I have changed the way that I work to ensure that there is minimal environmental impact. Most of the power used in firing is supplied by solar panels and steps have been taken to minimise waste in the studio. This journey has also taken me from making works almost exclusively in cast porcelain, through a variety of recycled media into a current obsession with charcoal, which is salvaged from winter fires. Wood for the fire is cut from old fenceposts and fallen branches sourced from local farms. Fuel that would otherwise be piled in a paddock and burnt in ways that are much more polluting than my slow combustion stove. Within a wider conceptual framework, charcoal is linked to scientific investigations into biochar as a soil rejuvenator and an effective means of carbon capture. It can also refer to current political debates about carbon trading.

Each work captures a moment in the life of an individual. A small moment or fragment of a story is made significant by the mere fact that it has been acknowledged. The action represented becomes poetic and symbolic.

The human figures are simplified, faceless and psychologically remote. Are they us or people passing through our lives? The
animal figures also propose a story that the viewer can complete.
I continue to use a variety of materials from solid cast iron and bronze to the more spontaneous corrugated iron fragments reshaped and riveted together.