Congratulations to Melissa Egan, who has been selected as a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize with her painting of Charles Blackman called The Old Master, view here.
Opening Night:
Damien Kamholtz
Remember This
March 24 to April 7, 2012
Please join us for drinks with Damien from 6pm on Saturday, March 24.
Click here to RSVP for the Opening Night.
In the slow process of building narrative through nuanced layers of paint and latent symbolism, Damien Kamholtz’s imagery manifests much like the surfacing and subsiding of memory. Deliberately ambiguous, the veiled tableaux generate an imaginative dialogue in which one’s personal experience determines interpretation.
“Child as metaphor is key to this,” says Toowoomba based Kamholtz. As a young father of three and a professional educator, it seems only natural that the subject of his art should involve aspects of childhood but they are given an allegorical context. Kamholtz’s works offer access to our own repressed, or forgotten, inner realms. In a culture dominated by logic, intellect and linear thinking, life becomes a problem to be solved rather than a mystery to be enjoyed. For children the everyday world is interlaced with the world of fantasy and imagination. We all have parts of ourselves still childlike and curious.
“I paint my own children dancing blindly into or around the inevitable loss of innocence; the beauty and tragedy of the moment when experience outweighs the other. It is a returning to a time of total experience, when all was new and undiscovered,” comments Kamholtz. Conjunctly, he employs bird symbology to express that which is instinctive and unbounded. “All I know I’ve learnt from birds,” he says. “Birds have a magical quality to them that I have loved since I was young.” Birds represent freedom from restriction, flights of imagination, thoughts and ideas. Throughout the ages they have been seen as mediators and messengers between the mythic and mundane.
Kamholtz explains that he has always viewed the people and creatures in his work as “being like characters arranged on a minimal stage.” He has recently extended the process of depicting his multilayered, quite abstract concepts in the making of a short film. “Like my paintings, the film also challenges traditional narrative while mapping a young boy’s imaginative and creative evolution.” The film will have its premiere at the Remember This exhibition opening.
Although Kamholtz’s art embodies a sense of nostalgia it is not simply about reflection, rather it aims to rekindle receptiveness to alternative ways of seeing. “The works describe their stories in a non-literal manner, not from left to right nor even beginning to end,” he continues. “I am not so much interested in eliciting meaning, rather my intent lies in presenting a series of prompts, triggers and facilitators of exchange between parties – the object and the viewer.”
“Child is a metaphor for hope, for loss and joy, for blind wisdom and unawareness of pretense. Child is the forming of us now, Child is vivid in the present, a charismatic figure active in the makeup of our memories.” Artist’s journal 2010
JACQUELINE HOUGHTON
Damien Kamholtz holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, USQ and is now undertaking a Master of Fine Arts. He is currently a part-time lecturer at USQ and also tutors for Queensland’s Flying Arts. He is the director and founder of Play on Play, which is a creative collective that promotes community creativity, multiculturalism and environmental awareness. He has published a children’s book in collaboration with schools and communities in Central Australia and has recently returned from London where he presented a series of workshops and curated an exhibition at the International Gallery of Children’s Art. Among his many achievements Kamholtz gained a Gold Medal in the Illustrators Australia Award, 2012 and has twice been a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship 2005, 2007 and a finalist in the Sulman Prize 2010. He is the recipient of grants and residencies both in Australia and abroad.
The exhibition is showing at Anthea Polson Art, Shop 18-20 Mariners Cove, Seaworld Drive Main Beach QLD 4217 (next to Marina Mirage), from March 24 to April 7, 2012.
Her portrait of her daughter Bella has been selected as a finalist in the Northern Rivers Portrait Prize which is held at the Lismore Regional Gallery from the 24 March.
Carolyn V. Watson ‘A Bone To Pick.’
Artworld by Marina Saint Martin
Paradise Magazine,
Gold Coast Bulletin
Bone structure is key to emerging artist Carolyn V. Watson, as her latest exhibition shows so clearly… more
Congratulations to Peter Smets, whose oil on canvas piece Water Towers yesterday won the Gold Coast Art Prize People’s Choice Award.
A Dutch expatriate, Peter said he came across the towers last year when visiting his father in Holland. “It was such a beautiful structure, it struck a chord,” he said …
Opening Night Photos
Carolyn V.Watson
Owning the Bones
January 21.
Her first solo show – but she ‘pulled’ a huge crowd. The exhibition was opened by Independent lecturer and writer Ben Byrne. Ben is the Research and Postgraduate Secretary at Queensland College of Art, Brisbane. More photos here.
View Exhibition | Press Release
Martin has been acquired by The Parliament House Public Collection, Canberra.
He was also the winner of Urban Smart Projects annual Art Force Awards in the best organisation category, as the representative for Autism Qld.
Opening Night:
Carolyn V. Watson
Owning the Bones
January 21 to February 18, 2012
Please join us for drinks with Carolyn from 6pm on Saturday, January 21.
This is Carolyn’s first solo exhibition and it will be opened by Independent lecturer and writer Ben Byrne. Ben is the Research and Postgraduate Secretary at Queensland College of Art, Brisbane.
Click here to RSVP for the Opening Night.
Thoreau’s words, “Know your own bone; gnaw it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still” inform Carolyn V Watson’s conceptualisation and absolute rigour of process in producing “intimately veiled” paintings and “scorched raw” sculptural pieces. With anthropomorphic intent, her anatomically imperfect feral animals are the embodiment of flawed humanity’s foibles and deepest longings.
Ancient beliefs held that the essence of a person was contained in the bones. For Brisbane-based and QCA trained Watson, they represent something enduring in the passing of time – the possessing or coming to terms with one’s own past histories. “The use of bones as a base material is a readily identifiable metaphor,” she muses. “It’s about knowing ourselves, every bulbous, gnarled memory, and accepting the repercussions of our actions and embracing the gift of regret.”
There is a strangely unsettling quality to Watson’s works – one that positively urges engagement. The survival instinct of species alien to new environment finds parallel with our own behavioural patterns when adrift in unfamiliar territory; selective, destructive, adaptive. A curious paradox presents itself as Watson portrays the existential predicament of her empathically termed “stoic thieves”. “I want there to be a quiet tenderness within these works that is beyond the immediate surface,” offers Watson.
The evidence of process and a respect for the handmade is an integral component in all of Watson’s works. There is nothing instantaneous in her practice. “It has always been an emotional title-fight of persistence,” she says, “and a discipline to not go the easy way or use a simple card trick to bring the work to an end.” Watson describes her mixed media drawings on linen as being like ‘cave paintings on skin’ where the internal workings are made manifest in an interplay of brutal shedding and delicate accretion. “I work intuitively,” she explains. “The initial drawn line instigates the Chinese whisper. There is a constant re-editing of space as each layer alters its course and grows over or changes with time. The drips of ink that pool are the only evidence of a previous existence.” Two notable elements within the imagery are the exaggeration of the protagonist’s ears and the omission of at least one limb – “the proverbial, something missing”. Other limbs have evolved into human-like hands. Watson’s mutant creatures invite the viewer to consider one’s own vulnerability and pathos.
The same regard for craftsmanship is invested in Watson’s sculptures that are hand-stitched with a “loving maternal patience”. At first encounter the constructions appear jarring. Standing stark on steel-rod legs, their bodies are encased in felt and sheep leather stretched taut and surmounted by real skulls and antlers. As with the drawings, here too anatomy has been granted a poetic license. The absence of ears in these works is intended to heighten audience participation. Without ears the beings are not readily classified – they become ‘other’ – and as such, act as a conduit to personal reflection. Watson’s new sculptures are white. Aside from the connotations of bones, ghosts and the totemic, she explains that she felt a need to move away from the ‘shadow’ aspect of her previous work. White invites a closer scrutiny where the considered dance of thread becomes evident. “The binding of the object has evolved beyond a system of containment,” says Watson. “It now has a linear function and provides a connection between the 2D and 3D work.”
Although Watson’s art is deeply personal, she is reluctant to expound upon the narrative content and underlying symbolism, preferring that the viewer respond instinctively. Her intention is the prompting of a dialogue with these “aching, untamed creatures” and to express “a quiet tenderness that is beyond the immediate surface.” The exhibition owning the bones is the culmination of experience and memory – an uneasy acceptance of “the human habits exhibited in the everyday.” With a defiant black humour, Watson hopes to “elevate our own marks and scars to that of trophy-room pride.”
Read Full Press Release Here | View exhibition works
The exhibition is showing at Anthea Polson Art, Shops 18-20 Mariners Cove, Seaworld Drive Main Beach QLD 4217 (next to Marina Mirage), from January 21 – February 18 2012
Opening Night Photos
Our Represented Artists Show
Eight Days Before Christmas
December 17.
A great evening – another huge crowd. Our thanks to Andrew Stark who was, as we promised, wonderfully provocative. And Jacquie (no, not that Jacquie) won the beautiful lucky door prize by Robyn Sweaney. More photos here.
View Exhibition | Press Release
Damien has been short listed in the Illustrators Australia Award 2012.
The awards aim to present the very best of illustration and will be judged by top professionals in the fields of advertising, design, publishing and illustration.
The competition is open to all Australian and New Zealand illustrators.
