A classical, timeless serenity imbues the sculptures Phillip Piperides creates. ‘More than naturalistic representations, my work is about capturing moments which occupy a space in time,’ he imparts. The title of the exhibition, Images, refers to musings and perceptions personified into 3D form. Understanding the unclothed figure as a ‘landscape’ of soft undulations, Piperides searches for a nuance in a live model’s pose that will evoke the essence of his subject.
Gold Coast-based Marilyn Peck imparts that the exhibition’s miniature artworks are essentially, ‘poetry in motion’. “My second love, after painting, is the writing of poetry,” Marilyn professes. “I approach both the same way. A word or two will set me off and a poem arises with its own rhythm. Similarly, I love the accidental happenings on the picture plane when I drop colour onto wet, hot-pressed Arches paper. These are gifts that ferment the imaginative process.”
Carolyn V Watson’s new body of work, let’s play pretend, extends her ongoing enquiry into how one might “activate the audience’s curiosity by inverting the familiar and thereby offer new readings of the known”. Beyond a childhood game connotation, the exhibition’s title embodies a deeper signification. It arose from her research into the philosophy of the Russian writer, Viktor Shklovsky. His 1917 treatise, Art as Devise, expounds the notion of ‘defamiliarisation’ in the creation and presentation of art forms. Shklovsky asserted that objects deliberately made ‘unfamiliar’ or strange removed the viewer’s “automatism of perception” so that the ‘commonplace’ might be seen as if for the first time. “Art exists so that one may recover the sensation of life,” he declared.
The physical structures within which we live possess both functional and symbolic qualities, usually an interweaving of both. Home is thought of as a sanctuary – a place to retreat from the world and be oneself. Erica Gray’s current paintings reflect a quest for such. Although the figure is absent from her interiors, a mood of warm intimacy resides amidst the sensuous forces of colour and pattern.
Vicki Stavrou understands the communicative power of colour – it functions as a visual language for her. ‘I am always immersed in thinking about colour. My main goal in painting is to find the most exciting and beautiful combinations that really sing,’ Stavrou declares. In speaking about the exhibition’s title, Golden Daze, she relates that many of her paintings exude an affirmative, golden hue. ‘And sometimes I do feel ‘heady’ being so absorbed in the intensity of my colour choices. Working full-time as an artist is living my dream and that too equates to golden days: Golden Daze.’ Incidentally, the brand of the paint medium Stavrou always uses is called Golden Acrylics.
Sydney-based Sophie Gralton tells that the title for her new body of work, Paint by Numbers, is a ‘tongue in cheek’ jest as to just how opposite her painterly oeuvre is. The antithesis of predetermined, fastidiously rendered illustrations, her concern is the relationship she has with paint: ‘the excitement of the mark, the loss and gains encountered when creating a new work is my impetus.’ Gralton wants us to respond not solely to the subject matter but also to the aesthetic signals the painting communicates. In this quest she employs a direct technique, the loaded brush spontaneously eliciting form and engendering a visceral reaction.
As an introduction to the new Tedder Avenue gallery, Anthea Polson Art presents a selection of limited-edition photographic artworks by the multi-awarded Samantha Everton. The unerring integrity of her photographic processes and an innate ability to access the subliminal in sumptuous visual narratives has won significant international acclaim for the Melbourne-based artist. Numerous series of works spanning 13 years have visually explored subjects “straddling dual worlds” in a quest for self-identity and transcendence amidst cultural variances.
Curious hybrid creatures, schematic figures and plant forms advance and submerge amidst linear markings and colourful geometric shapes. They personify Jill Lewis’s musings about the worlds within and around her. Akin to the intent and pictorial techniques employed by primitive and ancient cultures, the scenarios are invested with symbolism. “As in Egyptian frescoes, the size and position of the characters can be representative of their significance in my own imagined stories,” she imparts.
Secreted somewhere amidst tangles of filigreed foliage may lie the little tadpole and frog pond that was the inspiration for Robert Ryan’s intended new body of works. The pond and its creatures had been a chance discovery he’d made as a child during a brief roadside stop on a long journey. The rebuff of his plea to come see its wonders was his first inkling that he possessed an innate awareness of the ‘other’ shared by very few – the artist’s perspective!
Characterised by an intense involvement in the materiality of paint, Steve Tyerman’s works are the outcome of an intimate engagement with the environment. His art however, communicates a visual experience beyond the strictures of traditional landscape painting. Form, space, colour and light become simultaneously resolved in the immediacy of the palette knife gesture.
Receive e-mail updates on our exhibitions, events and more
Subscribe Now