A sense of quietude pervades Robyn Sweaney’s new body of work. The mood is one of introspection and stasis. She explains that her current paintings were created amidst ‘a year of uncertainty and the complexities of a world where our collective experience of multiple lockdowns, orders to ‘stay at home’ and be ‘alone together’ have become the new normal’. The exhibition’s title, Long Road Home, references memories of pre-2020 excursions from Mullumbimby to visit family and the Victorian landscapes of childhood, as well as a 2012 residency in Broken Hill. ‘The vistas and dwellings I had encountered along the way were quite literally, a long way from home!’ remarks Sweaney. ‘More than just reflections on my travels, the imagery embodies the larger issues we’ve all faced. It is about distance, but also love, longing and hope.’
Two very different creative approaches are evident in David Green’s current exhibition. Large, incredibly intricate, dip-pen and ink drawings, that take months to complete, are juxtaposed alongside small, gestural and collaged evocations. ‘When I finish a big drawing, I need to clear my head, so I’ll spend a period of time just having fun,’ Green remarks. ‘My work has always fluctuated between fine line and broad brushstrokes; between drawing, drawing/embroideries and painting,’ he furthers. Green relays that this is in all probability a consequence of working as a freelance textile designer in his early days. A constant changing of styles was required to meet the various companies’ niche markets.
A conversation may be defined as an exchange of sentiments, observations and ideas. Buderim-based Veronica Cay’s new body of works reflects a ruminative dialogue with her materials and subject depiction, as well as certain historical art pieces. The drawings, canvases and ceramic figures portray the imaginary conversations that she’d loved to have shared with an adventurous aunt but lacked the opportunity. The aunt had led quite an extraordinary life. In 1936, at the age of 15, she left a very conservative family in Toowoomba to attend Sydney’s National Art School never to return home.
Working from her studio in the hills behind the small northern NSW town of Mullumbimby, Avital Sheffer creates profoundly beautiful vessels that have attracted international recognition. An exhibition of Sheffer’s hand-built ceramic art resonates the atmosphere of a sacred space. The forms may be thought of as portals between realms past and future, temporal and spiritual. Sheffer tells that the title for her current body of work ‘refers to the capacity of vessels to tell stories, to store knowledge, to keep records of place and time. There is inherent poetry in such intimate, yet collective memory. I perceive material and spirit as inseparable.’
Robert Ryan’s new series of works again engages the viewer in a poetic linking of humanity and the natural world. Picture surfaces pulse with linear activity and an astounding array of biomorphic shapes. Sociological and ecological implications are ever present. The exhibition’s title, I Found an Old Box of Paint, may seem curious but Ryan imparts that it has both a metaphorical and quite literal relevance.
‘I opened an old carton of oil paints that I had discovered during the packing up of my print studio below the Barebones Gallery in Bangalow,’ he explains. ‘Long forgotten, it had been stored away when I was preparing to go overseas in the early 2000’s. Some of the tubes would have been from the mid 90’s… a lot of memories in that box!’
The imagery in Steve Tyerman’s new body of work fosters warm, escapist thoughts of a haven beyond everyday concerns. He tells that the title of the exhibition, An Island in the Sun, refers to the special relationship Australians have with coastal regions. ‘There is something magical about being on the edge of this huge island and looking out to the vastness of the ocean and what lies beyond – and beneath. Despite the ocean’s enormous life-force and the hustle of holiday makers along its beaches, the shoreline has a strangely calming effect.’
Peter Smets’ new body of work revisits the construction activities that now define his oeuvre. ‘Construction sites have always intrigued me,’ he imparts. ‘One day there is nothing and the next a large building!’ The Gold Coast-based artist tells that what happens during the various stages of construction is fascinating and provides copious inspiration. Enclosed behind high barriers, the men and machinery that raise a building from rubble metaphorically exist ‘in the shadow’. For Smets however, they are the ‘making of works of art in themselves’ and worthy of ‘spotlight’ exposure.
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.
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