Media Releases

Media Releases
Private: Peter Smets

In The Shadow

26/06/2021 - 10/07/2021

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.


Media Releases
Phillip Piperides

Images

29/05/2021 - 12/06/2021

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.


Media Releases
Marilyn Peck

Poetry In Motion

29/05/2021 - 12/06/2021

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.”


Media Releases
Carolyn V Watson

Let’s play pretend

01/05/2021 - 15/05/2021

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.


Media Releases
Martin Edge

Martin’s Adventurtes

17/04/2021 - 30/04/2021

Much of the imagery in Martin Edge’s new body of work revisits urban landscapes he has previously painted. But each time Martin ventures forth from his Strathpine studio he says “it’s like seeing places for the very first time”. An unfailing positivity and sense of humour always accompanies Martin on his adventures. The omnipresent depiction of city cats and ferries signify the process of being ‘out and about’. Awareness of historical features and keen observational skills direct his course and subsequent renderings. Vibratory colours and schematic representations of sites encountered translate his joyful, immersive experiences.


Media Releases
Jodie Wells

Growing Wild

27/03/2021 - 10/04/2021

Once upon a time everything in the natural world was growing wild. Over the eons, certain animals, birds and flowers became domesticated or cultivated by humans for practical or aesthetic purposes. Jodie Wells’ new body of work expresses a desire for a more natural state of being; a return to tactility and away from an electronic, virtual reality. The paintings’ surfaces are palpable. We encounter nature in all its wild, textural vividness through the gestural freedom of her palette knife markings. Rather than realist depictions of flora and fauna, her works aim to convey the ‘spirit and energy’ of her subjects.


Media Releases
Erica Gray

life@home

27/02/2023 - 13/03/2021

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.


Media Releases
Vicki Stavrou

Golden Daze

23/01/2021 - 06/02/2021

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.


Media Releases
Sophie Gralton

Paint By Numbers

05/12/2020 - 19/12/2019

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.


Media Releases
Charles Blackman

Paintings, drawings and sculpture

14/11/2020 - 28/11/2022

Charles Blackman is one of Australia’s favourite iconic artists. An acute sense of emotional interplay between the viewer, the subject and the artist is at the center of his artworks. He is particularly renowned for his rendition of feelings and the feminine, showing up and focusing on particularities of the most tender and complex emotions that are difficult to express in any other way.


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