At the Galleries-April

With The National 2017, New Australian Art, at three venues, there’s a lot going on. Not just the National but some other great exhibitions as well.

Fiona Hall, Gateless Gate, at Roslyn Oxley, 12 April – 13 May 2017.

This is a very intense show comprising different media – bronze sculptures, glass, cuckoo clocks, long case clocks, water colours, installations, photographs. Syria is the over riding theme. There are numerous interpretations and meticulous cataloguing of the multifarious dimensions of the impact of this conflict and its’ drivers. This is very Fiona Hall – you enter into her world. Rather than a series of separate conversations this is one big one with several participants involved. It is a consuming, spooky and draining experience.

Wrong Way Time 2014

By the Book and Protect My Right to be Forgotten

Gateless Gate, 2017

View of exhibition and ‘No Man is an Island’

View of exhibition and ‘No Man is an Island’

Jonny Niesche, Love-light and Nicola Smith, A whole Night, at Sarah Cottier, 20 April – 20 May 2017.

No wonder Jonny Niesche and Nicola Smith are such a relief. Niesche’s immersive colourfield work is mesmerising and calming. Nicola’s takes on black and white movies are as immersive as films. Serial images play out in different scenarios, emotively evoking moments lost, forgotten.

Jonny Niesche

Jonny Niesche

Jonny Niesche

Jonny Niesche

Jonny Niesche

Nicola Smith

Nicola Smith

Nicola Smith

Nicola Smith

Around the galleries – February

There are two great shows across the road from each other in the Trumper Park gallery area of Paddington.

Matthys Gerber at Sarah Cottier Gallery 10 February – 11 March 2017.

Back in the 1980’s, Nederlands born,  Sydney resident, Matthys Gerber was doing massive paintings of babies’ faces that charismatically dominated rooms. He’s still doing confronting postmodernist work except with more clarity. This is a great exhibition of looking though and out of templates into, merging photography with abstraction and expressionism.

Tamara Dean at Martin Brown Contemporary – 2-26 February 2016. Instinctual

A soothing and poignant escape into landscapes and rituals, glimpses into lives of some very free people immersed in these landscapes. Reflections, bird tattoos flying on bodies, sky-peering. Questions arise from of these constructed photographic views of what, where, why and how the people are in these places; floating, walking, giving themselves to  the space and places that Tamara evokes.

Sarah Cottier Gallery

Matthys Gerber

Matthys Gerber

Matthys Gerber

Tamara Dean

Tamara Dean

Tamara Dean

Tamara Dean

 

More of Melbourne, 2017

No matter how often you go to Melbourne there is always more to discover. This may be  a cliche for any city but it’s may also be an indicator of a healthy one; there’s always change and growth happening.

Here’s some recent discoveries during the 2017 Australian Open Tennis Championship. At the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) there’s a challenging show of Viktor & Rolf’s work and a seductive mirrored piece in the main foyer.

NGV,Jeppe Hein, Semicircular Space

NGV,Jeppe Hein, Semicircular Space

NGV, Jeppe Hein, Semicircular Space

NGV, Viktor & Rolf exhibition

NGV, Viktor & Rolf exhibition

NGV, Viktor & Rolf exhibition

NGV, Viktor & Rolf exhibition

NGV, Viktor & Rolf exhibition

Seat pods, Elizabeth Street

Manchester Unity Building

Manchester Unity Building

Beach in Barrangaroo Cutting

What can you do when you wake up to 40*C heat?

Go to the beach where you’ll be burnt to a crisp?  During the Sydney Festival you can go to a sandless, cool and refreshing Beach under the shade of the sandstone cutting at Barangaroo. The 800 mm deep water is an installation made from 1.1 million refreshing white recycled polyethylene balls. Snarkitecture, a New York-based art and architecture collaborative practice are the brains and creative force behind this major free event. Last year there was Ephemeral City which was in the same location and very hard to beat, but this is really fun and you can really throw yourself into it and find it very hard to get out. Whilst there are no life savers there are a lot of helping hands and selfies galore.

This Australian exclusive event is free for all ages between 10:00am – 5:00pm Tuesdays to Sundays (closed Mondays). Last admission for free entry is at 3:30pm. On until 29 January 2017.

Around the galleries – November

On exhibition at  Sarah Cottier Gallery are two artists whose work are both ephemeral and transcendental, Koji Ryui‘s ‘A-UN’ and ‘Singing Vessels’ series and Sandra Selig ‘Air Pieces’. The experience of coming across Ryui’s work is like entering into a room full of antiquities which is filled with the sounds of Tibetan singing bowls. Tiny unglazed ceramic heads with mouths open (A) or closed (UN) play silent songs to each other. The rawness of the clay contrasts with the eclectic placement of scraps of playful, random materials like Christmas tinsel. A central table displays upturned glasses with bowls and vases or vessels with rods used to create the singing of the bowls. The sound is another layer that transforms these everyday objects into something else. Though separate, the two installations work together also as a binary.

Koji Ryui Singing Vessels

Koji Ryui Singing Vessels

Koji Ryui A-UN

Koji Ryui A-UN

Koji Ryui A-UN

Koji Ryui A-UN

Sandra Selig, Air Pieces

Sandra Selig, Air Pieces

Sandra Selig work has architectural and space-making qualities about it. The rectangular field of suspended rods play with light and movement. With the cut our figure grounds in yellow and red on the wall, again there is a binary contrast at work here.

Exhibition on at Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney, 18th November – 17th December 2016.

Customs House spirographs of colour

When you see layers of multi-coloured ribbons streaming and layering down from above the first thought that comes to mind is ‘Spirograph’. Apparently ‘Spirograph’ is still available to draw those gyrating patterns with but Megan Geckler Studio’s version in Customs House for Art & About is like a 3D version of it. It takes up the volume of the central atrium descending from the ceiling and spreading out onto a frame above ground level. Each pice of tape is critically positioned to create subtlety layers of graduating colours and rhythms.

installation

installation

installation

installation

installation

installation

the final piece

the final piece

As you move around the piece you sense a rainbow of  movement. With the light coming though from glass ceiling there an ethereal lightness to it all and a wonderful sense of space.”The end result resembles an updated three-dimensional version of string art that shares the seemingly kinetic territory of the Op Art and Light+Space movements. These site-specific projects are also strongly influenced by minimalism, but retain a sense of play and delight”.(From Megan heckler studio website).

On 17 November 2016- 30 April 2017

Tatsuo Miyajima at the Museum of Contemporary Art

This is a magical exhibition of digital numbers – floating, swimming, clicking, transforming – in every imaginable  permutation. Tatsuo Miyajima  “Connect with Everything”includes sculptures, installations, water ponds, windows and rooms by one of  Japan’s leading contemporary artists.  Watching the train go round the huge pile of coal with its flickering numbers embedded in it is quite mesmerising and references the people cargo trains of Nazi Germany. The room with a ceiling of suspended lights/numbers with cushions to lie in and gaze at the constellations is ethereal. Using a basic building block of digital numbers he creates digital sketches about time, place, space, past , present and future.

MCA steps

Floating Time V2-02-Yellow Shanghai 2000/2016. Floating Time V2-02-SHocking Pink 2000/2016

Diamond in You No8. 2010

Mega Death 1999

Time Train to the Holocaust 2008/2016. Counter Coal 2008/2016

Arrow of Time

Arrow of Time concept