HIGH RISE / LOW RISE & CURRENTS by ANNA MADELINE @ CCAS (2016)

HIGH RISE

LOW RISE

COVER: ANNA CAREY Hi Sky (detail), 2014, digital print, edition of 7; 80cm x 120cm

HIGH RISE / LOW RISE ANNA CAREY CLAUDIA DE SALVO ANJA LOUGHHEAD MONIQUE MONTFROY MILLAN PINTOS-LOPEZ KAEL STASCE CURATED BY DAVID BROKER AND REBECCA ROSS

CURRENTS ANNA MADELINE

HIGH RISE / LOW RISE A townhouse, a duplex, a small studio at the back of a duplex, an apartment and now a converted fibro shack.

What’s of interest here?

The complex also has a pool for those long summer days.

The sweeping view provides a relaxing aspect; perfect for unwinding after a long day.

I find myself bamboozled

That particular place (the apartment) was north facing.

I sleep in my van.

Safely grounded at street level.

This talk is laced with a plethora of slick promotional videos, but little evidence of the layered and complex dynamism requisite of a community addressing its own implicit geographic, social, and demographic needs - although there’s more cafes than ever before.

To keep you comfortable all year round there is a large reverse cycle split-system‌ It’s a strangely beautiful thing when buildings reflect light like crystals might.

Each of them sat comfortably close to terra ferma.

High rises, low rises and in-between rises.

I had to climb two flights of stairs home.

The culture, its developments and opportunities.

MONIQUE MONTFROY On Duty, 2016, digital print on archival matte paper; 42cm x 59.4cm

MONIQUE MONTFROY Beach Ready, 2016, digital print on archival matte paper; 42cm x 59.4cm

Located in the heart of Canberra, this bright and airy apartment features‌

Initiatives that group artists and creatives together to discuss ideas take place every other week. I went to one. It was called 2970 degrees. I think its a reference to the boiling point of something?

From its balcony I could see the Surfers Paradise skyline protruding stoically, glistening gold as the sun set on glass and steel.

Be the first to occupy this brand new one bedroom, plus study executive apartment situated on level one of the sought after IQ complex, offering all the mod cons and convenience of city living.

Q1 How did I end up here?

I don’t think I am a typical Gold Coast type.

I like the ocean and I live near it.

I never tire of turning into my street and sensing the ocean at the end of my road.

I’m frequently told how great it is here, especially the culture, its developments and opportunities.

There are a heap of commercial galleries, People think I surf...

This large 3 bedroom 1st floor apartment has plenty of space to relax in.

There’s lots of money for that kind of thing.

Pacific Fair and Sheraton Mirage.

ANJA LOUGHHEAD Where the bloody hell are you?, 2016, assorted linen and cotton tea towels, calico and thread; 410cm x 245cm

ANJA LOUGHHEAD Where the bloody hell are you? (detail), 2016, assorted linen and cotton tea towels, calico and thread; 410cm x 245cm

Conveniently located within walking distance to local shops and only minutes away from Cooleman Court Shopping Centre plus the arterial roads to the City, Barton, Woden or Tuggeranong as well as the Mt. Stromlo bike and walking tracks.

...pictures, mostly paintings, the occasional photograph, small sculptures, that sort of thing.

I’m not convinced though.

I remember seeing at this one place in Pac Fair a whole bunch of dolphin paintings in blue painted frames with seashells glued onto them.

Entertain outdoors under a covered deck at the front of the house and a paved pergola area in the backyard.

Come and enjoy this three bedroom home with a sunny outlook situated in a quiet and tranquil, kid friendly street.

The master bedroom features an ensuite and you’ll be cosy for those frosty Canberra nights with electric heating.

...Saturday nights Orchid Ave. I went to one.

Stunning, spacious and stylish top floor 2 bedroom apartment ideally situated in‌ Floating bamboo timber flooring throughout the living.

Does Canberra have High Rises?

Does the Gold Coast have Low Rises?

Together with a lovely leafy outlook this apartment is sure to please.

This beautiful apartment is finished to a high standard with quality inclusions and neutral tones throughout.

Chris Bennie, 2016

KAEL STASCE Dip, 2016, steel, acrylic paint and wood; 85.5cm x 125cm x 25cm

KAEL STASCE Dip, 2016, steel, acrylic paint and wood; 85.5cm x 125cm x 25cm

High Rise / Low Rise began as a mentoring program with Rebecca Ross Artistic Director of The Walls Art Space and David Broker Director of Canberra Contemporary Art Space.

In its early stages the project required visits to art spaces in Canberra and on the Gold Coast, the exchange of information and lengthy discussions concerning budgets, finance and funding. Eventually over a glass of wine, the uncanny similarities between Canberra and the Gold Coast started to dominate the conversation.

Speaking atmospherically, while the two cities are like chalk and cheese, both are designed for very specific purposes with industrial foundations of: (i) politics and education and (ii) holidays and night-life. Each underwent major development during the 1960s and 70s and has a fragile sense of heritage. While the Gold Coast’s buildings reach for the sky and Canberra central limits building heights to 617 metres above sea level, both locations tend to keep the notion of old at a distance. Importantly, both centres have a symbolic role in the Australian national psyche, Canberra as political capital and the Gold Coast as leisure capital. Consequently, Chris Bennie’s poetic catalogue essay reflects a common obsession with prime real estate using texts from property advertising to reflect characteristic lifestyles and the architecture that maintains them. At Vice Vice Baby beneath the Outrigger Resort, Miami Beach; as each curious paradoxical similarity emerged an exhibition evolved that focuses on the artistic concerns and styles of each city.

As one might expect with a title like High Rise / Low Rise, several artists have contributed works that echo the urban landscapes of Canberra and the Coast, albeit in ways somewhat abstract. Kael Stasce’s elegant interventions into the structural peculiarities of venues focus attention on aspects of buildings that are not always seen, hiding certain elements while highlighting others. They constantly remind the audience how

much goes unnoticed in the most familiar city surrounds. An aficionado of Bauhas design and Dada, Millan Pintos-Lopez’s stark lines are an oblique evocation of crazy paving with an intimation of the impenetrable maze, holding a stable pattern within the tenets of modernism. These works along with Claudia De Salvo’s tiny sculptures explore the audience’s interaction with the kind of physical spaces that seem to dominate in the uniformity of Canberra and the Gold Coast’s urban plans. De Salvo’s fragmented constructs speak of decay, where the dynamic space generated within the work is as important as its ostensibly disintegrating structure. All three provide a refined understanding of interactions with physical spaces and how they are connected to architecture and the built environment.

The monochromatic aesthetic of Stasce, Pintos-Lopez and De Salvo dissolves into garish colour as the three other participants turn with varying degrees of sardonic humour to industry, tourism and the leisure activities of local communities and their visitors. Anja Loughhead’s wall of souvenir tea towels contextualise Canberra and the Gold Coast within a tawdry iconography of common Australian stereotypes, blurring the boundaries of national pride and shame. The text, “Where the bloody hell are you?” emblazoned across these colourful symbols of domesticity references a controversial 2007 advertising campaign by Tourism Australia that saw tourist numbers fall. Ambiguity also drives responses to Anna Carey’s work, whose photographs of models of seedy motels capture feelings of wistful reminiscence, and disgust. With names like Hi Sky and Pool Side she raises the spectre of the Americanisation of The Gold Coast that is highlighted by ubiquitous Vegas style motels and hotels. Monique Montfroy’s documentary style of photography is the perfect complement to Loughhead and Carey with its harshly lit views of everyday life on the Coast. Exposing the nationalist mythologies of coastal lifestyle with sunlight, each image suggests that Gold Coast glamour is a thin veneer over nostalgia for an Australia that only ever existed in dreams.

High Rise / Low Rise is a contemporary art Contiki Tour with artworks packed in suitcases, curators on flights to far-flung locales, artists emerging from airport terminals into the sea air of the Gold Coast and mountain air of Canberra. Importantly this exhibition is not only about the work on display but also about the experience of being involved. It is often difficult for emerging artists to secure exhibitions outside their base and High Rise / Low Rise attempts to make this possible. It is an opportunity for artists from regional Australia to travel together, to develop skills in touring their work, to meet other artists and curators while learning about other art spaces and places.

David Broker with thanks to Rebecca Ross High Rise / Low Rise is supported by The Regional Arts Development Fund. The Regional Arts Development Fund is a Queensland Government and City of Gold Coast Council partnership to support local arts and culture.

CLAUDIA DE SALVO Master Plan (detail), 2016, mixed media; dimensions variable

CLAUDIA DE SALVO Master Plan (detail), 2016, mixed media; dimensions variable

MILLAN PINTOS-LOPEZ To walk away from the devine, or stare with open eyes towards the sun I & II, 2016, house paint on Arches BFK; 66cm x 78cm

ANNA CAREY Hi Sky, 2014, digital print, edition of 7, 80cm x 120cm

Anna Carey is an Australian artist whose work overlaps photography, model-making, film and drawing. Through memory and imagination, she creates fictive architectural spaces based on familiar iconic architecture, which she photographs. The camera lens magnifies the model with all its imperfections and reminds the viewer that the photograph has been constructed with a miniature materialized object. The photograph of the model creates a disorientating experience for the viewer which opens up an imaginative space for one to pause and reflect on their own experiences embedded within the familiar spaces. Anna completed a Bachelor of Visual Media with Honours (first class) at the Queensland College of Art and is currently undertaking postgraduate studies with QCA. She has exhibited at Photo la, Los Angeles; Artereal Gallery, Sydney; Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane; Dlux Media Arts, Federation Square Melbourne and the Museum of Brisbane. She has been shortlisted in numerous prizes including The Churchie National Emerging Art Award, The Queensland Regional Art Awards and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award which she received the acquisition award. Her work has been acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, University of Queensland, Caboolture Regional Art Gallery and numerous private collections.

Anja Loughhead is an emerging visual artist based in Canberra, Australia. Working across a range of media which include; video, photography, drawing and assemblage Loughhead’s practice explores the public narrative of Australia’s migration history and the subsequent implications upon the individual. The grandchild of Finnish migrants Loughhead scrutinises the ongoing construction of national identity by reflecting upon the self and the feeling of cultural diaspora which follows. Through the repurposing public archive material and the manipulation everyday items, Anja reveals new narratives through the combination of imagery, material and text. Straddling a line between truth and fiction, humour and trauma, Anja attempts to locate the personal within the national.

Monique Montfroy is a photographer and new media artist based on the Gold Coast.

Monique completed a Bachelor of Digital Media majoring in Photo Media in 2014 at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. In 2015 her body of work ‘Bois to Men’ [2014] was shortlisted for the National Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra and she was awarded a scholarship to complete her Honours study from the Association of Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (ADFAS).

Monique aims for her images to make an impact on society, to tell stories and shed light on concepts and issues that are not commonly spoken about in mainstream media.

Her current work explores notions of identity on the Gold Coast through portraiture, documentary and street photography.

Millan Pintos-Lopez completed a BA Visual Arts (Hons) at Australian National University Art School, Canberra, in 2015, majoring in Printmedia and Drawing. Millan has been the recipient of an EASS (Emerging Artists Support Scheme), the Ampersand Duck Residency, Canberra Mentoring Program with mentor Peter Vandermark, and awards from Cox Architecture, Canberra Museum and Art Gallery. Millan has completed residencies at the University of Hawaii’s print department and the Buenos Aires at Proyecto Ace Sub30 Residency program. Millan currently works as a Technical Officer at Megalo Print Studio + Gallery in Canberra. His recent work explores humanity’s irrational desire for a rational existence in an unpredictable universe employing printmaking, painting, installation and sculpture, his works examine points of convergence between contemporary art and modernism, with its links to advertising and propaganda, design and architecture.

Claudia De Salvo is an emerging mixed media and installation artist based in both Brisbane and the Gold Coast. In 2014 she completed her bachelor of Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, majoring in interdisciplinary sculpture, and she is currently

undertaking a masters in Creative Production and Arts Management at the Queensland University of Technology. Claudia is interested in space activation and community engagement and remains committed to exploring these ideas within the context of both the gallery and the public sector. Her practice reflects a desire to develop a better understanding of how people interact with physical spaces, and in particular, how our emotional connections to physical spaces are influenced by architecture and the built environment.

Kael Stasce completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts receiving First Class Honours in Painting at the Australian National University in 2014. Kael has exhibited at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Manuka and Gorman House, M16 Art Space, Canberra, Garage Gallery, Canberra and Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra. Kael has been the recipient of the CAPO Emerging Art Award , Canberra Contemporary Art Space Residency Award and Canberra Mentorship Award. Kael’s practice explores the relationship between visual perception and physical experience when viewing works of art, and industrial methods of construction to create sculptures and assemblages where the relationship between himself, the object and observer are questioned. His process incorporates bending, welding, grinding, sanding, painting and cutting, and employs sheet metal, bike frames, road signs and discarded or found components. The contrasting elements in Kael’s work aims to expand on the idea of painting as a constructed object beyond a flat surface, allowing me to consider the connections made between the materials and their relationship with the spectator. My investigation is focussed on the spectator’s physical interaction with works of art.

Curated by David Broker and Rebecca Ross

ANNA MADELINE CURRENTS

Currents consists of an interactive installation and a series of animations that explore the materiality of digital communication.

The Submarine Cable Map is an interactive, physical map of the global network of undersea cables that carry the communication signals of the Internet. It challenges how we conceptualise the Internet as a ‘wireless’ technology rather than a physical infrastructure. Remapping a communication system normally regarded as invisible highlights the evocative fragility of a world physically connected by cables.

Viewers are invited to interact with the work through an analogue switchboard that illuminates corresponding pathways around the world. This interaction is a reminder of the materiality of the Internet, where digital communication is entangled, chaotic, and subject to interference from the natural world.

The animations in Currents bring together maps of global ocean currents and tectonic plates with imagery common to digital errors and delays, such as the ‘loading’ icon.

They playfully consider elements of land and ocean that transmission signals pass through to reach our screens.

The animations in Currents were created during a residency supported by Arts ACT.

ANNA MADELINE Submarine Cable Map, 2016, EL wire and electronic components, aluminium, wood, paint; approx 200cm x 320cm

ANNA MADELINE Submarine Cable Map (detail), 2016, EL wire and electronic components, aluminium, wood, paint; approx 200cm x 320cm

HIGH RISE / LOW RISE ANNA CAREY, CLAUDIA DE SALVO, ANJA LOUGHHEAD, MONIQUE MONTFROY, MILLAN PINTOS-LOPEZ, KAEL STASCE CURATED BY DAVID BROKER AND REBECCA ROSS

CURRENTS ANNA MADELINE CATALOGUE BY ALEXANDER BOYNES

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE FRIDAY 14th OCTOBER - SATURDAY 19th NOVEMBER 2016 GORMAN ARTS CENTRE, 55 AINSLIE AVE. BRADDON CANBERRA A.C.T. Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 5pm | www.ccas.com.au

CCAS IS SUPPORTED BY THE ACT GOVERNMENT, AND THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNNENT THROUGH THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, IT’S ARTS FUNDING AND ADVISORY BODY.