7 May – 7 June 2014
Marion Borgelt Liquid Light: 70 Degrees 2011 oil on canvas 120.0 x 120.0 cm $16,000
Marion Borgelt is a leading Australian artist with a prodigious career spanning some 30 years. Her work draws inspiration from subjects such as semiotics, language, optics and phenomenology to create atavistic fantasies and mysteries that take form in paintings, sculptures and installations. Her work suggests connections between man-made culture and nature, continually navigating this intermediate space. It speaks to the links between the constructed and the organic world, between microcosm and macrocosm and the ever-present duality of light and dark.
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Marie Hagerty Coupling II 2012 acrylic and oil on canvas 200.0 x 180.0 cm Exhibited: Contemporary Australia: Women, 21 April- 22 July 2012, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery $19,000
Since her first exhibitions in the 1980s, Marie Hagerty has established a reputation as a painter whose work engages with the visual legacies of abstraction and figuration. Hagerty’s paintings offer the viewer a series of puzzling juxtapositions — between simplified and curvaceous shapes, and between eloquent lines and positive or negative space — often in a restricted colour palette. Hagerty paints with both traditional oil paints and modern acrylics, so the works are quite flat but contain small areas of surprising depth, which Hagerty builds through her use of line and shadows. The shadows are not straightforward representations of a light source. Instead, they are used as compositional elements. (Quoted from GOMAQAG website)
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Locust Jones And when you lose control 2013 mixed media on paper 103.0 x 205.0cm Exhibited: 24 HR News Feed: Barry Cleavin and Locust Jones, 6 July – 1 September 2013, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu, New Zealand $6,600
Locust Jones works on paper delve into issues of contemporary politics. With quickly worked surfaces reflecting a stream of consciousness process, these works are energetic and sometimes manic interpretations of current issues. The works swell with thought provoking images already familiar to us, although sometimes subconsciously, through the various media of the Internet, photojournalism, film culture and nightly news broadcasts. Jones’ works have been largely influenced by his travels. Spending time in locations as diverse as Lebanon, India, New York and most recently South Africa, Jones thrives simultaneously in both isolation from and immersion in distinct cultures. Feeling that his strongest works arrive from states of being challenged, his travels have been the catalyst for works that expose the physical pressures of being in unfamiliar or threatening environments and the psychological states required to deal with these environments. (Quoted from an essay by Melanie Flynn)
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Alice Lang Epic Fail Friendship Bracelet 2012 hand woven wool, cotton and resin beads 570.0 x 90.0 cm $5,000
While the statements Lang includes in her artworks may have been casually conceived, their translation is anything but – her labour intensive approach exploits her chosen materials to the limit. The resulting works have been made over many hours, and using unexpected combinations of material – strips of holographic paper, sliced up holiday snaps, tightly controlled lines of colour. In her use of an intensive colour palette and op-art effects, Lang references psychedelic aesthetics, and the cumulative effect is one of dizzying excess – it’s hypnotic, virtually impossible to look away from her swirling vortex of optically vibrating colour. The posters pulse with energy, just as her bubble-lettered statements pop, loud and literal. Yet, by removing the textual referent from its source the underlying seriousness of Lang’s investigation is exposed, even if her tongue remains planted firmly in her cheek. (Quoted from an essay by Bree Richards)
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Derek O’Connor Twixt Cross 2013 synthetic polymer paint on linen 117.5 x 110.0 cm $4,500
While making this new suite of paintings various influences both subtle and obvious worked their way into the production of each work. Firstly, I wanted a change from my usual style of production, namely an impasto surface using spatulas. I decided to use a thin layered application of paint, acrylic rather than oil. I also chose to limit the number of painting tools to three different sizes of rollers, and three different sized brushes. In considering colour I chose pink primarily because of strong associations I had growing up as an English migrant during the 1970s in South Australia: the then premier of South Australia, Don Dustan, wore pink shorts into parliament; the pink Holden Torana came out (designed for the increasing female driver market) and pink’s derogatory association with being a “pooffta”! Pink was also (combined with black) an 80s punk fashion statement, as it was 30 years earlier for young rebellious teenagers of the 50s. Derek O’Connor
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Olsen and Ormandy: Dinosaur Designs Stream 2014 resin, acrylic and stainless steel wire 320.0 x 120.0 x 120.0 cm $25,000
Olsen and Ormandy: Dinosaur Designs is the collaborative Sydney based duo Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy. Their work is a fusion of art, design and fashion. The enlarged sculptural pieces reference Dinosaur Designs wearable and design collections, reinforcing the textural and artful aesthetic, prevalent in their work and bringing it into the gallery context. Nature, one of Olsen and Ormandy’s core inspirations is also drawn upon in these works. Ormandy says, “The transition of colour is like the ocean to shore”.
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John Pule The Great World (To Ha) 2012 enamel, ink, oil, polyurethane and varnish on canvas 200.0 x 200.0 cm Exhibited: Hands to Bathe - Imagining a Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, National Museum of the Royal NZ Navy Devonport 2013 and touring. $45,000
This painting is from a body of work made as a result of a voyage taken in May 2011 when nine influential artists from around Australasia embarked on HMNZS OTAGO and set sail for the pristine waters of the Kermadec Islands. Among them was John Pule and artist Fiona Hall. So many times I have flown over the Pacific in a plane, and stared at it, and been mesmerised by it, and wondered what it was like to be on the water heading towards foreign destinations. I have been engaging with Polynesian and Pacific Island themes for a long time. When I said yes to the Kermadec trip, I wanted to have that sense of being on the sea, going towards a place, and to be inspired by it and, through that experience, create a different language and use words and different imagery to describe the place we call Oceania. We are all from this part of the world. For the past 200-300 years we have been beating each other up, marrying each other, taking parts of each other, making exchanges. We are part of Polynesia and we all belong to the same place we call the ocean. I was fascinated by the uniqueness of the journey and what we would find. If you go to a new place you have to be open to that environment and how you interact with it and how you use it. John Pule
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Reko Rennie Black Magic 2011 neon and perspex 100.0 x 100.0 cm edition: 1/2 Exhibited: Vivid Memories - An Aboriginal Art History, Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux (FR), 16 October 2013 – 30 March 2014 $13,500
Reko Rennie is an interdisciplinary artist who explores his Aboriginal identity through contemporary media. Rennie’s art incorporates his association to the Kamilaroi people, using traditional geometric patterning that represents his community. Through his art, Rennie provokes discussion surrounding Indigenous culture and identity in contemporary urban environments.
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Lisa Roet Revolve Chimp 1 2013 porcelain 22.0 x 123.0 x 20.0 cm (4 pieces) $12,000
Investigating the complex interface between humans and our simian relatives, Lisa Roet’s acclaimed Pri-Mate series thus challenges some of the great paradigms and theories relating to evolution and creationism, language and communication, science and art. Certainly the ape-human connection is a contentious premise in postmodern culture. In a new medium for the artist, these porcelain sculptures appear as sunken monuments recalling the closing sequences of Planet of the Apes, during which, the main character George Taylor looks aghast upon the only partially visible Statue of Liberty, symbolic of the decline of humanity and civilization as we currently encounter it.
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Heather B. Swann Shoulder height 2014 ink on paper 42.0 x 59.5 cm $550
Heather B. Swann’s work is at once figurative and abstract, its animal and human imagery expressed in refined formal organisation and sensual curvature. However, Swann’s variously stretched, twisted and otherwise manipulated birds, beasts and bodies also have a darker quality, a dreamlike, shape-shifting ambiguity.
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Angela Valamanesh Eggs/Seed #C 2009 – 2012 unglazed ceramic 26.5 x 140.0 x 4.0 cm (5 pieces) $5,500
Angela Valamanesh is one of Australia’s most intriguing ceramic artists. Her art is aesthetically minimal and cunningly simple, allowing us to interpret universal and ever-perplexing human, animal and organic forms. Valamanesh re-immerses us in the primeval rawness of form and function and, in doing so, the artist succeeds in visualising what many of her contemporaries have avoided - the symbiosis between art and science.
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Jason Waterhouse The bird house’s big exit 2013 wood 40.0 x 47.0 x 25.0 cm $1,500
For over a decade sculptor Jason Waterhouse has been fascinated with our relationship with the urban environment and how we interact with the everyday objects integral to our lives. The shift to organic material is a significant new chapter in his work, exploring environmental issues and man’s ongoing desire to control and shape the world we live in.
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The catalogue only includes one example of each artist’s work from the exhibition, for further information and more images contact the gallery
Level 1/ 167 Flinders Lane Melbourne Victoria 3000 Australia +61 (3)9639 5855 info@kwgallery.com www.karenwoodburygallery.com Tuesday to Saturday 11 − 5pm