& Gallery - FED SQ. - Abstraction Catalogue

From the Curator

Abstraction: Inside / Out

Abstraction isn’t a singular style or movement; it can exist in all art to a certain degree. Various definitions of abstraction include ‘freedom from representational qualities in art’ and ‘not representing things pictorially’. It’s more about how the beauty of shapes and colours can override representational accuracy. Abstraction is a ‘continuum’. Many art movements have been influenced by and employ abstract principles to a varying extent; the more removed from reality a painting or sculpture is, the more abstract it could be considered.

This exhibition could have easily been called ambiguous. As humans we naturally see something in abstraction, a face, a figure, an animal or an object. We are compelled to make something of nothing as a way of being in control. Artists have been exploring abstraction for centuries. Abstract art has been around since the Stone Age in the form of prehistoric cave drawings and their renderings of dots and symbols, yet it wasn’t until the late 19th Century that artists began to break away from dominant Classical Realism (depicting a recognisable subject) in western art.

In 1910 Kandinsky returned to his studio and through filtered sunlight observed a painting he didn’t recognise. The lines and colours had no reference point. What he saw was an emotional experience that required no narrative. It was powerful and intriguing, spiritual and primal. It turns out it was one of his works in progress turned on its side. It is this simple, momentary visual illusion that has been argued represents the birth of modern abstraction.

Our artists represented in this exhibition all use abstraction in various degrees.

Takahiko Sugawara loves repetition, layering and overlapping. These ideas are rooted in his teenage years when he was a member of the number one ranked high school marching band in Japan. His experiences with patterns and shapes directly influence his ideas concerning form, layering, overlapping and repetition.

As an outsider artist Robert Croft delights in the colour, texture and the rhythm of the application of media, pushing as far as the materials will allow. The layers of colour and texture Robert achieves through his practice demonstrate the instinctual nature of this artists process. This is Roberts way of communicating.

Manfred Krautschneider’s work style is immediately recognizable. It progresses photography in the direction of the surreal and poetic, without any need for the artificial devices of the modern masters. Containing subtle mnemonics, these images allow deep associations to emerge over time.

Maryana Luchi is a Ukrainian artist who is currently in Prague, Czech Republic, where she fled with her two small children from the war. She creates her art by handembroidering with glass beads, sewing the canvas to create emotive symbolism.

Gordon Munro describes himself as a generative artist: generative artists design processes that in turn generate artworks, either autonomously or in collaboration with humans. In Gordon’s case, the generating system is a computer program and the artworks are made in a digital medium: digital prints and videos, or a display generated in real time by computer algorithms.

Faustas Sadauskas is a master in the manipulation of stone. As works of contemporary art, they seek to address the process by which geometric volumes are recomposed. Originating as simple constructs, they are transfigured into recognisable abstract forms - the cylinder becomes a ring, the cone twists into a knot, the cube loops around itself, the sphere is divided into variegated hues and ovals interweave within their own space.

Curator - Julie Collins

Takahiko Sugawara

I love repetition, layering and overlap.

These ideas are rooted in my teenage years when I was in the number one high school marching band in Japan. As a band, we performed in many different configurations.

If someone was absent there would be a gap, an empty space in the pattern. Incomplete patterns were frustrating, and in my artwork I want to create complete shapes and consistent patterns.

My experiences with patterns and shapes directly influence my ideas concerning form, layering, overlapping and repetition. I commonly use 3mm corten steel cut into different shapes with a plasma cutter, often with beeswax covering the sculpture surface.

Taka was born in Italy in 1979. Growing up, he was surrounded by stunning art pieces like sculptures and paintings. As both parents were both artists. After two decades, Taka became determined to become a sculptor like his father.

Taka completed a masters degree in a sculpture course in 2007. During this degree he made many large metal sculptures. Moreover, he spent the majority of his university life at a metal studio.

During one semester, he had the opportunity to study at Berlin Art University and he studied there for half a year. However, unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to make metal sculptures there, so he decided to work with wood and create wood sculptures instead.

In 2012, Taka moved to Melbourne in Australia and attended to many sculpture exhibitions. In recent years, he has been based in Ballarat in Regional Victoria and has continued to make metal sculptures in his studio while also working as a boiler maker at a construction company.

Sugawara

4.

Sugawara

Robert Croft

Robert is considered an outsider artist and has been working closely with Sculptor Mark Cuthbertson developing his practice. Robert’s application of any medium he uses gives a tactile quality to his work.

He delights in the colour, texture and the rhythm of the application, pushing as far as the materials will allow. The layers of colour and texture Robert achieves through his processes, demonstrate the instinctual nature of this Artist.

An industrious worker, Robert enjoys working across a range of mediums and can draw reference from still life and the printed image; but mainly and most effectively his inspiration comes from the pure joy of creating. Robert is an active member of Art Gusto, a supported art studio full of energy, vibrancy and original ideas. It is a studio for Artists self- motivated to create.

At ArtGusto, artists can access support from qualified practicing artists, working with them in a professional studio to assist their artistic practice.

Robert Croft

13. Robert Croft Graphite on Brown Graphite, arcylic on Board

x 117cm

Robert Croft White on Red Pastel, acrylic on Board

x 117cm

Manfred Krautschneider

Based on reflections of the streetscape, on imperfect surfaces, and sometimes slightly enhanced in colour or by adding elements of another photo, Manfred Krautschneider’s work style is immediately recognizable. It progresses photography in the direction of the surreal and poetic, without any need for the artificial devices of the modern masters. Containing subtle mnemonics, these images allow deep associations to emerge over time.

Here his twin obsessions of social isolation amidst the café culture, and the imminent catastrophe of war, give way to a seemingly joyous but fraught image of the unstable earth we inhabit. Successfully holding the border between recognition and abstraction, my surreal photographs transform suburban streetscapes into transcendent images.

Manfred Krautschneider

Shifting

Maryana Luchi

Ukrainian embroidery artist.

Works are in the author’s technique. All works are hand-embroidered with glass beads.

Over two years of work in this direction, more than 40 works were created, some of which are in private collections in Ukraine, USA, Italy and Austria.

At the moment I live and work in Prague, Czech Republic, where I took two small children from the war.

21. Maryana Luchi

Ukraine - Before

Canvas hand-embroidered with glass beads Unique

x 40cm

22. Maryana Luchi

Maryana

Gordon Monro

Gordon Monro is a digital media artist who lives in Ballarat, Victoria.

Gordon describes himself as a generative artist: generative artists design processes that in turn generate artworks, either autonomously or in collaboration with humans. In Gordon’s case, the generating system is a computer program and the artwork is made in a digital medium: digital prints and videos, or a display generated in real time by the computer.

Gordon draws on his background in science and mathematics to make works that in large part draw their inspiration from realms outside the confines of purely human concerns; he is also interested in the large-scale forces operating on human society. His primary sources are geometry and pure mathematics, and processes of various kinds in the natural and human worlds. Gordon also draws on the history of Western abstract art, and in particular on constructivist art and minimalist art.

Gordon Monro

Faustas Sadauskas

Faustas Sadauskas is a master in the manipulation of stone. He has a had a long and fruitful career, exhibitions across Australia and internationally. His works are held in many significant private collections.

Requisition of Matter is an expose of selected works articulating the use of Australian marble to remake found objects into abstract sculptures. As works of contemporary art, they seek to address the process by which geometric volumes are recomposed. Originating as simple constructs, they are transfigured into recognisable abstract forms - the cylinder becomes a ring, the cone twists into a knot, the cube loops around itself, the sphere is divided into variegated hues, ovals interweave within their own space... The use of marble sees various structural elements within each work become fastened to create an equilibrium of pivoting shapes. Other forms are braced together or buttressed against one another, seemingly defying their own material shortcomings having been moulded and flexed into various contortions. In so, they redefine their own material properties, that sees uninhibited gestures of movement and fluidity.

What may be an industrial discard to some, can be reimagined to a new scale. The utilitarian hand held and purpose built becomes construed into a sculpture object. Fabricated offcuts, seemingly jettisoned from everyday use, are differentiated to find new meaning. These works recollect a design function. However, unlike the detached fabricating processes and digital make believe of todays visual kaleidoscope, they are steadfast concrete objects requiring human touch – art made in reverence of real matter. Having delved into various genres in the past, the reoccurring theme of fashioning stone into sculpture continues to oscillate between the notions of the abstract and representational. As hard and as difficult a material may be, marble itself, when polished, takes on an entirely different hue as though contradicting its own density as a metamorphic crystalline calcium carbonate composite.

The stone quarried from the East Gippsland region of Victoria is a rare commodity that few artists dare to challenge. Though spontaneity may be an uncommon trait amongst sculptors working in such a material, the patience required and the delayed gratification of the working process, add to the potency of each individual work. Inevitably, stone as sculptural matter, cannot be completely mastered or yielded to bare the artist’s will. At best, it may be requisitioned to serve a higher purpose and be granted the respect it deserves. F.S

Faustas Sadauskas

28. Faustas Sadauskas

Plait

Fredrick White

There is the history of abstract art known to most people through the art of the early to mid20th Century. Abstracted figures and radical abstraction were part of these movements and an end unto themselves. For my own practice abstraction is not a style I have consciously taken on and subscribed to, but rather a means to an end that has come about and taken these for ms as I have fine tuned and explored my beliefs about existence and mortality (admittedly a language of approximation). The notions of these meditations while abstract in form, filtered through subconscious murmurings are for me concrete in other ways; the materiality and association of these materials is perhaps the opposite of the abstract.

The pipe form of Recorded Flight as a conduit of water emanates and connects to the black box shape at the base, the abstract dance that ensues is from many angles quite figurative. Conceptually I see these pipe work that I have made over many years to being a metaphor for life’s Journey, the twists and turns that life takes, chance co-incidence and spontaneity are all abstract concepts. Inversely Recorded Flight like our own lives, springs from one point and eventually returns to it, universal truths about life that connects us all.

The Idea of the spiritual has been explored in art across all cultures since human history began and while the concept of the spiritual in art is very abstract and impossible to quantify it is certainly visible to me in all my favourite works of art. The abstracted humanoid spirit shape that has popped up in my works since 1986 has been a core motif for in my practice for exploring inter-dimensional ideas about the universe, transference of energy from one place or life to another. In my world everything is connected not just physically but consciously.

Fredrick White

Spirit

32. Fredrick White Living Memory Cast Bronze, Steel

155 x 30 x 30cm

$12,000 inc GST

33. Fredrick White Recorded Flight

Steel, Paint

@FED SQ. Melbourne CBD.

In the Atrium opposite the NGV entrance Open 7 days a week 11.00 - 5.00pm

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