Exhibitions
May
Monkey Business
Painting can be a forcefield, a place with edges, finitude—even if what plays out within its borders is a kind of absurd, stuttering chaos. For Brent Harris, painting is a place to frame and momentarily circumscribe shifting psychological states and philosophical questions that threaten to overwhelm us at times. This is why their forms are inexhaustible, always requiring recombination, reassessment, another painting.
Harris chose the exhibition title “Monkey Business” (with its allusions to playful, mischievous, or even inappropriate behaviour) as an umbrella term that encapsulates divergent subject matter, allowing for more ambiguity and multiplicity of meaning than in some of his earlier series, such as a recent reworking of the orderly narrative of the fourteen Stations of the Cross.
– Helen Hughes, from the Monkey Business catalogue essay, 2022. Senior Lecturer, Art History, Theory and Curatorship, Monash University
Image: BRENT HARRIS Large Apron of Abuse 2022, oil on linen, 244 x 175 cm
March
Forced Rhubarb
A solo exhibition with hand-printed and embroidered linens, accompanied by a floorwork made from sherbert-filled straws.
Food is the catalyst Elizabeth Willing uses to translate the ineffable body, to reflect on the performance of eating, and facilitate multisensory experiences.
Image: Elizabeth Willing Necklace of birth scars 2021, linen, cotton, thread, acrylic paint, 110 x 105 cm
February
redux
Part of the PHOTO 2022 international festival of photography exhibition program.
Visit Danie Mellor redux exhibition online (April 2022)
Listen to Danie Mellor interview on ABC RN The Drawing Room (11 May 2022)
Read an interview with Danie Mellor in The Age (28 April 2022)
Images have a powerful way of revealing connections between disparate histories and experiences. redux is an exhibition that assembles, re-assembles and sequences parallel and divergent narratives, curating archival and recent photographs in a way that evokes a pictorial and studied chronology. History repeats itself and redux shows how we are implicated in those cycles.
The ecological destruction portrayed in many of the images is an uncanny reminder of our current global and environmental impacts and contrasts acutely with intact rainforest ecologies shown alongside them. It is a reminder as well of the often-violent displacement of Aboriginal people and knowledge systems, with civilising enterprise failing to acknowledge the value of cultural systems embedded in story, Dreaming and Country.
Selected images are printed on highly polished surfaces, the viewer reflected and brought into the work as witness to changes that unfolded in and on our landscapes. redux aligns the splintered narratives of past and present experience into a compelling arrangement of large and intimately scaled photographic works. – Danie Mellor
Image: Danie Mellor, Redux 2021
Part of the PHOTO 2022 international festival of photography exhibition program.
Visit Danie Mellor redux exhibition online (April 2022)
Listen to Danie Mellor interview on ABC RN The Drawing Room (11 May 2022)
Read an interview with Danie Mellor in The Age (28 April 2022)
Images have a powerful way of revealing connections between disparate histories and experiences. redux is an exhibition that assembles, re-assembles and sequences parallel and divergent narratives, curating archival and recent photographs in a way that evokes a pictorial and studied chronology. History repeats itself and redux shows how we are implicated in those cycles.
The ecological destruction portrayed in many of the images is an uncanny reminder of our current global and environmental impacts and contrasts acutely with intact rainforest ecologies shown alongside them. It is a reminder as well of the often-violent displacement of Aboriginal people and knowledge systems, with civilising enterprise failing to acknowledge the value of cultural systems embedded in story, Dreaming and Country.
Selected images are printed on highly polished surfaces, the viewer reflected and brought into the work as witness to changes that unfolded in and on our landscapes. redux aligns the splintered narratives of past and present experience into a compelling arrangement of large and intimately scaled photographic works. – Danie Mellor
Image: Danie Mellor, Redux 2021
February
Mother and Child
Part of the Melbourne Design Week program, 17 – 27 March 2022, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria.
A&A is industrial designer and Rigg Prize-winner Adam Goodrum and straw marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur. Their latest collaboration is the Mother and Child cabinet, exploring the dual definitions of emergence – as processes that make something visible after being concealed, or to bring something into existence.
The former finds expression in the opening of the cabinet, in the disruption of the undulating form to reveal the recognisable figures of a mother and child. The latter through the symbolism of the lines in the closed form representing a continuum of energy, which is transferred to the mother and child making their existence possible. The space in between, the opening of the cabinet by the viewer, enacts the mystery of this process, evoking palpable surprise and wonder.
This piece is a departure from the riot of colour usually present in their work, as seen in their debut exhibition Exquisite Corpse at MDW 2020. The concentric lines are amplified, accentuating form, while the properties of straw direction create a spectrum of tone and texture within the confines of black and white. The use of graphic, vivid contrast and emergence processes echoes the sensibilities and metamorphosis theme in the work of M.C. Escher and a shared love of visual puzzles.
Image: A&A Mother and Child cabinet 2021-22. Photography by Andrew Curtis.
Part of the Melbourne Design Week program, 17 – 27 March 2022, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria.
A&A is industrial designer and Rigg Prize-winner Adam Goodrum and straw marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur. Their latest collaboration is the Mother and Child cabinet, exploring the dual definitions of emergence – as processes that make something visible after being concealed, or to bring something into existence.
The former finds expression in the opening of the cabinet, in the disruption of the undulating form to reveal the recognisable figures of a mother and child. The latter through the symbolism of the lines in the closed form representing a continuum of energy, which is transferred to the mother and child making their existence possible. The space in between, the opening of the cabinet by the viewer, enacts the mystery of this process, evoking palpable surprise and wonder.
This piece is a departure from the riot of colour usually present in their work, as seen in their debut exhibition Exquisite Corpse at MDW 2020. The concentric lines are amplified, accentuating form, while the properties of straw direction create a spectrum of tone and texture within the confines of black and white. The use of graphic, vivid contrast and emergence processes echoes the sensibilities and metamorphosis theme in the work of M.C. Escher and a shared love of visual puzzles.
Image: A&A Mother and Child cabinet 2021-22. Photography by Andrew Curtis.
December
2022
December
Pictures for Thinking
Pictures for Thinking has a wide breath of subjects: light, body, history, time, and measurement. Combinations of these subjects are used to elicit insights or to raise questions. In Bones III (pictured) penetrating light becomes the source illuminating the shared structures of our varied bodies.
The making of these artworks is akin to a chemical spill. It is an accident with an unpredictable result, but one in which chance and intuition coalesce. The entangled methodologies that bring these pictures to fruition include, in no particular order or hierarchy, the conventional mediums of print, drawing and painting.
– Benjamin Armstrong, February 2022
Image: Benjamin Armstrong Bones III 2021, pigment and binder on polyester , 174 x 143.5 x 4 cm
November
seeing time
seeing time is Brook Andrew‘s new body of work reflecting on ‘time’ and how one perceives and hopes to either manipulate or fall into ‘time’
These paintings were created during 2021 when the artist was focusing on alternative visions of not only time but how the world is shifting into what it means to decolonise, or to a state of yindyamarra-gunhanha (ongoing respect). yindyamarra-gunhanha is a term Brook Andrew has developed to deal with the often challenging space of museum research and repatriation.
The signature black and white patterns are inspired by his Wiradjuri cultural heritage which in its abstract state, continues to remind himself and others of the strength and continuing cultura of the Wiradjuri.
Image: Brook Andrew seeing time VII 2021, mixed media on linen, 235 x 235 cm
October
Creed
Sofitel Melbourne on Collins
Summer Salon Show
Sofi’s Lounge, Level 1
25 Collins Street
Melbourne 3000
With thanks to Global Art Projects
Image: Tim Johnson Thredbo Valley 2021, acrylic on linen, 183 x 244 cm
September
A History of Images
Danie Mellor‘s new suite of paintings A History of Images provide an intimate glimpse into a pictorial past, a collection of experiences that lie in archival memory beyond our tangible reach.
Image: Danie Mellor Promises 2021, acrylic on board with gesso and iridescent wash, 40.5 x 30.4 cm
August
The Stations 2021
Brent Harris is well known for haunting imagery that drifts between abstraction and figuration. For more than four decades, the artist has engaged in a sustained investigation into the human condition, producing paintings, prints and drawings that address universal themes such as intimacy, desire, spirituality, sexuality and mortality.
More than thirty years ago, Harris produced a series on the Stations of the Cross for which he received widespread critical acclaim as a young artist.
In 2020, Harris returned to the subject with The Stations 2021, a new body of work comprising 14 polymer gravure etchings with watercolour.
Each image size: 47.5 x 37.5 cm
Each sheet size: 71.5 x 56 cm
Edition of 20
Each sheet has been hand coloured with water colour, making each print unique.
The series was printed and editioned at Viridian Press, Benalla by John Loane.
This project was generously supported by Paul Walker and Patricia Mason.
