Entries Tagged 'Notices & Announcements' ↓

SUBURBAN ZEITGEIST, a photographic exploration of Suburbanscapes, will kick off Canberra’s three-month Vivid Photography Festival with a special preview on Wednesday 9th July.

The exhibition showcases work from 17 artists who are currently undertaking postgraduate studies or have recently graduated from the ANU School of Art’s Photography and Media Arts Department. Reflecting a diverse perception of suburban surfaces and occupied spaces, the exhibition presents various media practices and techniques that question and explore the boundaries of the everyday. Here, familiar suburban landscapes are reconfigured to become a world of peculiar subjects that challenge assumptions of the Suburbs as places of banality, uniformity and monotony. Instead we are exposed to a contemporary archaeology of our dreams and desires for an ideal life against the backdrop of a globalised world.

The exhibition will be opened by Dr Martyn Jolly, Head of the ANU Department of Photography and Media Arts. Dr Jolly is a recognised artist and photography scholar who has played a significant role in fostering the development of practice-lead research at the ANU.

Please join us for the Reception of the Visual Arts Graduate Season this Wednesday night at 6pm. This is very quick show and ends this Saturday so hurry on down to the Gallery

See Megan’s review at glasscentralcanberra

And the Bombala Times now that’s outreach for you!

Don’t miss Nicky Dickson’s (PhD, Painting) upcoming show at the ANU School of Art Foyer Gallery.

In her own words:

‘Other’ Visions

The term exotic carries with it connotations of foreignness, excitement and an attractive strangeness. The exotic is not an inherent quality found in particular people, objects or places rather it is a particular form of perception that originated in the European mind when confronted with the ‘other’ Pacific or Australasian person, plant, animal, or artefact. Identification of the strange or unusual exotic ‘other’ is made by comparison to things and people that are usual and familiar. It is the very strangeness and unfamiliarity of the ‘other’ that becomes attractive and desirable.
The cultural lure of the exotic was, and is, a strange, paradoxical blend of the empirical and the fantastic. Factual information was interpreted and inevitably perceived through European conventions and desires. This exhibition engages with how assumptions formed concerning the ‘other’ person or artefact from elsewhere were constructed and presented to 18th and 19th century European audiences as a fantastic jumble of ‘curiosities’. This predominately occurred in the context the natural history museum. In this period there was no distinction made between specimens of plants, animals, people or their material culture; all were considered revelatory of the characteristics of the exotic ‘other’ and the diversity found in nature.

Nicola Dickson 2008

is the title of Pam Lofts’ Alice Prize entry. To be announced tonight…

…recent MPhil graduate of the ANU School of Art Pam Lofts is showing with Helen Maxwell Gallery at Silvershot, in Melbourne.

by Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax’s new exhibition at CCAS Manuka. Her drawing of a flock of starlings creates compelling illusions, as well as gritty surface qualities, as it swirls around you. It’s an irregular space which lends itself to surprising effects.

Sarina (a PhD candidate in Printmedia) explains: Time can be experienced in different ways. It can be quantified by the sweep of hands around a clock face, or experienced through the ongoing cycles of Nature. These seasonal changes are easily observed in recurring events such as the waxing and waning of the moon, but can also be noticed in ordinary moments such as the flight of birds across the sky.

This exhibition of charcoal drawings contains the traces of such a chance encounter. Transposed onto the gallery walls, the flight of a starling flock takes place within a unit of imagined time. The ghostly silhouettes contain the memory of their flight, and recall Rilke’s poetic concept that ‘silently the birds fly through us.’ This form of experiential time is not quantifiable, as it cannot be measured as a length of distance over time, for the starlings are simultaneously both here and there.

Her show (titled here + there) is open from this Wed (30th) til Sunday (4th May) from 11 – 5pm

Lia was an MPhil graduate (in Ceramics, obviously) in 2006. This piece (from the ‘Nudibranch series’, mid-fire porcelain, 2006, photo by ANU photography) is characteristic of the work she did in the program, and is currently in the border, an exhibition at CraftACT. Lia gives the following account of her motivation in works such as this:

Aesthetically, the visual inspirations for the work are natural forms including plants, coral and sea creatures. This work does not set out to replicate the specifics of particular organic forms but seeks to capitalize on the strange, complex, richly patterned and brightly coloured beauty of the natural world. That said, there are elements of the work that are often confused with actual organic things, and in this way act as a kind of mimesis or an imitation of nature. This creates confusion between representations and the real.

The nudibranch or sea slug is a delightfully strange and weird looking thing. I am drawn to its flamboyance and extravagance – why is a sea slug so ornate? It seems like a fine thing to try to combine with an object that alludes to function in that it acts as a setting off point between the understandable reality of a functional object (vase) and something beyond easy understanding –the animate and inanimate together.

calls his show at ANCA Gallery Dickson “I wish I was David Bowie”. The title’s allusive. The show is more about getting under your skin. Catch it before it closes on April 13.

Congratulations to two ex postgrads Catherine Woo (Painting) and Ken Yonetani (Ceramics) who’ve been selected for Handle with Care: 2008 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, currently on show as part of the Adelaide Festival of the Arts. Ken’s work is featured on the cover of the Broadsheet, Catherine gets a rave in Sebastian Smee’s review (Weekend Australian Review, p18-19). Ken will also be profiled on the ABC program ‘Sunday Arts” feature story, on air between 5:00pm and 6:00pm on Sunday.

“Sweet Barrier Reef” ‘Handle with Care’ The 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Contemporary Art, 3.6mx12.5m, Sugar, Icing Sugar, Polystyrene foam, Ceramics with a performance by 2 costumed girls serving edible sculptures (coral shaped cakes).

Ken gives the following account of the work: Sweet Barrier Reef focuses on the event of coral bleaching. Coral bleaching refers to the process leading to coral death. River waters containing high levels of suspended sediment cause coral death and bleaching. This sediment often comes from harvesting sugarcane, and is known to be one factor leading to bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. Many large sugarcane fields are located beside coral reefs, leading to coral damage across the globe. In this project, I focus on the connections between consumption and human impact on the environment by creating a reef out of sugar. Here, I do not focus only on the impact of the sugarcane industry; rather sugar is used as a much larger metaphor for our desire to consume and its environmental impact. Sugar becomes a metaphor of human desire. It is also strongly connected to processes of “colonization”, “modernisation” and “consumerism”.