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Contemporary Art Awards 2015
Finalist Exhibition
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Lauri Smith
Fremble, the whole universe is contained within us
Resin, Silicon, and Human Hair
30 x 43 x 30cm
2015
Felicity O'Connor
She is only Happy in the Sun
Oil on Canvas
91 x 91cm
2015
Vanessa Stanley
Eastern Branch Brisbane River - Outside
Mirrored Perpex and Aluminium
Variable Dimensions
2014
Award Winner
Highly Commended
Highly Commended
Aidan Weichard
Victoria
I have been creating art for as long as I can remember, always drawing, painting, carving or constructing something out of wood. My father is a sculptor and passed on the admiration of the human form, which for me evolved into an appreciation of the animal form and the complexity and diversity within their kingdom. The unique markings and distinct characteristics of these creatures is what inspires me to capture the raw beauty through colour and shape.
Nolan
Oil on Canvas (Tasmanian Oak Frame)
95 x 95cm
2015
Alahendra
Queensland
Alahendras’ artwork focuses on the concept of haunted-beauty through her research which investigates mental health. The word 'Haunted' alludes to a person being weighed down mentally. ‘Beauty’ is interpreted as looking for, or finding strength during an internal struggle. Through her works, Alahendra hopes to connect to those who cannot relate with others faced with mental illness by visually displaying this process within a contemporary context. By using mixed media, she focuses on creating paintings filled with depth and emotion to dictate a story.
Held Back
Mixed Media on Canvas
92 x 92cm
2015
$900.00
A State of Purity
100% Engraved Aluminium
130 x 44cm (Framed)
2015
Alexia Brehas is a freelance artist and designer whose practice focuses on incorporating detail to create highly intricate finished works. Her artistic practice is highly influenced by the physicality of nature, ornate cultural patterning, and the sleekness of monochromatic Swiss design. This work was engraved entirely by hand on pure aluminium providing a commentary on the relationship between the benevolent forces of mythology and mortality. Alexia has exhibited at the Deakin Phoenix Gallery, in the 2015 RAW Natural Born Artists ‘Current’ showcase, and in the 2015 Drawing Group Show at the Brunswick Street Gallery.
Alexia Brehas
Victoria
Alison Peters
New South Wales
'Afterimage’ began as a still from the video of the immolation of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh in January 2015. Painted via acrylic, oil, and digital means, the work represents countless layers of recreation, reduction, overpainting, and editing. Printing defects, pixellation, and breakdown of resolution are left uncorrected or amplified as a metaphor for the sifting of the ‘truth’ of an image through the cameras of eye witnesses and combatants, perpetrators, and victims, through media outlets, on the internet and finally through our own eyes - how we network those visual vestiges and file them in our memory.
Afterimage
Digital Print on Arches Paper
118.9 x 84.1cm
2015
Ocean Ramble
Porcelain, Cobalt, Clear Glaze, & Gold lustre
39 x 17 x 6cm
2015
'Ocean Ramble' draws inspiration from Matthew 3:13-17
‘As soon as Jesus was baptized he went up out of the water. At
that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from
heaven said, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well
pleased”.
The story of Jesus’s baptism in the River Jordan by his cousin John is the basis behind the work ‘Ocean Ramble’ Matthew 3:13;17 evokes the imagery of movement and demonstrates Jesus faith and commitment to God.
The very permanence of clay and water themselves allude to the permanent faith of Jesus, and his faith in the redemption of mankind. Water both washes clean and renews the soul and spirit and the work ‘Ocean Ramble’ exemplifies this.
Amelia Kingston
Victoria
Aurora and Arc is a physical data visualization that draws
attention to the disparity in treatment of LGBTQIA+ citizens
across the major states and territories of Australia.
Aluminium rods intersect with two halves of a circle– a universal metaphor for a ‘whole’. The length of each rod from where they meet the raised arc is representative of how long it was punishable by life imprisonment to be in a same-sex relationship – one inch equals a decade. Some rods also include small holes cut into the underside, which indicates states or territories that still don’t allow legal adoption for same-sex couples.
Andy Bates
Queensland
Aurora and Arc
Acrylic, Aluminium, Screws, Coloured LEDS, & Lithium Polymer Batteries
100 x 100 x 60cm
2015
Beatrice Prost
Queensland
'Phosphorescence' is an imaginary story unravelling the mystery of a mangrove by night. A sense of sacred is awakening in this fictional works on paper, where reality meets fiction, where patterns come out of chaos. What is hidden below takes life, allowing us to escape, dream and become sensitive to other realities.
Technically my work cannot be categorised. After hours of photographing nature, the careful selection of choosing the final image is digitally manipulated to enhance its beauty and bring magic. Then begins the meditative, productive days of hand-carving the unique image print on rag paper. Each mark starts with a dot. Each dot forms into a line. Lines and dots might develop into patterns or not. Those scars create movement and dance on the artwork while writing a story. There is no return as the white purity of the rag paper is irreversibly revealed.
Phosphorescence
Hand Carved Unique Print on Rag Paper
105 x 75cm (107 x 76cm in perspex frame)
2015
'Modes of absence, presence' examines the fluidity of place, asking the viewer to reflect on the complex relationships that underlie constructions of place.
Auge states that places are never pure in form – continually reconstituting themselves between place and non-place. They are relational and in process and can be experienced as places and non-places by different actors.
To consider how non-place can represent place for many of us, replete with identity and meaningful interaction, a collective identity was developed and narrated in these sound sculptures and exhibited within the non-place of a hotel room.
Press Play - This artwork has sound
Caroline Austin
Queensland
Modes of Absence, Presence
Glass, Hair, Speaker, and Sound
40 x 40 cm
2015
Cherie Devlin
Tasmania
I find my inspiration from photos of people, particularly from magazines. My aim is to lift an image from one piece of paper to the other, with nothing more than my pencils and artistic skills which are self-taught. I chose 'The Music Man' as he is full of mystery, and appears to be very knowledgeable; I can almost smell the leather of his hat.
The Music Man
Watercolour Pencils on Fine Art Paper (framed)
64 x 44 cm
2015
Constance Hunter
Victoria
'Top Heavy Forest' is an exploration of pattern, repetition, and balance. The line work and mark making used is repetitive and busy, this contrasts with the empty space surrounding the vegetation. The vegetation itself is not actually a pattern despite the limited and repeated use of the same plants. The trees bend down at the top of the picture to give a sense of clutter, cramped space and slight anxiety. While the content is beautiful the viewer hopefully can't help but want everything to move down the paper a few inches. Why must beautiful things only be beautiful? sometimes beautiful things are frustrating.
Top Heavy Forest
Pen on Paper (unframed)
50 x 65 cm
2015
Detail
Danae Thyssen
South Australia
'Struggling To Breathe' is layered with a kaleidoscope of emotions that resonate with feelings of desire, loss and isolation, unfulfilled passions, and conflicting ideals. It is a conceptual photographic artwork with a narrative undertone, an emotive and unsettling disquiet that has been created to evoke an emotional response from the audience. It is based around the experience of women who feel trapped by circumstance, speaking of lives truths within a domestic violence relationship. There is a vulnerability and hope that exists simultaneously, yet still speaks of the beauty that can be found even within the darkest situations, reflecting the strength of the human will to survive.
Struggling to Breathe
Conceptual Digital Photography on Fine Art Paper
50 x 50cm
2015
Daniel Kneebone
Victoria
Behind the Crimson Curtain encompasses the very essence of burlesque and the burlesque performer. Not only is she the star performer, but often also the choreographer, costume designer, beautician, production manager and promoter. Liberated, sensual, feminine and funny, her skills encompass a blend of dance, theatre, cabaret and comedy that formulate this empowering art form known as ‘burlesque’. Once on stage, however, the audience is completely captivated by her unique beauty, her spirit and the anticipation of what’s to come.
Behind the Crimson Curtain
Archival Fine Art Print
100 x 71cm
2015
David Hayes
Queensland
'Pina Grenada' is a pop-political work inspired by the changing culture of the Gold Coast. Around 2012/3 where bikie gangs were taking over the historic “people’s paradise”. The pineapple is symbolic of Queenslands welcome and relaxed subtropical culture—no more so than in the cocktail “Pina Colada”. The geometric symmetry of a pineapple grenade is a perfect metaphor for the creeping substitution of paradise overtaken by crime, which also served well to name the work “Pina Grenada”. This piece is an example of my pop-based realism approach to subject matter.
Pina Grenada
Aerosol, Acrylic, and Resin on Board
60 x 60cm
2015
$1500.00
Ekaterina Vostroukhina
Western Australia
My artwork represents an idea of memories related to my past. Treating memory as a physical space I am seeking for a visual representation of the multiple connections and intersections of memory pathways. My aim is to show an ambiguous nature of memories were real and unreal , exterior and interior , personal inner world and external reality are interweaved.
Crossing of Spaces
Oil on Canvas
75 x 100cm
2015
Felicity O'Connor
New South Wales
My quick mark making and painterly gestures of abstraction are expressions of moments or moods from places both physically and emotionally that I have visited. They are landscape and inscape paintings that reflect both physical and internal landscapes.
I'm interested in the authentic and direct energy and mark making that abstract painting allows. I strive to work without controlling an outcome but allow the painting to emerge in its own time and space.
She is only Happy in the Sun
Oil on Canvas
91 x 91cm
2015
Hayley Roberts
Queensland
'Siren's Sorrow' is a conceptual self-portrait photographed on location at the HMQS Gayundah shipwreck in Woody Point, Brisbane. The image is an HDR panorama consisting of three different exposures taken from four different angles that were stitched together to form a whole. It was created as part of my Exposing Illusions project, through which I explore trick photography and Photoshop manipulation to create illusions that blend fantasy into reality.
Through the use of costumes, props, and posing, my art aims to tell imaginative stories that could easily have leaked from the pages of fairy tales. Magical realism is at the heart of my images that seek to elate, inspire, and provide an escape from the monotony of life’s routines by adding a touch of magic to the everyday and helping people recapture the wonder they felt as a child. My own childhood dream was to become a mermaid, my art allows me to make my dreams come true in a way that life cannot.
Siren's Sorrow
Photography on Fine Art Paper
50.8 x 50.8cm
2015
Depleting
Spotwelded Stainless Steel
1200 x 400 x 2400cm
2015
Through this work I seek to explore the beauty of our natural environment. The patterns and forms that I observe in the natural world inspire me. However, the diversity of the natural world is currently threatened by climate change, through my work I intended to explore the impact that this changing climate is having on our delicate reef ecosystems.
Depleting is a relief sculptural work, I love making works with a lot of repetitive patterns and shape. These singular metal shapes are welded into forms, which create a sense of rhythm and movement in the work.
Holly Pepper
Queensland
My art practice investigates the representation of psychological space, through constructed worlds suggestive of emotional states. I am interested in exploring the narratives of dreams as driven by the unconscious, and how this association can be used to give visual form to an internal experience.
My paintings take the form of three-dimensional constructions as a means of reflecting the composition of the human mind. They reference architecture as a compositional device, and for establishing the psychological foundations of the work. I aim to generate an experience of the paintings, which is understood on both a visual and emotional level.
Janet Angus
ACT
Enjoy the Silence
Oil on Board
81 x 122 x 9cm
2015
Jeramie Scahill
New South Wales
The Thinker is a modern day take of Auguste Rodin's Thinker. I wanted to bring the sculpture into the twenty-first century, still keeping the integrity and classic shape of the original while using a contemporary medium and modern lines.
By using 316 stainless steel with a mirror finish, the viewer gets to not only see their own reflection but that of their surroundings. I think that viewing ourselves and surroundings, thinking about what we are looking at and working out the distortions and reflections is the essence of life.
The Thinker
316 Stainless Steel
40 x 40 x 60cm
2014
John Davies
New South Wales
John Davies is a Sydney based artist. After a long career as a residential and commercial Architectural Designer, whose credits include the re-designing of the historic Como Hotel after it was destroyed by fire, he has turned his love of nature and the Australian landscape into highly detailed pencil sketches.
Hankerchief
Pencil on Fine Art Paper (Framed)
30 x 20cm
2015
Narooma
Pencil on Fine Art Paper (Framed)
30 x 20cm
2015
John Procter
South Australia
Socially and culturally marginal, embracing unconventional views and alien to the prevailing dominant culture, life is about the living, the real relationships between people and places. My art is the savoring of the moment, the emotional tie between the subject and the heart, deriving everything from my own depths and nothing from convention. A creative outsider possessed of an expressive impulse, externalising the overwhelming desire to share the experience, self- expression entirely for my individual satisfaction and inner need. Encouraged by memories, guided by instinct, content and context, the visual image is primarily a vehicle of my storytelling impulse.
Going Underground
Copic Markers, Gouache on Crescent Board
100 x 75cm (Framed)
2014
Jordan King
South Australia
My work is built on mistakes and accidents, which accumulate on linen drop sheets covering my studio floor. I step on them, smearing, and smudging paint. On top of this mess, I layer awkward scribbles using thick, clumpy oil stick. Ultimately, my paintings are weird and flawed.
I am Creased
Acrylic, Oil, Oil Stick on Linen
122 x 111.5cm
2015
Kalinda Nelson-Boyd
New South Wales
'I Am' celebrates and challenges traditional notions of gender roles and expectations. It is an exploration of feminine sexuality, gender non-conformity and assertive expression. Historically, within the Western cultural context, roles and expectations within society have been constructed through patriarchal parameters set by religion and tradition. I Am challenges these traditional conventions and promotes the acceptance and embracing of feminine sexuality and gender non-conformity. The superficiality of blended illustration and photography accentuates the existence of struggle surrounding feminine sexual expression and restrictive gender constructs. The amalgamation of conceptual and technical elements creates a metaphor that reflects tension and desire.
I Am (Untitled 3)
Metallic Pearl Archival Print
56 x 84.1cm
2015
Katya Petetskaya
New South Wales
My most recent series of works (The Spill) have addressed the politics of contamination and explored oil spill sites as Anthropocene landscapes. Such pollution exposes the imbalance of our dialogue with nature – the irreversibility of our impact on the environment, but also our vulnerability and fragility that comes with the inability to keep this impact under control. Found in different parts of the world, these sites are unique and distinctive nature-culture, landscape-human interactions.
Spill no.8
Synthetic Polymer Paint on MDF Board
61 x 91cm
2015
Keiko Matsui
New South Wales
Directly stemming from my Japanese heritage and familiarity with the mending and restoring technique known as Kintsugi, my work explores the altering of fine porcelain forms through the cutting and rejoining of sections. I make a symmetrical shape on the wheel, and then alter the form by cutting and re-joining the parts. When putting the parts together with liquid clay, excess clay pushes out of the joint and makes a line like a human scar. I am drawn to the idea of organic detail juxtaposed with the consistent lines of the wheeled form. It is like finding imperfection in our everyday.
Scar Bowls
Porcelain and White Matt Glaze
10-23cm Diameter, 11-18cm Height
2015
Kelly Southee
Queensland
A suburban Art Deco treasure
Boarded up for many years
Now being peeled open and undergoing an unknown transformation
I decide to check it out one sunny morning
From a side window, which lacks glazing, I'm greeted by sun back-lighting the old shop front COKE sign.
What a sight - change illuminated!
Morning Coke in Greenslopes
Soft Pastel on Sanded Card (Framed)
67 x 81 x 4cm
2015
Shimmering iron roof-tops in red & green
Soon to be a sight unseen
A single hailstorm transformed our town
Now we await re-roofing
As old iron is being torn down
Annerley Junction: Before the Hail Storm Re-Roofing
Soft Pastel on Sanded Card (Framed)
62 x 76 x 2cm
2015
Lauri Smith
New South Wales
I wanted to explore the connection between the universe and all the creatures contained in it. I am fascinated by the connection between the macro and micro worlds that are living within ourselves and the world around us. From the smallest cell in our body, it can be seen to be reflected and mimicked in nature and the cosmos, this inherent link between animal, human and the universe. Utilising this idea I created a creature that incorporates different combinations of animals and human characteristics featuring fleshy skin, human-like eyes and hair that is intended to invite the viewer to contemplate this idea.
Fremble, the whole universe is contained within us
Resin, Silicon, and Human Hair
30 x 43 x 30cm
2015
Leisl Mott
Queensland
This piece is inspired by the beauty of a landscape that used to mean ‘home’. There is a multi-faceted beauty in this place... Not only is it appealing to the eye, but it is a hopeful place, a place with qualities of patience, generosity and honesty.
Looking to the East
Oil on Canvas
121 x 91cm
2015
Lisa Kotoulas
New South Wales
Human gesture and expression remain the primary focus of my art practice.
A preoccupation with the idea of Self is supported by an intent observation of others. Convinced that answers can only emerge by looking outward, I attempt to seize instances where emotion is unlocked.
Driven by a place where time stands still, I engage in the moments where the masquerades of daily life are disrupted. Within these moments, the possibility of truth can be revealed.
I encourage the consideration of using the canvas as a type of mirror, allowing oneself to thoroughly observe and reflect.
Eyes Heavy
Oil on Canvas
51 x 61cm
2015
Lisa Mattock
New South Wales
I have always valued textiles as being more than merely functional. I appreciate their colour, variety, and texture.My artworks evolve after a colour palette is selected. Different fabric combinations are then stitched together. These layers are then cut, stitched, and embellished multiple times.
My current body of work is titled 'Forage', as the fabrics and embellishments are sourced from discontinued textile sample books that would otherwise be added to landfill. The silk embellishments are sourced from women's cooperatives in India which specialise in repurposing the off cuts from sari factories.
Jewels
Textile Collage
60 x 70cm
2015
Loique Allain
South Australia
This print is a response to my experience of being in this landscape. An important process of the art making is traversing through the land. This allows for an immersion into the site which invites new experiences and discoveries. In the studio, I drew from my memory, photos and intuition to bring it to life through carving lino and then printing onto paper.
This print evokes the emotion that the site provoked in me at the time I was visiting. This place has compelled me to be expressive in my mark making. It is the land and the human connection to place that is the essential influence of this work.
Calanque de Morgiou
Linocut on Somerset Paper
165 x 102cm
2015
Michael Simms
New South Wales
The surreal experience of entering a hypnotic state of consciousness while creating art has always fascinated me. I wanted to produce a self-portrait that reflected this place.
Transcendence
Oil on Canvas
50 x 82cm
2015
My obsession with 'between-ness' started while taking photographs as a professional photographer. I explored the space between a subject and the camera as an energy flow, and found how important to be aware of ‘between-ness’.
Katami is an object that was once a possession of deceased, kept as a remembrance of the dead by Japanese people. Living in Sydney for nearly half of my life and having missed the communal sharing to honour/appreciate the life of the deceased, I created artworks of Katami that represented the visualisation of the ‘between-ness’: the interconnectedness between the deceased and the living.
Miho Watanabe
New South Wales
Awareness of Between-ness: Katami, once a possession of decreased
Photograph and Painting on Silk, Aluminium, Pespex, LED
500 x 500cm
2015
My paintings relate to an artist's sensory encounters with landscape. They are based on cultural geography and the feeling and perceptions of being in wild places.
My art practice as a whole is influenced by phenomenological enquiry, a philosophical framework that relates to the structures of personal experience and consciousness.
I am currently working on a series of semi-abstract paintings that explore the concept of 'Ambiguous Romanticism': contemporary art that has its base in an appreciation of both natural and urban environments, individual expressions and a deliberate ambiguity in the composition and colour of the paintings.
Nigel Laxton
Western Australia
Le Terroir #4
Acrylic on Board
60 x 60cm
2015
There are two aspects behind this painting. The first is about the strange moment when people are posing in front of a camera, waiting for the photographer to take a photo. It's almost like time has stopped for the camera and people's face expressions are not real.
The second idea behind this painting is that you can't judge people from outside impressions. Even if someone looks weird, the person might be pure of mind. The contradiction of scary looking creatures who care for everything down to the smallest flower or butterfly is funny to me.
Noriko Sugita
New South Wales
A Commemorative Photo
Oil on Wood Panel
24.4 x 34.4cm
2015
Pamela Pudan
New South Wales
This work is an exploration of central spaces and the forms that contain them. Rondels, mazes and forts are all organised around a central, mysterious space. In the bird world, the lapwing performs a beautiful, intricate dance to protect its own central space, the nest. Examples proliferate everywhere. I am fascinated by our notion of our own centres, by what lies therein, and by our own intricate and colourful ways to both express and protect what is there.
Blue Rondel
Stained Porcelain in Perspex Box
48 x 48 x 35cm
2015
I’m fascinated by form and texture, by taking familiar things and trying to distill them. By stripping them of colour and by repeating them, interesting rhythms can be created. Making things in clay is fraught with mishaps and invariably becomes a negotiation between what I want to make and what is possible. I usually start with one idea and end up making something different, but still containing the original seed. This process is both frustrating and rewarding - the struggle to express my idea, eventual surrender to the process, and final acceptance that what eventuates is not wholly within my control.
White Atoll
Chinese Porcelain and Perspex Frame
C. 75cm
2014
Samir Hamaiel
Queensland
A memory of my previous life in the UK, this work is of an Underground station in West London. Neither day nor night, it is an in-between time of day at an in- between place. I attempted to capture the ideas of stillness and movement in the scene to celebrate the everyday elements of urban life.
Stamford Brook Station
Acrylic on Canvas Paper (unframed)
59.4 x 42 cm
2015
Samuel Kim
New South Wales
I have a humble background and beginning in art through graffiti and street art. Over the years I have transformed and taught myself to use different mediums such as acrylics and oils to incorporate them alongside aerosol paints. My work strongly focuses on layers and how it makes up an individual or object, to represent an idea or emotion whilst retaining an element of grit and rawness. This piece in particular, portrays Alice from Alice in Wonderland with her bewildered look along with her famous quote “curiouser and curiouser” layered within it.
Curiouser and Curiouser
Aerosol and Acrylic on Canvas
102 x 76cm
2015
Sanne Koelemij
ACT
My work explores the relationship between colour, shape, and material to construct ambiguity in the pictorial order of marks. Specifically I am investigating how colour, in the form of a painterly mark, can be deconstructed by the diversity of texture within my support. I construct my support out of non-traditional painting materials. By doing this I create tension between representation and illusion. Using and maintaining the form of the support materials allows for the shapes on the surface to be recognised as part of our everyday and brings the ‘everyday’ into the gallery context.
My Mark is a Shape, is an Object, is a Mark
Acrylic and Spray Paint on Cardboard, Plastic, Hessian, Raw Canvas, Tracing Paper, Polyester, and Wood.
194 x 205cm
2015
Silvia A Sellitto
Victoria
From the "Impossible Body" series. I am inspired by the performance-based feats of contorted and awkward postures that one experiences in the daily grind of work and play. My altered portrait of the Artist and Mother, Magdalena Bors, represents her desire to fly like a celestial being and “how insignificant an everyday obstacle can feel when thinking about it in terms of the scale of what we are all part of”. I pay homage to the tradition of collage with my two-step process of creating an oil-painted copy of my collage.
Lost in Orbit
Oil on Linen
57 x 75.7cm
2015
Simone Linssen
Queensland
Throughout my artwork I explore particular issues of identity, anxiety, and loneliness. I am interested in private and intimate spaces that can be a place of comfort and solitude but also a place of entrapment and isolation from the outside world.
The Safe House
Oil on Canvas
76 x 61cm
2015
Steve Pond
Northern Territory
This image was captured late at night in the walled City of San Gimignano, Italy and depicts the movements of Count Dracula.
The Count
Aluminium HD Print - Float Mount
30 x 45cm
2014
A Consumer's Guide to Unobtainable Happiness
Recycled cardboard, polystyrene, paper, acrylic paint, modelling paste, glass, and paper.
Dimensions Variable
2014-15
Using strategies of assembling, disassembling, and reassembling, this installation emerges from my own concern that current forms of consumption in western society are unsustainable, leading to environmental damage by depletion of the earth’s resources almost as if without consequence.
Ironically, consumerism has been regarded as a means to social progress, refinement of taste, pleasure, and the fulfilment of happiness. Creating objects out of waste materials I seek to destabilise the role that ‘luxury’ plays in the nexus between the ‘aesthetics of display’, desire and the promise of pleasure fulfilment, drawing attention to the emotional inducements embodied in consumerist cultures.
Susan Gourley
New South Wales
Skulk is a Sydney-based visual artist working across painting, drawing, and muralism. Expressive large-scale murals and playful characters have long-formed the basis of Skulk’s practice, but his more recent work shows an exciting development toward figurative abstraction, yet retaining a strong sense of style and authentic energy.
Thomas Thorby-Lister (Skulk)
New South Wales
Crash
Acrylic on Linen
90 x 120cm
2015
Vanessa Stanley
Queensland
This artwork installation and video was created on site of the Eastern Branch of the Brisbane River at Crossing No. 18. The work comprises seventeen individual convex mirrors positioned in a curve, rising and falling in height emulating the bed of the river. The still and moving water caresses and surrounds the mirrors. This work disrupts the notion of a fixed perspective as you see the sky and clouds floating, reflecting and disappearing in the water. Earth's measured rhythm is visible within the reflection and flow of water. Observation, the ongoing moment, time and present, simultaneously exist.
Eastern Branch Brisbane River - Outside
Mirrored Perspex, and Aluminium
Dimensions Variable
2014
I grew up in Maningrida, an Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land NT. The name of the town means 'The place where the dreaming changed shape' and my work has always been influenced by this concept. Morphing shapes, the spirit world, and everything that lies beyond.
Aboriginal culture, religion, and belief in reincarnation into animal forms is an element in all my work, the connection of people and animals, alive and dead and where our spirits go.
I am also influenced by Christianity and the way it has been accepted by many Aboriginal people and how the two ways of life can often exist in parallel, rather than one becoming dominant over the other. Ancient bones and feathers sitting along side the image of a Mary or a crucifix on the wall. Or in the case of this work, gold halos and bones. My art is from my heart, from the dirt, from the dust, from the bones, from the wild!
The Cow God
Bone, Adhesives, Acrylic, and Plant Material
116 x 66 x 20cm
2015
Violet Bond
Queensland
Youjia Lu
Victoria
'Loop' explores the duality that exists when one is trapped in thought suppression. A double consciousness exists as the paranoia-fuelled anxiety generates an individual who, while consciously attempting to escape thoughts, is at the same time indulging in them obsessively.
Loop
Video
5:25mins
Helen Oprey
New South Wales
My work is inspired by my environment. As a social worker, I have been exposed to the vulnerable, the wonderful and the wacky. Since becoming a mother, I am also exposed to innocence, wonderment, and mother stress. All these elements combined influence my art. My paintings are a combination of creative play and thoughtful contemplation. I hope to capture something both beautiful and meaningful. I allow my love of colour and experimentation to take me on a carefree journey before my adult mind takes over. Respecting this is an attempt to capture the freedom of expression within the confines of balance, harmony, and integrity. I, therefore, use a variety of mediums and techniques in my paintings.
Waiting
Acrylic on Mixed Media Binded to Linen
100 x 100cm
2015