Collaborations across artists working in different materials are always stimulating. A master glass-worker and an excellent craftsman in wood have works on display in the one exhibition at the Canberra Glass-works.
Tom Rowney makes beautiful glass items that have remarkable lined internal decorations woven into the fabric of the glass.
Zeljko Markov makes blocky creations of varied coloured timber and he has accompanied them with lined prints.
Alex Asch creates wonderful works out of re-purposed materials. In all his art he finds timber and other artifacts that he then weaves together to make some further intriguing objects . The latest exhibition mounted at Beaver Galleries has hangable objects that are all painted a generally flat black. These objects are made out of musical instruments elegant hair-combs and lots of other timber objects. The resulting works are almost like idols or gods. Hung together they are a remarkably striking set.
See some examples below
13-30 April 2017
Ella Whateley has exhibited a single painting of varied coloured vertical stripes in the space normally allocated to video creations. Her painting is interestingly lit from behind but the canvas is not translucent so the effect is basically a halo effect. There are religious meditation aspects in the construction at the back. The picture and the gallery material is below.
11 March 20 – August 2017
Video installations are often fascinating and some engage in rich ways. There are two vivid free flowing abstract videos on two wall sized screens accompanied by an invitation to lie on the floor to watch it all unfold. The images are abstract and nature based free flowing images have an almost psychedelic light show aesthetic about them except that the images are much crisper and have more recongisable content.
Below is the web link to the NGA page for this exhibition:
https://nga.gov.au/installations/pipilottirist/default.cfm
There are wonderful layered activities in the world of photography and Emilio Cresciani has created a lovely set of layered pictures in which there is face and sets of images overlaid that can tell a story linked to the face
My pics were produced on the phone but they were on some sort of filter that made them look like beige where are they were actually a vivid blue.
Below are some sample pics
13-30 April 2017
There are artists that have a most distinctive look and Phillip Alldis is one such artist. This show is a beautiful set of woven images of layers overlaid in lots of interesting shapes and styles. Alldis works in charcoal and his choices of people and lettering gets his viewers to try to work out visual puzzles of overlaid images. Intriguing and beautiful images.
Pictures and gallery material below
Prizes are problematic. The exhibition of the National Photographic Portrait Prize is the result of a judging panel of three, assessing a large collection of submissions of photographic portraits.This year their decision is one of the most baffling in all the years I have attended the exhibition.
We only see the shortlisted ones but within the exhibition there are dozen’s of photographs that eclipse the bland ordinary snap that has been nominated as the winning picture. Within the exhibition there are truly rich faces, bodies, relationships and contexts that are represented in complex inter-relationships with each other that engage the viewer with their detail and content.
I have placed some of the better examples below in phone pic.
The following link has the judges and the prize winners listed .https://nppp.portrait.gov.au/.
The Australian National Botanical Gardens exhibition space focuses on botanical images. Right now it has a focused exhibition on plants drawn by Kim Bagot-Hiller. There are two styles in the images. One style of works are delicate light stroked pale rendered drawing of plants.The other works are striking two tone linocuts with a dominant green colour.
Pics are below with gallery material.
8-30 April -2017
Collaborations in art are often rich. That fact is demonstrated in a beautiful set of works by the Painting with Parkinson’s Group currently on display at the Belconnen Arts Centre. The bulk of the works are abstract works in watercolour on almost blotting paper type of surfaces. Many of those works are intriguing and point in beautiful ways to various types of landscapes and other subject material.
The collaboration is with the Calligraphers. They have taken a few dozen of the paintings and added apposite quotes to compliment the artwork in gorgeously adapted calligraphy to produce another type of artwork. For these works there is a published book available in the gallery that has each of these works reproduced. It is delightful.
Pics and gallery material is below.
8-30 April 2017
Some artists radiate a sense of humour through their art. Vee Malnar is a very funny person and her art had me happy in a sympathetic way as I digested her fun work. Domestic complexity is at the heart of Malnar’s work. She portrays women in domestic places doing a mix of juggling tasks. I have included just a few of them that truly touched me with a sense of familiarity and of fun.
Pics and gallery material was below.
stephenrrandall 