Liam Benson wins the 2011 Mardi Gras Art Prize

Liam Benson_Coat of arms_2009_C Type print_ Ed of 5_90 x 120 cm

A big warm congratulations to Liam Benson, the 2011 winner of the $5,000 Mardi Gras Art Prize, as judged by Deborah Kelly and Christopher Dean.

Liam Benson will be exhibiting at Artereal in May as part of the Head On Photography Festival, stay tuned for more details.

YOUR MOVE: Australian artists play chess

Ken + Julia Yonetani, Dead Sea - Chess Set, 2010, porcelain, glass, metal, LED wave light and electric components, 58 x 58 x 63 cm. Photos courtesy of Ian Hill.

Opening tomorrow night at the University of Queensland Art Museum is Your Move: Australian Artists Play Chess.

Inspired by the international exhibition The Art of Chess, this travelling exhibition was organised  by Bendigo Art Gallery who commissioned thirteen of Australia’s leading artists to respond to the notion of the game of chess. The result is Your Move: Australian Artists Play Chess an exhibition which aims to cement the role of Australian artists within the wider international art community, while also highlighting the skill and dynamism inherent in Australia’s contemporary art scene.

The works in this exhibition engage with a multiplicity of concepts, an example being Ken + Julia Yonetani’s ethereal porcelain sculptures which engage with issues of climate change and environmental degradation.

Your Move: Australian Artists Play Chess will be on exhibition at The University of Queensland Art Museum until 24 April 2011, before touring to McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park in Victoria and the Samstag Museum in South Australia.

Artist Interview: Jessica Mackney

Horology I_2010_Enamel screenprint on glass_177.5 x 43 x 8.4cm

What is it that you are trying to achieve with the works in this exhibition? What message or ideas, if any, are you are trying to convey?

Horology (the study and measurement of time) explores the themes of memory, time, journeys and identity. The focus is on the comparison between the temporary and the unchanging environment through the portrayal of the deciduous trees in autumn (Horology I) and spring (Horology II). Using the contrasting colours produced in these seasons, I have represented the evergreen and urban environment in black and grey hues (to simulate the semi-permanent) against the changing deciduous trees in autumn with their bright reds and yellows, and in spring with their rich greens and the burst of colour coming from the flowers reacting to the seasonal change (imitating the temporary).

The pathway systems of roads and sidewalks that a person experience while they are undertaking a journey interweave and overlap continuously to produce a conflicting representation of a chronological trip. The repeated motifs act as another representation of time and the journey. This work continues my study of identity through the land by acting as a reminiscent narrative of a personal trip. I want the observer to feel engaged in the journey, compositionally viewing it however they want to, reading it as a story from another person’s life and/or also imprinting his or her own experiences onto the work.

Horology I_2010_(image detail)

How does the landscape inspire and inform your art practice? What is it that drew you to the landscape tradition?

To date, the landscape has completely informed my practice. I have always been fascinated with the natural world, however it wasn’t until later in high school and university that I realized it was my main artistic focus. I went about exploring the notion of memory and identity within these portrayals, finding refuge in the representation and actual environments. My works act as unconventional self-portraits.

Jessica Mackney will be showing at Artereal as part of our group exhibiton Scape until the 26 February 2011.

Aziz + Cucher in ARTnews Magazine...

The February 2011 edititon of American magazine ARTnews features an interesting article by Hilarie M. Sheets which looks at the growing number of artists such as Aziz + Cucher who are making art as collaborators and what exactly it means for traditional notions of artistic authorship...

The article discusses Aziz + Cucher's latest body of work and upcoming solo exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art which opens on 30 March 2012.

Aziz +Cucher_Glory_2000_183 x 76 cm_ed of 3

Artist Interview: Stevie Fieldsend

Stevie Fieldsend_solve et coagula (install shot)

_2010_glass, wood_dimensions variable

What is it that you are trying to achieve with the works in this exhibition?

Solve et Coagula is a response to the time spent with my father, and his sudden death. How grief resides in the body. It is about bodily sensation and it is my memorial to him. Central to this personal experience are the notions of transferrence and transformation.

What message or ideas, if any, are you are trying to convey?

The essence of this work is about those ideas of transferrence and transformation. How from generation to generation, unresolved issues can be passed down. Inside of that lies the idea of transformation in that - given the right environment these seemingly fixed ways of being can in fact change and this is embodied in the materiality of steel, burnt wood, and cooled molten glass.

Stevie Fieldsend will be showing Solve et Coagula in the Artereal project space until the 26 February 2011.

Stevie Fieldsend_solve et coagula #7
_2010_glass, wood_66 x 13 x 15cm

Stevie Fieldsend_solve et coagula #8

_2010_glass, wood_81 x 36 x 24cm

'Put up or Shut up'

New York based artists Simone Douglas and Aziz + Cucher will be showing work at the New York Academy of Art as part of a group exhibition Put up or Shut up. The exhibition presents the work of MFA graduate program faculty members working in the greater New York City area and runs from 10 February – 6 March 2011.

Participating institutions include Brooklyn College, Long Island University, Montclair State University, New Jersey City University, New York Academy of Art, New York University, Parsons/New School, Pratt Institute, Queens College, Rutgers, SUNY Purchase, SUNY Stony Brook and Tyler School of Art of Temple University.

For the esteemed artists who teach in these many MFA programs, serious art-making is required - maintaining a vigorous focus on an active studio practice is demanded. The goal of this inaugural faculty exhibition is to engage in the discourse between teacher and student, mentor and rising star, reflecting the challenges and growth presented to each as a result of their pedagogical relationship. The public – and the students -- may judge for themselves the output by these ever-evolving agents of influence and direction.

The exhibition was conceived by Catherine Howe, faculty member at the New York Academy of Art, and is scheduled to run concurrently with the 2011 College Art Association conference and the 7th CAA New York Area MFA Exhibition at Hunter College, an expansive survey of work from students in 20 institutions within a hundred-mile radius of New York City.

Ken + Julia Yonetani @ the Australia Council for the Arts

 Still life: the food bowl, 2010, salt, dimensions variable
 

Ken + Julia Yonetani are currently showing work as part of genart_sys, an exhibition presented by the Australia Council for the Arts and curated by New Media Curation, which runs until 16 March 2011.

"genart_sys showcases 19 innovative artists, collectives and organisations supported by the Australia Council from a broad range of artforms. Theirs is a generative, ever evolving system of art-making, by which artists are innovating and sharing stories and knowledge over space and time, playing and interfacing with audiences across diverse platforms and communities.

Building digital culture, all these artists are connecting with us across real and virtual platforms, leading us into new territory with exciting examples of how technologies and content can converge." - Kathy Keele, CEO, Australia Council for the Arts.

"The groundwater salt that is such a problem for the Murray-Darling basin is the material and subject matter of the Yonetani’s new works. On show are preliminary salt works and accompanying video which are part of a larger installation. These salt works bring us back to the environmental cost of agricultural production and the historical associations of salt - as a powerful, sacred substance that maintains life by enabling food preservation, but also induces the death of ecosystems. Death through salinity is mixed with the everyday in the form of a fruit bowl on a coffee table, ready to eat but morphed into salt, and a video in which the genre of still life painting has been reduced to its modern, digitised, salinised equivalent. Their multimedia work is inspired by close-up images of stomata from the leaves of trees near the Blue Mountains National Park, NSW, acquired using electron microscopic technology from the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility at the University of Sydney. The work reveals the hidden process of photosynthesis and respiration of plant life to the naked human eye, asking us to once again begin a lost conversation with trees as living and breathing spirits."

Carla Hananiah: 'the making of...'

Artereal artist Carla Hananiah is currently showing seven new paintings at Artereal as part of our group exhibition Scape. Following her exhibition Sublime in early 2010, Carla has created these new works as a result of recent travels to locations as diverse as Broken Hill, New Zealand and the Snowy Mountains. 

Carla's work has always been strongly influenced by music, a point which is illustrated through videos, like the one above, which show layer by layer how she paints and layers each work. The musical score for these films have been composed by Isaac Hananiah, Carla's husband.

To view more videos of Carla's work click here.

Scape: group exhibition

Carla Hananiah_Resplendent_2010_Oil on Board_

91.5cm x 120cm

Jessica Mackney_Horology #1_2010_Enamel

screenprint on glass_177.5 x 43 x 8.4cm

Petra Svoboda_Palm I_2010_Ceramic,

Metallic Glaze_50 x 30 x 18cm

Artereal has reopened for 2011 with our first exhibition Scape which brings together three approaches to landscape.

Three individual points of view and responses to the phenomena that surround us and shape us are expressed in the romantic and emotive landscapes of Carla Hananiah; the pictorial memoires of the pleasures of the everyday of Jessica Mackney in her continuing study of identity through landscape; and the wry consumerist commentary in the fanciful dioramas with flaccid mirror-glazed ceramic palm trees of Petra Svoboda.

Scape offers a selection of work by emerging artists and recent art school graduates. These are three early career artists who are advancing through the filter of award and prize exhibitions. In 2010 Carla Hananiah was a finalist in the Blacktown Art Prize, John Leslie Art Prize, Waverly Art Prize and Fisher's Ghost Art Prize whilst Jessica Mackney was a finalist in the 2010 RBS Emerging Artist Award.

Scape can be seen at Artereal Gallery until 28 February 2011.