GARY DEIRMENDJIAN / CLOSER TO HOME

Gary Deirmendjian has recently been invited to create a sculpture as part of Taronga Wild! Rhinos -  a spectacular world-class sculpture trail organised by Taronga Zoo which stretches from the Sydney Harbour foreshore through the Blue Mountains to Dubbo and the Central West region of NSW.

From February – April 2014 a huge herd of wildly colourful rhino sculptures painted by artists and their small calves decorated by local schools will charge into town as part of a mass public art exhibition to help raise awareness and valuable funds for Taronga’s world leading Black Rhino breeding program and in-situ conservation projects. 

Created as part of this project, Gary Deirmendjian's sculpture closer to home is a life size rhino which is can be seen at World Square, on the corner of George and Liverpool Streets in Sydney. As part of this fund raising program each artist has been sponsored by a local business with Gary Deirmendjian receiving sponsorship for this piece from Brookfield Office Properties.

"This rhino form, appearing as though a giant digestive sac, holds bare the actualities of our ways ... made STUFF. It is of course only a tiny sample of the unprejudiced worthlessness of cost and consequence that pile up daily as mountains in the wake of our ushered consumer ways. Exponential growth in human population and demand appears to correlate neatly with evident pressures causing environmental and ecological concern. The non-organic rubbish was collected from both Taronga Zoo and the home of the artist, suggesting that such concerns are not abstract and removed from the incremental consequences of our daily lives." Gary Deirmendjian, Artist Statement, 2014.

For further information on Taronga Wild! Rhinos visit: www.taronga.org.au/wild-rhinos/trail-map 

KEN + JULIA YONETANI / BREATHING TREE

 Ken and Julia Yonetani_Breathing Tree_2012_Installation at Blue Mountains Cultural Centre

Ken and Julia Yonetani have recently completed Breathing Tree, a sculpture comprised of 12,000 tiles to represent the stomata of a single breathing leaf.

"This work is inspired by microscopic images of stomata, the pore openings on leaves used in respiration. The images were acquired from leaves of eucalyptus trees growing near the Blue Mountains National Park, using electron microscope technology from the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility, the University of Sydney." - Ken and Julia Yonetani

The installation will be permanently displayed on the exterior wall of the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, in Katoomba.

Ken and Julia was also recently featured and interviewed by The Cloudscape, an art and lifestyle hub surrounding the Blue Mountains, which you can click here to read.

Glen Henderson: 'The Lightness Matrix'

Installation shot: Glen Henderson, The Lightness Matrix, 2010

Glen Henderson will show The Lightness Matrix, a moving image work, at the Queensland University of Technology this November.

As the first person to be awarded the position of Creative Industries Artist in Residence, Glen Henderson's work can be seen at the Parer Place Screen nightly at dusk from the 19 November - 5 December 2010.

"The Lightness Matrix is a response to microscopic biological structures where all of the patterns are interrelated and the injection of each unexpected physical image reinterprets the space. From the smallest living organisms to designed and fabricated formations the lightness matrix looks at the way things are connected.

In this work, the connections that play out between the scientific, the architectural and the infusion of selected imagery may seem like leaps of the imagination. Yet the process of bringing this material together frame by frame transforms what might be read as disparate elements into a seamless language of idea." - Glen Henderson, 2010.

The Parer Place Screens provide experimental and innovative outdoor projections as part of QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty.