Handwise IV curated by Ahn Wells

Angela Armstrong, Chris Brown, Jan Downes, Ruth Feeney, Annemarie Murland

Wednesday 16 February - Saturday 5 March 2011

Opening night: Thursday 17 February, 6-8pm

Curator and artists talk: Saturday, 5 March, 4pm

Free and all welcome

http://handwise.blogspot.com/



This year, the annual Handwise exhibition extends into exhibition number four. The artists participating in 2011 are all local: Angela Armstrong, Chris Brown, Jan Downes, Ruth Feeney and Annemarie Murland.

Handwise IV is once again curated by Newcastle based artist Ahn Wells. It follows on from the the original concept of creating works which are based on fibre/textile materials and/or techniques. Each artist was invited to contribute new work that falls within the Handwise concept but which also explores their own artistic practice.

For Ruth Feeney, this means another floor installation, this time made up of simply folded polyethylene triangles that are carefully arranged into a pattern on the wooden gallery floor. While Feeney works on the floor, Chris Brown transforms a corner of the gallery in a maze of colour and vibrant illusion made from vintage cotton string, based on the craft of String Theory. It may seem odd to include painter Annemarie Murland in a Handwise exhibition but her deeply coloured “weave paintings” sit comfortably with the concept and remind us of Scottish tartan blankets. In contrast are the pale and delicate work of Angela Armstrong - hand-sewn weathered seaweed captured between layers of silk, reflecting her personal preoccupation with the natural world. Jan Downes' lightly coloured porcelain ceramics hang precariously from the gallery wall and continue the artists interest in the ephemeral life of cloth.

This exhibition challenges audiences expectations of what fibre textile art is, and can be, within a contemporary art context.








REVIEW: 4th Annual Handwise at PODSpace
By Dwuan LaTrobe

Running into its 4th annual appearance in Newcastle’s art world is Handwise IV at the PODspace Gallery, from its beginnings at the John Paynter Gallery in 2008. Creator, artist then turned curator Ahn Wells has been exploring the world of tactile and textile artworks. This outing sees Angela Armstrong, Chris Brown, Jan Downes, Ruth Feeny and Annemarie Murland fill the space with fibres and weaves of a contemporary cloth.

Ruth Feenly's work immediately draws your gaze as you enter the room as it takes up most of the floor space. It's comprised of 228 intricately folded triangles of synthetic cloth laid out in all geometrical patterns. Ruth once again pulls off repetitive shapes in an ordered fashion and the ethereal tonal hues ripple over the entire piece, though I prefer more chaotic pieces like her stencil mural of chairs on King St. This work reminded me of The Harmonic Algorithm as explained to me by multicoloured curry puffs.

The next piece that grabs my attention. The far wall is filled with 660 lines formed by cotton thread fanning out from 10 different directions. The colours of Rust to Scarlet and Lemon to Amber bisect each other producing a myriad number of diamond shaped negative space. This is Chris Brown's contribution to the show. I do enjoy Chris's work and have a photo of his in my Studio. But once again I'm brought down by the order. It's the same Harmonic Algorithm just explained differently by a tailor at a bush doof.

I wander around counter clockwise to a brace of oils by Annemarie Murland. They are wonderfully complex with layers upon layers. It's like native copper at the Museum of Natural History. An element that makes you wonder how it grows beneath the earth only to be dug up and then admired as this quirky organic ore. A work with roots. Though I have never seen works by this Artist I look forward to her art in the future.

Following that is a series of cyanotype photograms. Portholes into underwater worlds. Artist Angela Armstrong collects seaweed and sews them into little pockets of silk, casting them into the dark to mature a lovely little series of prints. Some grow to be kaleidoscopic, some to be vortexes and some just grow up to be trees. I always like a good Prussian Blue. For some reason the first thought that popped into my head when I saw them was Reindeer antlers in petri dishes.

Which brings me to the last work in the exhibition, a set of unassuming porcelain tiles. But as I look further they represent that bottom draw in my wardrobe, the one where I keep all the jeans I never wear but am too in love with to throw out. And somehow I'm whisked away to remember a pair of corduroy pants I had when I was 16 and fell apart around me only to be patched and over patched.

The loved to death of weave caught and set in china by Jan Downes.

This group of art is outstanding in its commitment to exploring the medium of fabric and textile in a fashion that might be unrevealing to the eye in the first but is revealed slowly. A total mix of media but they do speak strongly to one another. I must congratulate Ahn's vision in putting together such a show.

http://culturehunter.org/notice-board/review-4th-annual-handwise-podspace
2 March 2011 - 12:14pm

LUCAS GROGAN & LUKE THURGATE

Wednesday 26 January - Saturday 12 February 2011

Opening night: Thursday 27 January, 6-8pm

Free and all welcome

Lucas Grogan: thegoldenpony.livejournal.com


Since first meeting at the University of Newcastle in 2003, Lucas Grogan and Luke Thurgate have exhibited extensively together. While at first their art appears to be dramatically different, both artists’ practice is based primarily on drawing.

Thurgate's 'le pitite morte' portraits position the viewer as voyeur, accomplice and perpetrator. Their seductive darkness at times belies their content; we are left unsure as to the exact nature of the precipice of emotion on the subjects face. Masterfully rendered, Thurgate's mysterious works reinforce the belief that it's a fine line between pleasure and pain.

In contrast between Thurgate's exacting academic-style drawings, Grogan's works, from the series 'New Gold Islands' conflate numerous cultural patterns to create graphic monotonal works atop of gold boards. Whilst now well known for his appropriation of indigenous art, this series also clearly references Islamic, Australiana and European lace. Grogan's works appear like treasure washed ashore.

Resolved

3rd year drawing exhibition from
Fine Art students from the Newcastle Art School (TAFE)

Opening Night: Thursday 25 November 2010, 6-8pm

Exhibition Dates: Wed 24 November - Sat 11 December 2010


Drawing is an important component of Fine Art studies for students at The Newcastle Art School (Hunter Street TAFE). While a graduating exhibition at the Front Room Gallery in December will allow students to showcase their major electives (painting, printmaking, sculpture and photography), this exhibition is an opportunity to demonstrate just how fundamental drawing is to their art practice, regardless of their dominant discipline.

Resolved is a diverse exhibition. It highlights the wide range of mediums students have employed to explore, evaluate and refine techniques in mark making and individual concepts. The exhibition includes figurative, imaginative and observational drawing. Some of the work shown supports the artists' area of specialisation, in other cases it represents a larger body of unique drawings.


Alison Smith - Drift I, II ; Garry Hamilton - Red Grid Town #3


Rebecca Ramsay - Geometrical For The Absent Minded No.1 & No.2 ; Alithia Andrianakis - Untitled


Sarah Jones - Human Vessels ; Clare Banks - Circular Head


Thadeus Ikihega - Traffic Jam ; Jennifer Muldoon - Falling Through Time And Space 1,4


Justine Williams - Untitled

don't stop me now!

an installation by Stevi Cannon and Jen Denzin

Opening Night: Thursday 4 November 2010, 6-8pm

Exhibition Dates: Wed 3 November - Sat 20 November 2010


Don’t stop me now! is an installation whereby Podspace will not be used in the conventional gallery sense as a means of showing objects, but will instead become a place to experience ‘experience’.

Stevi Cannon and Jen Denzin ask “What is art? Why do we need to create works of art? What do we want to say?” These two local, emerging artists have come together to wrestle with the question of what it is to be an artist, and with the desire to engage with others – to bring viewers into a space where art has been made, where they too are free to question and interact. Installation is an art form that allows for this engagement. Don’t stop me now! will consider the relationship between the gallery space, the viewer and the artists, as they encounter each other.

Cannon’s art practice is multifaceted: dramatic actor, singer, performer, artist. Emerging out of a successful career in design, a serendipitous moment found her attending the Fine Arts Diploma at Newcastle Art School in 2007. A recipient of a Ford Scholarship for her efforts, Cannon is now completing the Advanced Diploma, majoring in sculpture.

Denzin’s current work investigates a residual ‘Asian’ aesthetic embedded in our visual culture through the mapping of historical, more specifically visual, connections between China and Australia. It is also an imaginary navigation of the silent spaces in Australia’s early history regarding Chinese migrants. Denzin uses casting, carving, cutting, moulding and installation to investigate and tell spatial stories. She is also currently finishing her Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture.

Silent Entropy

new paintings by Anne McLaughlin
patchwork drawings by Ahn Wells

Opening Night: Thursday 14 October 2010, 6-8pm

Exhibition Dates: Wed 13 October - Sat 30 October 2010


Silent Entropy brings together the works made by two artists that share a studio space at the Newcastle Community Arts Centre. Within this space Anne McLaughlin and Ahn Wells work in different mediums, explore different themes and even work in different ways.

McLaughlin paints, sometimes her canvases are on the floor and she applies from above, other times they are leant against the wall and she works on them with bits of folded card, brushes, plastic knives and squeegees. Then she sits back and contemplates the overall effect, making changes here and there, leaving it for days and then reworking. McLaughlin's mark-making in these works layer feelings and thoughts across the flat surface in nuances of emotion that are otherwise inexpressible.

Wells on the other hand sits to make all her works, starting with manageable pieces of Stonehenge paper. The paper is drawn on using pencils, painted on using gouaches, sewn on using the sewing machine, ruptured by piercing or scratching. Her works are detailed and decorative and are concerned with surface manipulation, texture, order and balance. They are then cut up into smaller squares and brought back together to form the final artwork. Dubbed “Patchwork Drawings” by the artist, these works are the beginning of a new direction in her art practice.

healing: space and place

in conjunction with the 2010 ArtsHealth Symposium
at the University of Newcastle

miranda lawry, kris smith, emily windon, aaron bellette,
patricia casey, ella dreyfus

Opening Night: Thursday 7 October 2010, 6pm

Exhibition Dates: Wed 6 October - Sat 9 October 2010

prior to the public lecture by Dr Esther Sternberg
at the Conservatorium Concert Hall at 7pm


Healing: space and place features the work of six photomedia artists address relationships between the body and its interaction with a spatialised world.

Miranda Lawry is a fine art academic at the University of Newcastle. Her imagery investigates the notion of trace within the landscape, evidencing both historical marking and contemporary presence to redefine notions of identity, memory and ‘place’. Incorporating specific environmental conditions with an awareness of memory, experience, and embedded history the World Heritage listed Hospital de la Santa Crue i Sant Pau in Barcelona is revealed in its current transforming phase.


Emily Windon is a PhD student at the University of Newcastle. Trapping the Midnight - Metamorphes Spectral is a photographic series in which is captured the dream space of the pshyche in a surreal environment where symbols float around a strange feathered figure. This figure both dances through the liquid world of the dream and is trapped in the world of the here and now, raising questions of where dream and real space begin and end.



Deciphering Identity is a collaboration between fine art academic Kris Smith and a participant in an Australian Research Council linkage grant titled Growing up with cancer: a mixed methods examination of how cancer influences the transition from adolescence to adulthood. The project involves researchers from Sydney University, The University of Newcastle and CanTeen working with young adults that have experienced cancer whilst navigating adolescence. Using established research methods alongside innovative qualitative methods this study looks at the effect of this experience on the formation of identity.


Aaron Bellette’s Tearing Light uses medium format film photography to record the visual experience of Dyslexia, where he distorts and layers photographic images to present his own interpretation of time and space. Spatial and temporal planes are rendered onto the film planes in order to physically construct his envisaged world. Aaron teaches photomedia at the University of Newcastle and Avondale College.


Ella Dreyfus is Head of Public Programs and lecturer in photomedia at the National Art School in Sydney and winner of the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture in 2005. For Healing: space and place, Ella exhibits Blue Chip Tenant a photographic diptych. Ella will also give a paper at the ArtsHealth Sympoium titled Weight and Sea: an interactive artwork that confronts our private obsession with body weight in a very public place.


Patricia Casey is a Sydney artist. Scented Gardens for the Blind is series of black and white photographic prints on cotton with embroidered detail of metallic threads and handmade lace. They are dream-like landscapes hovering on the border where dreams and reality are blurred. They explore our ability to lose oneself and become immersed in a special place.

Sacra Tierra: an installation as part of TINA 2010

Ekarasa Prem and Karma Barnes

Thursday September 30 - Monday October 4 2010
Gallery hours: 12 - 5pm


Explore our connection with our immediate environment as the artists use natural materials to create an impermanent landbased installation. You can join Karma and Ekarasa as they install and then de-install the piece, returning materials and venue to their original states.

Check out this Flickr link for some images of the installation:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hradcanska/sets/72157624945303461/with/5066356040/