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/

Pixel Perfect

camera phone photography

Wed September 1 - Sat September 18 2010
Opening Thursday 2 September 2010, 6-8pm



As analogue photographers embrace slight blurs and faults within their photographs, so do mobile phone photographers – the quality is rarely good and the final image (if ever physically printed) is always a surprise.

With newer phones and the continuous search for improved quality we are slowly losing the grainy textured mobile phone photographs we use to love and embrace. There are even programs or applications you can download to your phone that replicate the old analogue way of taking a photograph, whether it is for a blurred edge, the aesthetic of a Polaroid image or even the look of an aged 1960s photograph.

Pixel Perfect showcases photographs taken exclusively with a mobile phone camera, by local emerging artists.


Emily Roberts


Caelli Jo Brooker


Liane Audrins


Amanda Degan


Simone Sheridan