danny renehan

surface markings

The construction of a megalopolis is a slow yet unstoppable force.  Like cicadas, industrial buildings gather with the progression of human development, slowly hardening… they cover over their points of origin.    At dusk the advance pauses.

Surface Markings is a detailed and clinical investigation into the industrialised urban landscape.  The delicate nature of working with fine graphite detailing over a monochromatic acrylic background belie the weight and solidity of the structures Renehan portrays. 

Regardless of whether the landscape is within our own earthly terrain, or elsewhere, Renehan captures a quiet, unpopulated and static moment.

naomie sunner

code purple

Naomie Sunner’s multi faceted self-portraits are a result of her 12 month residency at St Vincent’s Hospital. Through her digitally manipulated photographs she assumes the roles of Nurse, Doctor, Patient and Nun.  The resulting scenes explore relationships and power dynamics, perception of bodies and sexuality.  They also explore the fear of medical intervention, and the control that the medical profession can assume over a person’s body, in particular over women’s bodies.

St Vincent’s Hospital was a training college for thousands of nurses from the 1900’s to 1970’s.  The residency became an ideal setting in which Sunner could explore the power relationships between women.  The stories of compliance, obedience and rebellion amongst the nurses and their constraining conditions, underpin much of Sunner’s manipulation of the gendered gaze.

nora sumberg

look who's talking

Let the works speak for themselves” is a well known saying in the art world.  nora sumberg lets us into the private world of the painting… six of them in fact…. arguing and gossiping, as they while away their time in the gallery. 

They chat about saganaki and Elvis Costello; art critics and transport vans.  They grumble about the boredom of hanging in an exhibition and they dream about running away.   They discuss the 'new' painting on the other side of the room, and they share their fear of returning to the studio and being faced to the wall.   They don’t have much time for gallery directors, and of course, they discuss nora….

e         who was there?

m         i was.  it was amazing. she was dabbing away one minute, pee-wee painting was on the easel, suddenly she was reeling backwards coughing. apparently she’d sneezed, and as she inhaled, pee-wee was caught in the up-draught. the tiny painting was sucked in and lodged in her larynx. she had to have a …something scope, you know where they thread a camera up your nose then dangle it down your throat to see what’s happening

g          ouch!

v           so the painting was hanging in her throat?

b          sort of. she’s got a photo of it stuck there

v           wow!

m         she was pretty sick

e          what happened to the painting?

b          i think she coughed it up in time for the exhibition

v           she could have stood by the wall with a torch and opened her mouth

g          and people could shine it in to see

v           like at the doctor!

m         how very conceptual

v           i’d like her to swallow me

opening night drinks

wednesday september 7

6-8pm

exhibition duration:  september 6 - 24