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march 21 - april 8

places

by Natalie Jeffcott

Places is a photographic collection of randomly encountered places such as walls, steps, doors and objects.  Jeffcott continually wanders the urban landscape capturing the changing environment. 

Using the found street environ she constructs images like a plein air painter. By focussing on the colour, design and shape of the street scape, no one object is given priority, rather each element and line completes the picture. A wall of red bricks is given equal weighting to a stack of leaning black tyres which then relies on a line of grey concrete to complete the image.

Places consists of ten large scale digital prints.  The exhibition is a transformation of the three dimensional into a flattened plane where the inherent line and colour of an object is more important than the object itself.

Since graduating with a Fine Arts degree from RMIT, Jeffcott has travelled extensively overseas with her camera.

FORM-WORK 

by Catherine Hockey

FORM-WORK is an investigation into form and line. The result is a collection of minimalist geometric wall and floor constructions.  Pure forms cascade down the canvas and domino into structural abandonment. The gallery becomes a backdrop to the unfolding and expanding mixed media works.

Hockey has captured the architectural offerings of the city and collapsed them into her two and three dimensional works.  Solid structures and tenuous lines connect and dissipate throughout the works. However it is not only the external street façade is which Hockey has taken an interest.  Thought is also given to the internal spaces.  The result is an altered perception of depth and a respect for the negative space of each structure.

Hockey is currently undertaking a Master’s Degree and the Victorian College of the Arts.

Brandawear 

by Melissa McVeigh

Brandawear is a series of black and white children’s portraits.  Children of various ages pose for the camera. Tattooed across innocent skin are well known brands that target the minor market.  Hotwheels® and McHappy Meals® wrap around a child’s surface. These brands are a concept, a sale, an artificial identity embedded into the skin. 

The exhibition is an investigation into the impact of advertising on young children.  The aggressive marketing of companies such as Mattel™ reinforces gender stereotypes. There are boys and their fast cars. There are girls and their pert, pink Barbies graduating to highly sexualized Bratz® dolls. It’s a menagerie of stereotypes that requires a quest for conformity.

These are some of the first brands to which children are exposed and the beginning of a clearly defined path of consumerism.  Once you get the Hotwheels® toy, the product is repackaged as the Hotwheels® lunch box, the Hotwheels® bed spread, the pencil case, the computer game  and then finally sold again in a McHappy Meal®.  Collect all five.

In 2005, McVeigh was a finalist for the Prometheus Art Award and the winner of the John Margaret Baker Fellowship for emerging artists.  In 2004 she was a finalist for the Canberra Contemporary Art Prize and the Hutchins Art Prize.