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june 19 - july 7

Re-thinking the animal:

Challenging the objectification of animals in the current consumer culture

by Wendy Jane Sheppard

Animals in modern societies are categorically defined by their usefulness to humans, such as animals as pets for human companionship, and domestic animals for human consumption. Pet animals are highly visible in society where the animals themselves are a part of family life. In stark contrast to pets, domestic animals such as cows, chickens, sheep and pigs are secured away from view in factory farms. These animals are predominately experienced as fragmented, lifeless bodies, known as rump, loin and rib.

Wendy Jane Sheppard has been Re-thinking the Animal through her large scale paintings on canvas. She has explored an alternative visual experience that contrasts the visible presence of the pet animal with the invisibility of the domestic animal. Pet animals are depicted as highly textured experiences of colour, where domestic animals are seen as a whole and recognizable form rather than the fragmented pieces that can be found in the deli.

Wendy Jane Sheppard has recently relocated to Melbourne after completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours degree at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. This is her first solo exhibition in Melbourne.

Captured

by Mischa Merz and Michael Staniak

Through her canvases Mischa Merz plays the fine line between intimacy and distance, guilt and innocence, the watcher and the watched. These polarities are increasingly becoming a part of a contemporary culture that tends to shun the nuances of daily life and fixate on extremes. Merz’s paintings trigger questions around these opposing forces, inviting the viewer to wonder about how events might be linked. The audience is left to make their own connections between the images and extrapolate possible narratives from them.  

Michael Staniak continues on the line between the watcher and the watched. Our environment is inundated with data from many media sources, fulfilling society’s need for information. Seemingly, the media dominates the way we think and the way in which we live. However, our demands of the media also control what we ingest. It is easy to get caught up in this cycle, forgetting that the information we receive should not always be taken as truth. Staniak questions the source of the images that filter through to our television sets and shiny magazines.

Mischa Merz has worked as a writer and journalist since the early 1980s for The Age, Sunday Age and Herald Sun. She has published fiction and non-fiction including a book on her experiences as an amateur boxer, titled Bruising -  a journey through gender, which was published in 2000 by Picador and shortlisted for the Dobbie award. She resumed her interest in visual art and is currently completing a BFA in painting at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Michael Staniak was a professional world ranked tennis player and has returned to his interest in art. He is currently studying painting at the VCA.

Breathe

by Kim McDonald

Kim McDonald’s research into the self as subject has resulted in a body of soft velvety drawings on paper. McDonald investigates the demarcation between interior and exterior space.  Informed by Cindy Sherman and Freda Khalo, she questions the location of the self with regard to the interior and exterior of the physical and emotional body.

The focus of her research has been to investigate what happens at the junction, where one space borders the other.  It is on this living, breathing, semi permeable and tactile skin that the division between the interior and exterior occurs. The resulting intuitive mark making on paper investigates this living edge and the possibilities that lie on either side.

Kim McDonald is currently undertaking a Masters of Visual Art at Monash University. This is her first exhibition at red gallery.