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october 23 - november 10, 2007
recent works
Lidia Gertig’s recent body of work tumbles out of childhood, through innocence and lands with a dark thud flat onto the face of canvas. Black silhouetted figures fleet across the image like apparitions of tightly held memories.
Gertig’s work focuses on the emotional strength, observant nature and candid disposition of children during times of conflict. Embedded into each image is a sense of eminent danger and a corresponding quest for survival. Marching soldiers and gun clad tanks storm through the foggy environs. Red and white barrier tape cordons off further investigation into the past whilst feebly trying to protect the future.
Lidia Gertig graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1999. This is her first solo exhibition at red gallery
Lidia Gertig, War widows,
oil on canvas, 1240 x 790 mm, $ 1200 SOLD
Lidia Gertig, installation view
Lidia Gertig, installation view
charted
by Siobhan Punshon
Victoria’s coastline is littered with shipwrecks from a time before adequate shipping charts and navigation equipment. Stories of sunken treasure, survival and loss, are part of what makes the sea a place of mystery and danger.
Siobhan Punshon is interested in the connection between the romance of the sea, and the practical aspects of navigation. A shipping chart defines what lies beneath the waters surface. It contains information regarding depth of water, beacons, wrecks, marine parks and hazards that can neither be clearly defined, nor seen from water level. Punshon takes elements of these charts and superimposes weather maps and other coded documents to create her own dramatic yet un-navigable adventure maps. The final works are a composite of codes, icons and warnings.
Based on old shipping charts of Port Philip Bay and the Victorian coastline, Punshon lives and plots on the Victorian coast, and navigates from Sorrento and Portsea to Queenscliffe. Siobhan Punshon was short listed for the 2006 ANL Maritime Art Prize. This is her second solo exhibition at red gallery.
Siobhan Punshon, Chart correction,
acrylic on canvas, 1070 x 1120 mm, $ 1500 SOLD
Siobhan Punshon, Head South,
acrylic on canvas, 1200 x 1200 mm, $ 1800
Siobhan Punshon, Submerged rocks,
acrylic on canvas, 1200 x 1200 mm, $ 1800
by Louise Saxton and Tim Craker
dot-net-dot-my is the result of separate residencies undertaken by Australian artists Tim Craker and Louise Saxton in Malaysia.
Building upon their shared interests in pattern and Asian culture, both artists re-invent the net as an object that can entrap, protect, or shield. Referencing the decorative traditions of Islamic patterns and Western handiwork, dot-net-dot-my weaves together influences from salvaged and reconstructed hand embroidered table linen, mass-produced paper stencils, disposable plastic cutlery and postcards, along with Malay flora and fauna.
Tim Craker installs the rhythmically monumental Thought Pattern, a literal net of woven plastic Chinese soup spoons and fishing line. The piece celebrates the cheap, available and disposable and gives it a new aesthetic worth. In a gentle subversion of the dictates of hyper-consumerism and a paean to the humble and domestic, the worthless and disposable are assembled into an epic net. The meditative nature of its construction is echoed by the net’s slow movement in a gentle breeze and the shifting interaction with its own shadow.
Louise Saxton has netted together a fantastical collection of insects, made by reconstructing the embroidery of others. There are 150 ‘new specimens’ in her work re-collection. Each specimen is delicately pinned to a large swathe of sheer bridal netting. The series brings together influences ranging from the domestic realm of women, the Malay flora and fauna along with the intricate world of carved decorative motifs abounding in Asian culture.
Saxton and Craker’s work provides a cultural comment on the domestic and the public, the disposable and the valuable, the familiar and the other. After showing at red gallery this exhibition will travel in expanded form to Malaysia and Singapore under sponsorship by the Australian High Commission.
Tim Craker
Louise Saxton
opening night drinks
wednesday october 24
6-8pm
exhibition duration: october 23 - november 10, 2007