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10 - 27 February 2010
opening night drinks wednesday 10 February 6-8pm
Ergo
‘The Human subject is a figure drawn in sand’ Foucault
If the canvas is already teaming with possibilities, how do you censor these things to produce a painting that is more than the sum of your preconceptions or pre-existing ideas? Camille Hannah suggests that you must have contact with something outside of your subjectivity. Her work lies between the figurative, which utilises ready-made perceptions, and the non-figurative, or absolute abstraction. These are images detached from illustration and narrative. They are designed to stage a shift in the viewers' mind from the affect produced by the image to an awareness of the process that created it. The paint becomes a subject of the painting.
This exploratory process operates step by step, recalling the contingency of the event – a reminder that the image so easily might not have existed. Presenting themselves as culminations of a tactile process, the works are testaments to their physical genesis. Hannah appears to be seeking devices that attempt to disrupt a known, socially-produced subjectivity, exploring the terrain beyond structures and forms. “… I don’t want to reassure the viewer or myself of a subjectivity in place – I want to pull forth other responses.”
Camille Hannah is currently completing her Fine Art Painting (Honours) degree at the VCA.
Between the Pages
Between the Pages is a celebration of the beauty and physicality of books in an age of immaterial information. Ryan Ponsford produces black and white pigment ink prints of aged books and manuscripts found in archives, libraries and private collections. His images are captured on a nearly obsolete format of Polaroid type film using a large format-camera, and the negatives are hand-processed. As Ponsford remarks, 'For centuries, the written word has been the most important way of passing on knowledge, stories, theories and ideas. Before we could travel overseas and before the days of instant information and mass media, books were a pivotal part of making the world available.
‘The work is about texture, history, and lost objects. There are suggestions of baroque art and references to the vanitas painting tradition. On another level, the work is a statement about the loss of past objects. The books are captured on silver gelatin emulsion and presented in a cold black void – as if resting in a place where books go to die.'
Ryan Ponsford graduated from the International Collage of Professional Photography, Melbourne, in 2008. This is his first solo exhibition.
A Figurative Relationship
In these recent works, small figurines are placed on an indeterminate surface, their forms revealed but also kept partially transparent. A Figurative Relationship continues Treloar's exploration of space and displacement in painted and drawn compositions. However, where previously there were only one or two figures inhabiting each mysterious space, new players now intrude; their incongruities inviting the viewer to deduce or invent strange narratives. Unknown relationships hold each work at a point of tension.
Andrew Treloar’s background is in fashion design.
He has shown in group exhibitions at Chapel Off Chapel Gallery, Chapman
and Bailey, St Luke, and the VCA. He is currently undertaking
postgraduate study at the faculty of the VCA and Music at Melbourne
University while practicing art from his Melbourne studio. This is his
first solo exhibition.
