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28 april - 15 may 2010
please join us for opening night drinks wednesday 28 april 6-8pm
Polar Instincts
Monumental dogs wander through groups of children playing hopscotch. A polar bear gently cradles a sleeping infant. The animals and children in Siobhan McMahon's watercolours are plucked from their natural environments and placed into fields of open space. Flecks of glitter occasionally sparkle across the image, recalling the flurried enchantment of a snow-dome or the remnants of a forgotten celebration.
McMahon has remarked that 'young children and animals are uninhibited and self-centred creatures, yet both are forced to adapt to a life that changes these instinctive traits. I know it is irrational to believe in a world where children don't grow up and dogs are the size of bridges, but sometimes I find myself enjoying viewing these visions when faced with the banalities of adult life.' The images in this exhibition present isolated, dream-like territories in which fantasy proliferates.
Siobhan McMahon is a recent graduate of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Painting). This is her first solo exhibition.
A Visual Discovery: Six Weeks in Southern France
This exhibition of new photographs and sculptural works was created during Dawn Whitehand's residency in France earlier this year. The work continues her interest in the communicative properties of clay and the value and aesthetic of totemic objects.
Whitehand's studio practice is strongly informed by her relationship to the rural settings in which she creates her works. As she explains, 'Living in a rural environment, I am constantly aware of the curvaceous lines and constant movement within the natural landscape. As light and shadow play amongst the hills at different times of the day and night, the illusion of motion and tonal variations suggest an ever-changing environment. Clay being the ‘skin of the Earth’, I find it to be the most appropriate, and the most expressive medium to capture the vulnerability of the natural environment. The visual tactility of specific glazes heightens the connection to organic landscapes. These works aim to draw the viewer closer to their natural self and their belonging within the world.'
Undertaking a residency in a centuries old small town in Southern France, however, presented a blending of the urban and natural: a built environment that was organic in its colours, materials and textures. Beyond this town lay an environment of hillsides, coastal shorelines and snow-capped mountains. The resultant artworks are a visual representation of Whitehand’s gradual discovery of the town of Vallauris and its unique surrounds.
Dawn Whitehand is a regional Victorian artist. She has participated in many Australian and international group exhibitions over the past decade, and her work is held in numerous public and private collections. She was recently awarded her PhD from the University of Ballarat, Victoria.
Loose Threads
When I was a child, my mother and her friends would sit and sew while painting their nails, smoking and talking. There were no patterns, things were just made. There was very little money so the women were resourceful: a curtain one day became a ball gown the next weekend. There was no stopping their ingenuity.
Victoria Nadas' compositions in needlework, collage, paint and textiles are the result of learning to combine a European heritage with an Australian present. Cultural collisions are sensually and courageously traced used red thread, the expression of bloodlines in Hungarian culture. Sepia-stained photographs from old family albums are ghosted across tissue and organza, the softness of the materials highlighting the fragility of the image.
As Nadas reveals, her practice is motivated by a desire to 'bring into relief the accidental nature of inheritance and roots, and to offer a vision of that which is beyond geography and deeper than history. Mapping my own personal history, I invite the viewer to reflect on his or her own past, re-discovering the trails we leave behind.'
Victoria Nadas is a Melbourne-based visual artist. The works in this exhibition were produced during a residency at Caris Christi Hospice, St Vincent's Hospital, in 2010.
Additional works in this exhibition can be viewed here.