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Exhibition Dates 27 February -16 March 2013

Opening night drinks Wednesday 27 February 6-8pm

Gallery 1

CATHERINE HOCKEY

Land where you fall

Land Where You Fall is a body of work that concentrates on the familiar forms and signs found within our regular surroundings. Moving over the asphalt road like a carpet veiling the land, I am directed by arrows, cordoned by lines, and managed by traffic lights. Roaming through urban spaces I am lead, ushered and, in case of emergency, saved by the sign of a running figure rendered in green and white.

Road signs and markings are there to manage the traffic but when the streets are empty and people gone, they are large paintings.  I choose to focus on these emblematic devices, ignoring the distraction of other infrastructure.

Working and re-working the signs and symbols within an urban environment that direct us, can suggest a subversion of the rules and expectations of society. The patterns of the forms repeated, or the elegance of isolating a form on the painting plane, are all notions I work with.
- Catherine Hockey, February 2013.

Gallery 2

ISABEL CUEVAS

Indivisible

Cuevas’ practice explores the contrast between apparent chaos; the random, the incidental, and the generated, versus an imposed order that references human intervention and an attempt to observe or control. These works draw on a diverse constellation of subject matter ranging from cellular biology and Buddhism, through to the everyday, as well as more pictorial formalist concerns. Cuevas’s imagery is restrained within a grid-like compositional structure that is cast as a unifying device; exploring the relationship between individual elements indivisible from the whole - a record and metaphor for life.

Cuevas employs printmaking techniques such as intaglio, relief and mono printing, and many of her works on canvas emulate a printmaking aesthetic. This is produced through stenciling procedures, as well as a combination of graphically charged elements such as flattened planes, patterning and tonal juxtaposition.

Gallery 3

ROBINA MCDONALD

Transforming encounters

At the heart of the Celtic world is the art of storytelling. In Scottish Folklore there abound stories of imaginary creatures, both benign and malevolent. Some are hybrids neither human nor beast, others are spirits from the supernatural world. Created narratives go back centuries and are part of childhood. They also serve another function, that of instilling discipline by way of an exaggerated story. McDonald’s work is informed by such memories.

Due to evolutionary processes and rapid technological change in the modern world, children are less likely to be influenced in a fearful way by such old stories. It seems that globalisation has also influenced the spirit world, forcing emigration and transformation to pastures new. This contemporary work has a conceptual framework that explores hybrid transforming encounters with a group of spirits who have emigrated to Australia and are trying to adapt to new experiences as some of their old powers decline. It is a fairy story for both children and adults.