NEW AUSTRALIAN PAINTING
16 July - 24 August 2013
Opening: Tuesday, 16 July, 6 - 8 pm
Conversations: 7 - 7:30 pm
We cordially invite you and your friends to the Finissage (end) of the exhibition.
Closing drinks: Saturday, 24 August, 3 - 5 pm
6 August, 6 - 8 pm: Performance by the artist Phoebe Rathmell
PERFORMANCE by PHOEBE RATHMELL as part of NEW AUSTRALIAN PAINTING
Phoebe is performing an ephemeral toothpick installation - 'painting' with toothpicks, which reminds of a meditative Mandala Painting. Rathmell was born in Sydney and completed her bachelor of Arts/Fine Arts (Honours Class) at COFA in 2011. She is the recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award and is currently a Masters by Research candidate at COFA, University of NSW. Phoebe's research is centred on her phenomenological exploration into silence as a manifestation of her meditative art practice. Her interest in this field of study stems from over twelve years of meditation practice.
Conny Dietzschold in conversation with some of the exhibiting artists.
‘New Australian Painting’ at Conny Dietzschold Gallery features a group of eight Australian artists whose art practices stem
from a space in art history that has surprising relevancy and impeccable curation. The Group Show brings together eight
different perspectives in regards to shape, colour and composition, which are the three components that make up an integral
part of the concept of painting. What unites them is their use of pigment, whether it is found, industrial, or unsupported, and
their use of unorthodox materials to explore the three painting fundamentals: light, colour and matter. This exhibition explores
a dialogue of art history that is poignant and alluring outside the pervasive conversation of paint and canvas ie. paint is not
always involved in their art practice. The nature of materials is an important instrument to some of the exhibited artists, as
well as the structure of surfaces that is capable of changing the perception of colour in the eye of the beholder. This show is not
just about what painting does without paint, yet expands the definition of ‘painting’.
Painting is redressed in the work of Elizabeth Day using a variety of material that carry inherent meanings. Textures create
texts and textiles in Day's work. A new work Abstract Geneticsm 'paints' chromosomes with wool..knitting entered the
vernacular of painting with the work of Rosemarie Trockel and Day’s new work continues to develop that language and it's
implications. Metal and textiles are brought together in the exhibited works, steel shims and pins reflect light and evoke an
interplay of colour, surface and reflections.
For Faridah Cameron drawing, writing and stitching are closely associated. Her paintings are constructed by means of
repetitious mark-making, often running from left to right, which has become a form of personal calligraphy. Therefore the
pigment consists of many different layers of paint, the covered layer shines through and creates a diaphanous effect. The
images sometimes resemble textile, and sometimes text.
The focus on surface connects Faridah Cameron to Eveline Kotai, who adds the aspect of texture to her works. Eveline’s works
are a result of constructive origins of canvas itself. Pre-existing paintings are cut and sewn and sometimes repainted, and the
unfurling of these new configurations suggests a continuum that invites the eye to look everywhere and nowhere at once. Over
the past 30 years her work has evolved out of an interest in the impermanent nature of all things - into a mirroring of this via
a process of material regeneration.
Lisa Andrew explores text and the printed image across a wide range of media, from textiles, video and drawing to
installation and video projections. She works with the construct and language of urban planning and documenting landscapes
from the context of her immediate surroundings and urban environment. This is combined with her interest in billboards,
structures of communication and ephemeral constructions such as telegraph wires and scaffolding in the shifting landscape,
especially focusing on the inner central business district of cities. The visual artworks and installations of Lisa Andrew often
reflect the motifs of evolution, movement and change. In this show she exhibits a Inkjet print on different textiles in five parts
that represents a constructed space out of wooden-like panels opening up behind the surface. Repetition and colour shades are
important means of her artistic practice.
Vicki Grace works in a completely different domain. Her paintings appear dream-like and light as feathers. Her colour clouds
float over the surface and seem to displace and merge into each other. Everything remains vague and in motion. Colour is the
priority in Vicki’s artistic work rather than constructions and is based on her intuitive approach.
Pollyxenia Joannou embraces the canvas as her playground of geometric forms and diverse colour combinations creating an
imaginary and modern space with the means of painting. This effect refers to art history, when paintings were supposed to
create optical illusions, suggesting a space behind the two dimensional tableau. Polly’s accurately constructed work can also be
seen in conjunction with an architectural component as in city views and the visual experience of urban environments.
Joan Ross is working in mediums of painting, drawing, digital animation and the third dimension. She uses high-vis glow
materials in order to manipulate traditional sceneries and figures as they were common e.g. during baroque. Playing with the
re-telling of history Joan challenges the concepts of imperialism, racism, consumerism and throw-away culture. She states:
“What underlies almost all of my work is nature; about being natural and what a constructed civilisation is.” Her work The
claiming of things reconfigures, as its backdrop, an early Australian colonial painting by John Glover. Hi-Vis fluoro, colourfully
and gratingly pollutes with the fear of litigation and control over land. The world turns from pristine to colourful but out of
touch, eventually to be restored by flood to its natural state. The work in this exhibition represents the artists having exchanged
the traditional ‘brush’ with the ‘computer mouse’.
Homi Vesal is working with living bacteria wrapped up in artificial colouring and liquid. His work in this exhibition is about
transition and the progression of the dynamic identity of the living form in a completely artificial environmental structure and
it's persistence and development within the material flux. The material parts of which the organism consists at any given
instance are to the penetrating observer only temporary, passing contents whose joint material does not co-inside with the
identity of the whole which they enter and leave, and which sustains it's own identity by the very act of foreign matter passing
through it's spatial system in the living form.