Art for Alex Art Auction 2016 catalogue

CATALO G UE

Hilary Jackman | Still life with Holbein (detail) 2015, oil on linen, 61 x 76 cm

A fundraiser for Alex Bhathal’s 2016 campaign for the federal seat of Batman

Tickets $20 adult | $10 concession | $30 Keen n Green Entry includes cocktail on arrival Auction to be conducted by Maggie Skelton, Leonard Joel Food available for purchase from Crepes for Change Cash bar including wInes for purchase by First Foot Forward Bookings alexbhathalartauction.com | Enquiries Adam Ingamells 0434 923 205

Sophia Szilagyi | Within time (detail) 2015 pigment inkjet print on hahnemuhle photo rag paper, 35 x 32 cm

Alex Bhathal is the Australian Greens candidate for the seat of Batman for the upcoming 2016 federal election.

Alex has run for Batman in 2001, 2004, 2010 and 2013, increasing the Greens vote each time. With Adam Bandt winning the neighbouring seat of Melbourne in 2010 and 2013, now Batman looks to be the next seat to go Green.

To give Alex a fighting chance against the huge budgets of the Coalition and Labor, we need to raise as much as possible to run a strong campaign. The Art for Alex Art Auction will be a key fundraiser in pursuit of this goal.

About Alex I live in Preston with my GP husband Peter and my two school aged boys Ravi and Paddy.

For the past 28 years I’ve been a passionate community advocate fighting for the issues you care about – from strengthening Indigenous and multi-cultural services to social housing, action on global warming, marriage equality, access to higher education and fairer treatment for people seeking asylum.

I’m a qualified social worker with a Masters degree in Criminology. I’ve worked as a lecturer and tutor at RMIT University and undertaken doctoral studies in the social impacts of global warming.

Like you I want a local member who puts people ahead of politics, and I have a track record for getting results for the local community. That’s why I want to be your Australian Greens representative in Canberra for Batman.

Along with fighting for the issues I’ve always been passionate about, as your voice in Canberra I will stand up for a fairer tax system that pays for the health, education and infrastructure services we need, as well as investment in small business and local jobs in the new economy.

To find out more about Alex Bhathal’s campaign and how you can help the Greens make history in 2016 visit alexbhathal.com

LIVE AUCTION

Phone and absentee bidding available Contact Liam Ferguson on 0413 750 303 to register

1.

AGNETA EKHOLM Untitled 2001, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 cm Estimate: $2000 - $2500

2.

SARAH TOMASETTI Night path 2008, oil on linen, 100 x 100 cm Estimate: $4000 - $6000

3.

BELLE BASSIN Snake to wavelength 2016, Copperplate etching and watercolour A/P 1/1, 30 x 20 cm Estimate: $300 - $400

4.

CHARLES REDDINGTON Another Redd acrylic on canvas, 71 x 71 cm Estimate: $1000 - $1500

5.

SOPHIA SZIGLAYI Warm winds I 2016, pigment inkjet print on photo rag paper, 40 x 40 cm (unframed) Estimate: $400 - $600

6.

SOPHIA SZIGLAYI Almost loneliness moonlight 2015, pigment inkjet print on photo rag paper, 55 x 40 cm (unframed) Estimate: $500 - $700

7.

TRACY SARROFF Poached Fission 2015, chalk pastel on paper, 59 x 61 cm Estimate: $600 - $800

8.

JIM PAVLIDIS Kicking Yips – After Pollock digital pigment inks on archival paper, 35 x 73 cm (mounted) Estimate: $300 - $400

9.

CAMERON ROBBINS Wind drawing test, Melbourne Docklands 2008, copper etching 1/6, 99 x 99 cm Estimate: $1500 - $2000

10.

JEANNÉ BROWNE Walmadan Reef (James Price Point) 2009, Digital print of composite original, 38.5 x 29 cm (mounted) Estimate: $150 - $250

11.

LIZ CAFFIN Canopy 2013 aquatint 10/15. 25 x 20 cm Estimate: $350 - $450

12.

JOHN COBURN Desert Ceremony 1998, screenprint 101/150, 30 x 34 cm Estimate: $200 - $300

13.

JOHN EISEMAN & ANNE CONRON Rendezvous 2014, C-type photograph, 100 x 67 cm Estimate: $800 - $1000

14.

NATHAN GRAY Untitled collage on paper, 59 x 61 cm Estimate: $600 - $800

15.

FREYA HEADLAM Winter morning 1999, collage and acrylic, 90 x 120 cm Estimate: $500 - $600

16.

MONIQUE KEEL Yarra River I Digital print on Hahnemuhle photorag, 30 x 60 cm (unframed) Estimate: $300 - $400

17.

ANDRE J KOCIS A rainbow of books Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed) Estimate: $150 - $250

18.

HELEN KOCIS EDWARDS A steal of quolls Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed) Estimate: $150 - $250

19.

SARAH FAULKNER The Shingleback 2002, gouache on paper, 57 x 76 cm Estimate: $400 - $600

20.

ROBERT TRAUER On the Beach 1976, pen and ink wash on paper, 27 x 25 cm Estimate: $150 - $250

21.

WOLFGANG SIEVERS Foundry Casting 1968, silver gelatin photograph, 60 x 45 cm Estimate: $20,000 - $25,000

22.

MARC PASCAL Eyoi yoi table light (energy hub series) 2016, mixed media, 40 x 56 cm Estimate: $450 - $550

23.

HILARY JACKMAN Still life with Holbein 2015, oil on linen, 61 x 76 cm Estimate: $2000 - $3000

24.

ASPHYXIA Bike Girl 2016, vintage book and spray paint on reclaimed wood, 29.5 x 20.5 cm Estimate: $150 - $250

25.

ANNA TAYLOR Trace 11 2014, ink drawing & acrylic on canvas, 38 x 152 cm Estimate: $1000 - $1500

26.

JENNIFER LADE Further below it was cooler I 2010, Photograph, 41 x 61 cm Estimate: $600 - $800

27.

THORNTON WALKER Canis #II 2012, softground and aquatint 1/20, 19 x 24 cm Estimate: $800 - $900

28.

CHARLES BLACKMAN Axiom aquatint etching 44/50, 50 x 41 cm Estimate: $300 - $500

29.

MELINDA SCHAWEL Whisper 2015, multi-plate etching, 38 x 38 cm Estimate: $400 - $600

30.

CAROLYN LEWENS In the Photic Zone 2016, Unique-state solar cyanotype photogram (2009) digitally re-mastered (2016) archival print on 100% cotton rag, 75 x 47.5 cm Estimate: $1000 - $1500

31.

ROD GRAY Lagoon 2005, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm Estimate: $1500 - $2000

32.

ELYSS MCCLEARY Film Still (the eyes of laura mars) 2016, ink on paper, 23 x 30 cm Estimate: $200 - $400

33.

MICHELE MEISTER Last 2008, mixed media and collage on paper, 42 x 46 cm Estimate: $600 - $800

34.

ROBBIE ROWLANDS Fall to land - Farm shed - Wright Farm - Yeungroon digital C type prints, mounted on Di-Bond (aluminium), 30 x 45 cm Estimate: $400 - $600

35.

KATHERINE HATTAM Yellow Chair colour lithograph 17/25, 73 x 50 cm Estimate: $300 - $400

36.

KATE TUCKER Indiscriminate progress 2014, Batik, encaustic, oil on canvas on board, 42.5 x 37 cm, natural oak frame Estimate: $1500 - $2000

37.

ROSALIND PRICE By the Deua River oil on canvas, 38 x 76 cm Estimate: $200 - $300

38.

OWEN EDWARDS Woman in a turban 1991, pastel on paper, 98 x 67 cm Estimate: $200 - $300

39.

TAMA TK FAVELL Just Sayin’ lino print, 80 x 62 cm Estimate: $300 - $500

40.

SARA WARNER Dot’s Lilies 2015, oil on canvas, 76 x 38 cm Estimate: $800 - $1000

FOR SALE BY PRIVATE TREATY More rejected perspectives of Malcolm Fraser BASIL ELIADES oil on canvas, 160 x 100 cm This painting will be exhibited during the auction.

For further enquiries please contact Liam Ferguson 0413 750 303

SILENT AUCTION JEANNÉ BROWNE The Kimberley, Too precious to plunder 2010, Digital print of banner, 18 x 29 cm JEANNÉ BROWNE Midden Pieces, Broome, W.A. 2016, Digital print of composite original drawn images (mounted), 14.5 x 39.4 cm TONY CANNING Flinders St Station at night, June 2013 Photo, Kodak Portra 35mm, 20 x 25 cm TONY CANNING Flinders Walk at night, June 2013 Photo, Kodak Portra 35mm, 20 x 25 cm TONY CANNING Yarra river at night from Princes Bridge, June 2013 Photo, Kodak Portra 35mm, 20 x 25 cm IAN CLAYTON Tamar Island and Mt. Arthur oil on plywood, 30 x 44 cm BRIDGET FOLEY Red Vase 2015, porcelaneous stoneware, 19 x 15 x15 cm JOHN GRAHAM Monolith 1 & 2 2016, resin, timber, 19.5 x 9.5 x 19.5 cm RON GUY Juliet by the beach pen and watercolour, 50 x 41 cm (framed) MONIQUE KEEL Into Melbourne’s future Digital print on Hahnemuhle photorag, 114 x 60 cm MARTIN KELLY Coastal Heath, Wilsons Promontory photograph, 57 x 43 cm (framed) HELEN KOCIS EDWARDS A banquet of bandicoots Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed) HELEN KOCIS EDWARDS A parliament of owls Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed) ALISON LESTER Vignette from Imagine 2015, ink and watercolour, 51 x 55 cm JASON LICHT Food study oil on cardboard, 30 x 44 cm LARISSA MACFARLANE This place is marked for past and future great handstands 2014, Woodcut on hosho, A/P, 30 x 45 cm DUNCAN MAXWELL Tamar River from Trevallyn oil on cardboard, 19 x 28 cm DUNCAN MAXWELL Eye fillets, cucumbers and mustard oil on cardboard, 21 x 28 cm DUNCAN MAXWELL Lagoon Beach, Tamar River oil on cardboard, 17 x 28 cm MARIA MESTEROU Tempus AE watercolour on paper, 47 x 37 cm MARIA MESTEROU Tempus T watercolour on paper, 37 x 47 cm JIRI TIBOR NOVAK Untitled 1999, watercolour on paper, 47 x 52 cm RODNEY O’KEEFE Ritchie Ares Dona - Chandelier 2012, photograph, 47 x 61 cm ROSALIND PRICE Ivanhoe Billabong oil on board, 30 x 60 cm TIM PRICE Stair Case 2016, oil on canvas, 59 x 61 cm CAMERON ROBBINS Anemograph, Royal Park 2015, C-type photograph, 58 x 86 cm ISY SALMONT Untitled acrylic on wood, 59.5 x 59 cm BRONWYN SEEDEEN Koala Equity open edition print, 51 x 41 cm SOPHIA SZILAGYI Within time 2015, pigment inkjet print on hahnemuhle photo rag paper, 35 x 32 cm ROBERT TRAUER Lion 1976, aquatint 10/12 /Ed. II, 11 x 13 cm ROBERT TRAUER Nude 1967, pencil and wash, 14 x 13 cm ROBERT TRAUER Blue mood 1983, etching 4/30, 14 x 13 cm

ARTISTS A-Z

Asphyxia Asphyxia is a Deaf artist, writer, puppeteer and ex-circus performer. She has toured nationally and internationally over the past decade with her performing arts company and has had a series of four books published featuring The Grimstones.

Asphyxia has a background in ballet, and has trained with Circus Oz and the National Institute of Circus Art, specialising in trapeze, adagio (double balance) and hula hoops. She has created theatre shows, including Blood Makes Noise, which have performed sell out seasons in Melbourne, Sydney and the USA. A chance encounter with master puppeteer Sergio Barrio on the streets of Guatamala in 2006 introduced Asphyxia to the world of marionette theatre – and she was hooked! Asphyxia’s first puppet show, The Paint Factory, has won the hearts of audiences all over Australia. Her show The Grimstones - Hatched took her eighteen months to create. She designed the aesthetic for the show, handcrafted each of the marionettes, and built the set.

As a Deaf artist, Asphyxia creates works that reflect and strengthen Deaf culture and values - providing positive modelling and validation for Deaf audiences. She provides education about Deaf culture and lifestyle to hearing audiences.

Bike Girl This is my Bike Girl stencil, sprayed onto vintage book paper which has been collaged onto a piece of reclaimed wood. I am passionate about bike riding, which I took up in order to live local and reduce my carbon emissions. These days I ride because it feels good, it’s like flying, and I love that my new life involves so little car time. To me, this painting expresses the playfulness of riding, the unhurried joy that can be found on a pair of wheels. - Asphyxia

asphyxia.com.au

Bike Girl 2016, vintage book and spray paint on reclaimed wood, 29.5 x 20.5 cm

Belle Bassin Primarily working in drawing, Belle Bassin resolves her projects in an array of different media and processes.

Her recent body of work explores the subtleties of energy transference and the complexities of gender and has been heavily influenced by time spent in Paris, India, and the experience of birth. Her work uses the affective logic of the psychedelic where oppositions of the waking world seem to reconcile one another in a constant energetic emanation.

Bassin’s recent solo exhibitions include I Can Eat Glass (live work in the Heide Gardens, Heide Museum of Modern Art 2016), Feminine | Masculine (Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne 2013), It’s easier to look at your skin (Cites des Artes, Paris, France 2012) and The Terror of N (Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne 2012).

In 2007, Bassin was the recipient of the Wallara Travelling Scholarship, the Westspace Award and the George Hicks Award. She has been a Gertrude Contemporary Studio resident, an RMIT Printmaking Resident and, in 2012, a Cite Studio resident.

Bassin’s work is held in the Monash University Museum of Art and in private collections throughout Australia. She is currently an MFA candidate at Monash University.

bellebassin.com

Snake to wavelength 2016, Copperplate etching and watercolour A/P 1/1, 30 x 20 cm

Charles Blackman Charles Blackman (b.1928) is a successful Australian contemporary artist represented in most states and provincial galleries whose artistic career spans more than 60 years.

He is regarded as one of the most original and significant figurative painters in Australian art.

His narrative and illustrative works are relevant to his own experience; delving beneath the surface, Blackman reveals painterly images which have great strength. Blackman is a complete romantic, his work has been described as poetic, he probes the delicate world of human relationships, and his art speaks tenderly of grief, guilt, loss, persecution and the joy of dreams and memories. He explores the gesture of affection and empathy and his wealth of images have included the dreamlike and enchanting melancholy paintings of women and flowers, children absorbed in daydreams, the serene White cat Gardens and beach scenes.

In the 1950s he painted the infamous Schoolgirl series, followed by the Alice in Wonderland series. In 1951 Blackman married a poet, Barbara Patterson, who was to become a lasting presence in his work. Over the years Barbara gradually went blind, and some of his most moving works are portraits of Barbara during this period.

Blackman was a co-founder of the Melbourne Contemporary Art Society in 1953 and was one of seven Antipodeans responsible for the Antipodean Manifesto - a reaction against what they saw as the meteoric rise of abstract expressionism and non-figurative art in Australia. He has won many prizes including the Rowney Prize for drawing (1959) and the Helena Rubinstein Scholarship (1960). In 1997 Blackman was awarded an OBE for his services to art.

Axiom aquatint etching 44/50, 50 x 41 cm

Jeanné Browne As an artist, I operate under the mantle of ‘Ears2ground’.

My artwork offers a window into aboriginal cultural knowledge of habitat, derivative of many years living with Broome’s Goolarabooloo community: I divide my time between the Victorian bush and the NW Kimberley every year; my drawings directly reflect immersion in both environments.

The visual diaries I keep are in the vein of old naturalists’ journals, with a particular interest in the local reading of country, functional plant use, language and the seasonal knowledge of place, documented over the last 25 years via notes, painting, print-making, collage and large-scale interpretative mural signage.

Sideways from art-making, previous (and on-going) work involvements have ranged from teaching, to indigenous horticulture, bushland management, prop-making for film and theatre, and bush catering. Not all at once, but these engagements commonly overlap.

My main present focus is the preparation for publication of extracts of an archive of functional plant use and seasonal knowledge I have recorded since 1992, via artwork (drawings, paintings, screenprinting, collage, mural signage), local language notes, photographs and written description.

These cultural journals derive from time spent living in the realm of the Kimberley coast north from Broome, Western Australia, home to the Lurujarri Heritage Trail hosted by the Goolarabooloo Community.

instagram.com/ears2ground

Walmadan Reef (James Price Point) 2009, Digital print of composite original drawn, painted and photographic images (mounted), 38.5 x 29 cm The Kimberley, Too precious to plunder 2010, Digital print of banner, 18 x 29 cm Midden Pieces, Broome, W.A. 2016, Digital print of composite original drawn images (mounted), 14.5 x 39.4 cm

Liz Caffin Liz Caffin is an Australian printmaker whose work evokes scenes that are elusive and dreamlike, giving shape to fragmentary memories. Figures take flight and journey through landscape or architectural vistas.

Dark shadows hide in doorways and destinations.

Occasionally the ‘echidna person’ appears as a reminder of the artist’s home territory in the bushland of Central Victoria, Australia.

In a series of prints set in Venice the echidna person becomes ‘il foresto’ - the foreigner or visitor. Caffin’s Italian works are symbolic of the dilemma facing the Australian artist whose cultural heritage is European, but who lives a great distance from the rich repositories of art in Europe.

It is not that Caffin simply desires to be closer to our European heritage. Work such as the Tangling series immerses the viewer in an environment that is primeval and untamed. In these prints Caffin uses her understanding of natural forms found in the Australian landscape and melds this with the influences of the Renaissance painters, in particular the use of chiaroscuro (light and dark). Caffin’s work is both European as well as Australian – just as the artist is a product of both.

Liz Caffin has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions nationally since 1993. Her work is represented in many private collections as well as a number of public art galleries.

lizcaffinprintmaker.com

Canopy 2013 aquatint 10/15. 25 x 20 cm

Tony Canning

Flinders St Station at night, June 2013 Photo, Kodak Portra 35mm, 20 x 25 cm Flinders Walk at night, June 2013 Photo, Kodak Portra 35mm, 20 x 25 cm Yarra river at night from Princes Bridge, June 2013 Photo, Kodak Portra 35mm, 20 x 25 cm

Ian Clayton

Tamar Island and Mt. Arthur oil on plywood, 30 x 44 cm

John Coburn John Coburn painted for the past years according to simple philosophy: “I want to express my feeling about nature and the world.� Coburn adopted spiritual and religious themes in pursuit of the abstract art as his expression mode. It obliged him to pursue his lonely course since it is apart from postwar mainstream Australian painters.

In recent years, his reputation has earned wider recognition. It happened when his consistent approach was appreciated and the paintings achieved greater color and depth. Now, Coburn is held widely to be the foremost living Australian abstract artist.

He was born on September 23, 1925 and he is also famous for all of his tapestries. He grew at Ingham, Queensland and served in Australian Navy during the World War II. He enrolled later at National Art School. In 1960 and 1977, he won Blake Prize for Religious Art. All of the major Australian galleries have displayed and collected his works including the corporate and private collections like Cbus Collection of Australian Art. Two of the tapestries are hanged in Sydney Opera House and 7 of them are hanged in John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Some of his works are also displayed in Vatican Museum, in Rome.

During the 1970s he gained enough confidence to embark on his artistic mission and that is to develop distinct Australian abstract visual language. Coburn sought the influence of the Roman Catholic religion, Western European culture as well Aboriginal nature and spirituality. His international influences are Miro, Mondrian, Rothko, Piccasso, and Matisse. As he pursued his holy abstractions, his agnostic contemporaries watched in great fascination.

Desert Ceremony 1998, screenprint 101/150, 30 x 34 cm

Owen Edwards Artist Statement Education: BFA COFA NSWU and a bunch of Post Grad degrees that were mostly relevant to an artist.

Mostly not. Also a bunch of short courses that took me out of my comfort zone.

Many group exhibitions. Some in admired Sydney galleries. Apparently people were aware of my work. I am too modest to know. My work is leftovers of the experience that inspired it. Meaningless after the event.

From 1986 until about 1995 I did portraits. Usually of people I bullshitted with at nightclubs. I have an eidetic memory and would later portray the moment when the person I was talking to decided that I was a potential sexual partner. It was all about eye contact and the expression of desire and curiosity. There are hundreds of these portraits. A lot unfinished. I think I slept with about three of them. A few I still consider friends. The entire collection could be seen as a pictorial essay of how a person with child abuse experiences copes. The offer. The rejection. The absence of direct power. The incompleteness. “I can see you but I don’t want you.”

Woman in a turban Woman in a turban is a portrayal of the absurdity of the seeking of pleasure that can only remind a person of an unpleasant experience. Beauty at a price.

Woman in a turban 1991, pastel on paper, 98 x 67 cm

Jon Eiseman and Anne Conron Jon Eiseman has been a practicing artist/sculptor since 1985. During this time he has participated in many solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia. In 1998 he completed a Bachelor of Arts [Fine Arts] at Monash University and graduated with Honours. In 2000 he completed a Master of Fine Arts at Monash University. Eiseman has completed several public, corporate and private commissions throughout Australia His sculptures are part of private collections in New Zealand, USA, Asia and Europe.

Anne Conron is an Australian artist who lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria and in Stanley in North West Tasmania. She is interested in both art and science, and has a degree in Zoology from ANU as well as a Masters of Fine Arts from Monash University. Anne’s work utilises the format of the wunderkammer, or amateur museum. She explores contemporary environmental concerns and their relationships with the history of colonisation in Australia to create a visual dialogue about conservation and extinction.

Rendezvous During the winter solstice on a volcanic bluff in north western Tasmania, strange happenings can occur.

Some of the mysterious wildlife was caught for the first time on camera......

Artists Anne Conron and Jon Eiseman collaborate on their photographic artworks in which they explore the world of dreams and the human condition. ‘Rendezvous’ is a whimsical look at a world beyond our everyday reality.

dreamingofwings.com.au

Rendezvous 2014, C-type photograph, 100 x 67 cm

Basil Eliades Basil Eliades lives a passionate life. He is an artist and author more concerned with the energy that drives things rather than their appearance. Basil teaches creativity, philosophy, and flow through literature, art, and martial arts.

More rejected perspectives of Malcolm Fraser Eliades can lay claim to painting the last ever portrait of Malcolm Fraser - something he says has completely changed the trajectory of the work.

In the oil painting, Eliades challenges people to contemplate the varied perspectives of the former prime minister - something he has always been fascinated in. Over years, he watched as Mr Fraser’s values changed; and as he turned from a perceived tyrant to a figure of respect and admiration.

It was these ever-changing values and perceptions that inspired his cubist interpretation piece.

“More perspectives of Malcolm Fraser first started taking shape some years ago and evolved over time,” Eliades said, “I wasn’t really happy with the original portrait and it sat in the racks in my studio for years until Mr Fraser first started criticising John Howard and he was suddenly interesting again. I was very aware of the changing public perspective of who he was and the painting changed as a result.”

“His values changed over his time as prime minister and this was really interesting to me,” Eliades said.

“This work is more than a physical representation, because I’m not really interested in surfaces or jaw lines, but rather the energy of something and how something works.”

Eliades only had one sitting with Mr Fraser, after he refused to sit any longer.

“Mr Fraser wanted to know what it would look like when it was finished, what style and format it would take.

I said I didn’t know and he said, well, no more sittings then. When he saw the final product, I think he was fairly happy with how it turned out. Now in death, this painting means more than ever.”

basileliades.com

More rejected perspectives of Malcolm Fraser oil on canvas, 160 x 100 cm

Agneta Ekholm Agneta Ekholm has been a finalist in the Calleen Art Award for the past six years (2010-2016), a finalist in both the Wilson Visual Art Award, and the Fleurieu Art Prize. She recently completed a major commission for the newly opened Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Guangzhou, China, Marriott Hotel Beijing, China and has artwork in the JW Marriott Hotel, Miami, Florida & Marriott Dallas Market Center, USA. Agneta is currently completing another commission for The Parisian Sands, Macau, China. Her works are held in major public and private collections nationally and internationally, including Artbank, the Embassy of Finland (Australia), Sony Music Corporation, Google (USA) and Rydges Hotel Group.

Artist Statement My current work is by definition abstract and it is built entirely from imagination and engagement with my technical process. Each painting evolves on the canvas: no working drawings exist.

The viewer is immersed in the luxurious ebb and flow of paint and mysterious forms which might be suggestive of radiological images, landscapes, light-play, water flow or movement: many personal associations may be provoked. The scope of individual response to the paintings reflects an indefinable quality that is essential to the work’s ultimate success. The paintings result from the exploration and discovery inherent in a technique honed over the last number of years.

Working with fast-drying acrylic and water, I use a sponge to apply layer upon layer of shapes and gestures with solid pigment and transparent washes, while continually washing and rubbing sections away until the final complex image is built. I may work for days on a small isolated section of the painting. It is an obsessive and fastidious process and the work travels a complex journey of twists and turns before I have found the ‘solution’ which is that paintings final incarnation.

A spare use of colour focuses attention on a sense of movement in the forms framed by a still surround. In these works an inky blue creates a cool, dark and sensual space. It seems paradoxical that the work, while time consuming and re-worked attentively over weeks and months, should appear at first glance simple and immediate. The strong fluid and organic core stilled by the gentle ground , contributes to vague figurative and emotional qualities that the audience just cannot pin down.

agnetaekholm.com

Untitled 2001, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 cm

Sarah Faulkner Sarah Faulkner was born in Hobart, Tasmania. She studied Fine Art [Painting] at RMIT University and Prahran College, Melbourne. In the early 1980s Sarah was the founding member of Roar Studios in Fitzroy, Melbourne, which is now recognised as one of the most influential Australian art movements of the late twentieth century. Faulkner was awarded an Australia Council Grant for an artist residency at Green Street Studios in New York City. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia.

Sarah Faulkner’s work has been acquired for several high profile public, private and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; Artbank; Shepparton Art Gallery; University of Western Australia; Deakin University; Monash University; State Bank of NSW; Western Mining Corporation, the Myer ‘Roar’ Collection and the Australian Government’s Artbank.

A survey exhibition of Faulkner’s work was held at the Stonnington Stables Museum of Art at Deakin University in 2004. She has completed several significant mural commissions in Victoria. Faulkner’s work was included in Patrick McCaughey’s 2014 book on Australian art ‘Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters’.

The narrative elements of storytelling and personal experience are critical elements to Sarah Faulkner’s painting. Her palette reflects the country or place she has explored at a particular time. Sarah has travelled widely to Central, North and South America, Italy, France and India. Her most recent body of work focuses on the costal areas of the Bali, New Zealand, the Mornington Peninsula and the Great Ocean Road, Victoria.

She uses vibrant colour to create bold and dramatic paintings. Her lines and brushstrokes are free and spontaneous, always full of the beauty and harmony of nature and the detail of daily human life.

The Shingleback The Shingleback was painted in 2002 whilst I was staying at Gluepot bird reserve in South Australia. We spent three months living there during a period of drought. There we saw many reptiles , scorpions and birds as well as kangaroos and feral goats. A wonderful place to visit if you like birds and the remote country.

This is the 2nd lizard that I painted (in gouache) during this time.

sarahfaulkner.com.au

The Shingleback 2002, gouache on paper, 57 x 76 cm

Tama tk Favell Tama tk Favell is passionate about the links between carving, tattooing and printmaking throughout Pasifika.

Tama’s work is developing his idea of transgender tangata ira tane / male spirit identity being expressed through iconographic tattooing, creating a Takataapui / queer cultural means of gender transition, as an alternative or addition to the Western medical model.

Tama was born in New Zealand in 1975. In 2001 he moved To Melbourne, and in 2005 began to exhibit his work. He has held numerous group and solo exhibitions since then.

Favell has won several awards and prizes including the Darebin Art Prize.

Artist Statement My works have become a complex realization of many possibilities and a part of my own transition. I have been creating personal accounts of physical transition / the integration of self and culture and the negotiation and navigation required of living in more that one world. My work is about being between cultures, about moving between forms and changing form.

tamatkfavell.wordpress.com

Just Sayin’ lino print, 80 x 62 cm

Bridget Foley Bridget Foley has been working as a potter and a teacher for 25 years. In 2013, Foley left teaching and now work as a potter full time in Alphington. She works with porcelain and use glazes such as celadon, copper reds, chun and tenmoku and constantly experiments with different glaze combinations to give her work a unique look.

Visitors are welcome to visit Bridget’s studio gallery by appointment.

Red Vase The glaze technique in ‘Red Vase’ is called glaze on glaze, where after applying a base glaze, a number of other glazes are applied layer upon layer. The effect in the firing process is for all these glazes to fuse together to create this rather abstract surface pattern

bridgetfoleyceramics.com.au

Red Vase 2015, porcelaneous stoneware, 19 x 15 x15 cm

John Graham John Graham is a self employed designer and maker, working from a workshop in Brunswick, Melbourne.

Monolith 1 & 2 2016, resin, timber, 19.5 x 9.5 x 19.5 cm

Nathan Gray Nathan Gray uses techniques learned from his background in experimental music to create works that talk about the way people interact with objects. Using a set of strategies that look at objects as scores for action he creates succinct, often humorous works that span sculpture, performance and video.

Solo exhibitions include: Works: Under 30 Seconds and Things that Fit Together, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2014; Queen Size, Plinth Projects Melbourne, 2013; Acts, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2012; Theorist Training Camp/Practice Piece, West Space, Melbourne, 2012; In the year 2525, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2011; Gertrude Contemporary Project Space, Melbourne Art Fair, 2010; Tudo Que Acho/ Everything I Think, The Narrows, Melbourne, 2008; Quem Ao Viu O Vento, Escola Dos Belos Artes, Salvador, Brazil; 2008; Untitled Installation, Mirka @ Tolarno for ACCA, Melbourne, 2007; and Love, Purity, Accuracy, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2007.

Recent group exhibitions include The Substation Contemporary Art Prize, The Substation, 2014; Spring 1883, Utopian Slumps, The Hotel Windsor, 2014; You Imagine What You Desire, 19th of Sydney, 2014; Regimes of Value, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA, Melbourne, 2013; Sonic Spheres, TarraWarra Biennial, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2012; The Social Life of Things, Monash University Faculty Gallery, Melbourne, 2012; New Psychedelia, University of Queensland Art Museum; and ACCA Art #2, Horsham Regional Art Gallery, 2011.

Gray completed has residencies at Cemeti House, Indonesia in 2011, at the Sacatar Foundation in Bahia, Brazil in 2008 and was a Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artist, 2010-12. He is a member of the improvised electronic group Snawklor, band People Person and convenor of Ancient Memories a group that performs works by Cornelius Cardew. Gray was awarded The Substation Contemporary Art Prize in 2014.

Untitled collage on paper, 59 x 61 cm

Rod Gray Climate is the most vital subject of our time. More than at any other stage in human history, it is the epic backdrop for everything going on in human experience and discourse. Powerful tides and storms are tremendous forces with the ability to erase and erode land, life and livelihoods on a scale never thought possible before our present age.

The tension between human culture and the enormous resources nature has in reserve is the preoccupation of my work. I am drawn to landscape as a form, however, rarely work from life. The task I engage with in my artwork is to distill the visual matter common to us all and to create from this an essence of experience.

Rough hewn and painterly, layered, and colour driven, my work is intended as documention of this process of accumulation. I believe that the feel of the aesthetic thought process should be palpable and present, never glossed or overwritten and lost in the finished piece. Painting has always been about creating relationships with unexplained phenomena. Whether it was made in service of religious thought or the increasingly industrialised dictates of the 20th century, art has consistently grappled with the mystery of the unknown. From cave painting to the contemporary fixations with cell research and cloning, humanity has always used art to understand, translate, and reveal the inexplicable.

rodgrayart.com

Lagoon 2005, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm

Ron Guy Born in 1957, Ron Guy has exhibited widely since 1995, most often as part of the Post Goughists group exhibitions. Originally formed in 1987 the Post Goughists are a collective of artists who acknowledge the Gough Whitlam government’s position on tertiary education during the early-1970’s, as it was these forward thinking initiatives that allowed many members of the Post Goughists to gain access to tertiary education. As a group the Post Goughists come together annually on the anniversary of the sacking of the Whitlam government to celebrate their roots, and to ‘maintain their rage’.

Juliet by the beach pen and watercolour, 50 x 41 cm (framed)

Katherine Hattam The recurring image of chairs is a theme explored by Katherine since the mid 1990s. Her obsessive large black and white charcoal drawings as a sixteen year old incorporated domestic settings and representations of family members symbolically portrayed as objects. Much of this work was lost in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983 in the Adelaide Hills.

Hal Hattam died in 1994. Two years later Katherine s mother found four of the early drawings that featured symbolic representation of the family, the interior of the Canterbury home and, in particular, the motif of the chair became the focus and still resonate in Katherine s new work.

Katherine Hattam began in her early years with small linear self-portraits and scenes of family life on Basildon Bond writing paper and shortly after progressed to large black and white charcoal drawings depicting family, other people and furniture. Artist, Arthur Boyd, was shown the drawings and told Katherine s parents to take her out of school and encourage her to get on with being an artist.

Hattam completed a Master of Fine Art in Painting at the Victorian College of the Arts and later completed a PhD at Deakin University. Prior to these studies (and several years before) Katherine undertook a degree in Literature and Sociology / Political Science at the University of Melbourne.

Hattam had her first solo exhibition in 1978 at the George Paton & Ewing Gallery alongside Helen Frankenthaler. She has exhibited regularly ever since in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra with institutional shows at Warrnambool, Bendigo and Geelong Art Galleries.

Prolific, academically gifted and a perfectionist, her work has been heavily influenced by the landmarks of Melbourne, and her vibrant paintings contain echoes of Matisse. Her work has been collected by significant public and private institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery. Katherine has won the Banyule Drawing Prize and Robert Jacks Drawing Prize and has been short-listed many times in the Dobell Drawing Prize and Arthur Guy Painting Prize.

Yellow Chair colour lithograph 17/25, 73 x 50 cm

Freya Headlam As an abstract expressionist painter, I have worked for over 30 years with acrylic on canvas creating abstract landscapes. Sometimes I use paper or fabric to create collages over the paint or embedded into it. As a tonal painter, I enjoy using closely related shades of colour- warmer and cooler, darker and lighter. My aim is to capture the spirit of a landscape, real or imagined – or of some other kind of “scape”, say a cityscape, an “inscape”, or a dreamscape...

Winter morning In “Winter morning” I was using delicate colours of paint with white and pale pieces of paper, some marked with printer’s ink. As I worked, what began to emerge was a sense of things floating in a vapour, maybe rising and turning gently on an imperceptible current of air. When I stood back to look, it reminded me of one of those cold foggy mornings in autumn or winter, when the mist muffles the usual everyday sounds and shapes, and everything is quiet and peaceful.

Winter morning 1999, collage and acrylic, 90 x 120 cm

Hilary Jackman “After many years painting “en plein air” I have retreated indoors maintaining what I can of the experience of being in a living landscape. I employ objects from my collection; mostly glass, to activate a pictorial space, the painting then records the fluctuations of the viewing process.

I am interested is how I might use this process to choreograph an experience as opposed to depicting objects.”

Hilary Jackman has studied and exhibited in Melbourne since first graduating from RMIT University in 1963. She holds an Honours degree in Printmaking and Sculpture and a Diploma in Illustration. Throughout her career as a painter, her practice has largely consisted of painting from Still Life arrangements in settings filled with natural light. In recent years, she has developed a fascination with spherical and glass objects which have come to populate many of her Still Life paintings.

In 2007 she contributed to establishing Artery Cooperative Ltd. Northcote, with her partner Jeph Neale, who she also collaborates with through Public Art Projects in and around Melbourne.

Since the late 1970’s she has had Solo exhibitions at Eltham Gallery, The Melbourne Art Exchange, Australian Impressions Gallery, Delshan Gallery, and the Light Factory Gallery, Melbourne. She has been in numerous group exhibitions and has won a number of awards, residencies, and travel scholarships.

Her paintings are held in Victorian public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, the State Library of Victoria, and the Municipal Collections of Nillumbik, Banyule, Manningham, and Darebin. Her work is held in a number of corporate and private collections throughout Australia.

arterycoop.com.au

Still life with Holbein 2015, oil on linen, 61 x 76 cm

Monique Keel Monique Keel is a printmaker whose work addresses local and global environmental issues. The work addresses the fragility of the natural world whilst reflecting on the built environment in which she lives and works.

Monique has been drawing since she was a child in Melbourne and lived in Europe and Perth before returning to Melbourne in 2002. She completed numerous short courses in visual arts and then in 2009 decided to put aside her career as a psychologist and focus on printmaking. Over the years she has worked with a number of environmental organisations and it is this commitment to the environment that provides much of her inspiration.

Monique completed her Diploma of Visual Arts at the Council of Adult Education / Box Hill TAFE in 2013 and over the last 6 years has shown in a number of exhibitions in Melbourne. She is a member of the Merri Studios, a group of local printmakers who show their work together on a regular basis and work together to develop their art.

Artist Statement As an artist I take my inspiration and ideas from the natural environment around me; from my garden to the wide landscapes of the Australian coast and Alpine country. These landscapes are often juxtaposed with images of the cityscapes in which I live and work. I often begin with a small idea, taken from my local environment and then expand the idea to address wider environmental issues. My work is a visual representation of my striving to bring a greater mindfulness of the fragility of the natural environment and our communities’ role in preserving what we have and it speaks of hope for the future.

I have been drawing since early childhood and took up printmaking in my 30’s as I was continually drawn to admire the work of printmakers from the 15th Century to the present. I now work primarily as a printmaker and continually explore the ways in which I can bring together different media: linocut, etching, woodcut, colograph and also watercolor. The depth of lines and the colors achieved with each of these methods differs and adds richness to my work, which people comment upon and appreciate. I enjoy talking to people about the processes I use to arrive at a finished piece and the ideas behind the art, about how ideas begin small and seem to grow as I work through an idea.

My favourite tool is the lino cutter, as it gives me a sense of drawing within my work as well as a graphic quality to my art. I am inspired daily by the shadows cast upon my studio by the trees in my garden. These shadows, the changing light and color that is around me provides daily fuel for my art.

moniquekeel.com

Into Melbourne’s future Digital print on Hahnemuhle photorag, 114 x 60 cm Yarra River I Digital print on Hahnemuhle photorag, 30 x 60 cm

Martin Kelly Martin Kelly grew up in Tasmania where he spent much of his time bushwalking and taking photos.

He was influenced by the wilderness photographers of the time who immersed themselves in their subject matter and their photography. Moving to Melbourne in the early nineties he was influenced by urban themes whilst still looking for signs of the natural world amongst the city and its urban sprawl. His photos have appeared in local and international media.

Artist Statement Some of my photos are of wilderness areas where the influence of nature is obvious. With others of city or urban scapes the inspiration may be as simple as natural light falling on a road or building. People on bicycles have also been part of my photos recently - it is the movement and humanity that they bring to a streetscape that interests me.

I regularly carry a camera and lens with me in a backpack when riding my bicycle or walking through the bush.

I try to be broad in my approach: whilst planning in advance may be involved it is often happenstance of the moment that is more so.

Coastal Heath, Wilsons Promontory photograph, 57 x 43 cm (framed)

Andrej Kocis Andrej is a photo-imaging artist, based in Melbourne, where he has a studio at Artery Cooperative. He completed a Diploma of Photo-imaging in 2008 at Melbourne Polytechnic.

Andrej’s recent works include a stop-motion video for the multimedia exhibition ‘Bookends’, which was an official event of the 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival. The video was shown on large public screens at Federation Square in Melbourne. Andrej also participated in the ‘Dust’ print exhibition and exchange at No Vacancy Gallery, Fed Square Melbourne in 2013 – the prints from which are now included in the State Library of Victoria’s collection.

Andrej was artist in residence at Prem Tinsulanonda international school in Chaing Mai, Thailand in November 2013, as well as at the Kimberley Training Institute, Broome in June 2015. In both 2011 and 2013, Andrej participated in the Fringe Program of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, where his exhibitions were called ‘Exposing Time’ and ‘Retrology’.

Andrej is regularly commissioned by artists to document their artworks and installations. In 2014, Andrej reproduced prints for the ‘Flyway’ print exchange, which were later exhibited at Adelaide’s 2014 OzAsia Festival. And, in 2013, Andrej produced a short film documenting the hanging of the ‘1000 Tears’ exhibition at the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival.

A rainbow of books Helen Kocis Edwards and Andrej Kocis explore the words and imagery of real and imagined collective nouns.

Collective nouns originated in 15th century England, when terms of venery (hunting terms) formed part of a gentleman’s education. These terms highlighted a shared feature or characteristic of a group of animals, such as a ‘pride’ of lions, mischief of mice or murder of crows. Coining such terms became a game of wit in which players devised the most apt, humorous or evocative word to capture the spirit of the animals. The game was also extended to inanimate objects (a ‘quiver’ of arrows) and to human groups and professions (a ‘sneer’ of butlers).

These works are part of a larger body of work exhibited in Melbourne and Broome Writers Festivals in 2015. (See Face.book.com/Pride.Mischief) They visually explore the wit, social commentary and poetic invention of collective nouns within a contemporary Australian context.

andrejkocis.com

A rainbow of books Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed)

Helen Kocis Edwards Helen Kocis Edwards is a Melbourne based artist exploring the human condition through personal and social narratives using printmaking, drawing, painting and multimedia collaborations.

Helen completed an MFA RMIT 2009 and received an Australia Council ArtStart Grant 2010. Collaborative exhibitions 1000 Tears and Bookends have been included in Melbourne Writers Festivals 2013 and 2014 respectively. An Artist Residency in Thailand was undertaken in 2013.

Regular solo exhibitions have been held since 2003 including LWOO Port Jackson Press (2013), Red Gallery (2011) and Qdos Gallery Lorne (2007). Helen has participated in over forty group exhibitions.

Selected entry exhibitions have included Swan Hill Print Prize 2014, Northern Lights at Bundoora Homestead 2013, InkMasters Cairns (2012) and Silk Cut Linocut Award (2011, 2000 and 1998).

Helen’s work is held in national and international private collections and the National Gallery Canberra, State Library of Victoria, Silk Cut and Fremantle City Council Print collections.

About the works Helen Kocis Edwards and Andrej Kocis explore the words and imagery of real and imagined collective nouns.

Collective nouns originated in 15th century England, when terms of venery (hunting terms) formed part of a gentleman’s education. These terms highlighted a shared feature or characteristic of a group of animals, such as a ‘pride’ of lions, mischief of mice or murder of crows. Coining such terms became a game of wit in which players devised the most apt, humorous or evocative word to capture the spirit of the animals. The game was also extended to inanimate objects (a ‘quiver’ of arrows) and to human groups and professions (a ‘sneer’ of butlers).

These works are part of a larger body of work exhibited in Melbourne and Broome Writers Festivals in 2015. (See Face.book.com/Pride.Mischief) They visually explore the wit, social commentary and poetic invention of collective nouns within a contemporary Australian context.

helenkocisedwards.com.au

A banquet of bandicoots Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed) A parliament of owls Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed) A steal of quolls Giclee print on hahnemuhle paper, 48 x 32 cm (unframed)

Jennifer Lade Drawing on past work in sculpture and painting Jennifer currently works in photomedia, interweaving realspace and digital-space practices. Underlying her work is an interest in the integration of virtual sensory experiences and the corporeal world.

Jennifer Lade is a senior lecturer in Digital Art and Games at RMIT University. Jen has been Director of the three undergraduate programs that focus on digital art and games design and programming for the four years since their launch in 2005 until standing down recently to concentrate on her Masters research.

She has many works in private collections and is represented in the LaTrobe University art collection.

Further below it was cooler I Eight years prior to the arrival of the First Fleet in Australia there was a major flood along the Murray River.

Flood Lit: a narrative of words and images moves through dimensions of time that encompass the life span of individuals and into the deep time of climate and geology. Cyclic events of the past are connected with the experience of the present and the uncertainty of the future. Architecture and landscape merge, metamorphosing into creations of the imagination while leaving their inscriptions upon the body.

The traveller leaves the domestic space and cultivated garden, passing through a landscape wavering into a mirage, then darkness and beyond to the soundscape of the illuminated city. Finally returning to the outskirts and an unknown future. Regret underlies a collective inability to conserve an environment that has moved, or will move majestically beyond the reach of human effort.

Further below it was cooler I is a part of this work. To view Flood Lit in its entirety go to:

floodlitdigitalsensing.wordpress.com/the-flood chrysalis.com.au

Further below it was cooler I 2010, Photograph, 41 x 61 cm

Alison Lester Alison Lester is one of Australia’s most beloved children’s authors. Alison grew up on a farm overlooking the sea and first rode a horse as a baby in her father’s arms. She still lives in the country and rides her horse Woollyfoot, whenever she can. Her picture books mix imaginary worlds with everyday life, encouraging children to believe in themselves and celebrate the differences that make them special. Alison spends part of every year traveling to schools in remote areas, using her books to help children and adults write and draw about their own lives. Alison was Australia’s Inaugural Children’s Laureate from 2011 to 2013.

Vignette from Imagine Imagine yourself deep in the jungle, under the sea, in a land of ice and snow, on a farm, in the moonlit bush, on an African plain, in a prehistoric swamp.

This is an original watercolour from one of Alison’s enduringly popular picture books, Imagine. This muchloved classic offers a fascinating look into the natural world and has delighted parents and children over many years.

alisonlester.com

Vignette from Imagine 2015, ink and watercolour, 51 x 55 cm

Jason Licht

Food study oil on cardboard, 30 x 44 cm

Carolyn Lewens Carolyn Lewens’ practice blends installation with traditional and alternative photographic processes. Her interdisciplinary approach broadly canvasses ideas at work in cultural and scientific explanations of nature, with a particular focus on ecologies of light, water and life.

Her installations are mostly drawn from her cameraless photography, employing metaphors of light and ideas about photosynthesis and the photosynthetic. The vibrant blue and white artworks present plans or diagrams of imaginary worlds that could be alive, albeit in different systems. They invite speculation, questioning what it means to be made present by light, to be alive.

Carolyn has had numerous exhibitions––Photosynthetic at Queensland Centre of Photography, Submerge at Linden, Edge of the World at LaTrobe Gallery Gippsland and “Countenance” at Bendigo Art Gallery and Centre for Contemporary Photography and is represented in private collections.

Grants from The Australia Council, Arts Victoria and Regional Arts Victoria have enabled her individual practice along with awards from CCP best work on an Environmental Theme, in Black & White and from Linden.

She has been on a number of cultural boards and taught Photomedia at Monash, RMIT & PSC. In the Photic Zone Carolyn’s current PhD project In The Photic Zone at Monash University investigates the most analogue of photographic processes, the solar cyanotype photogram, and the transformational power of digital formats.

In the Photic Zone 2016, Unique-state solar cyanotype photogram (2009) digitally re-mastered (2016) archival print on 100% cotton rag, 75 x 47.5 cm

Larissa MacFarlane Larissa MacFarlane is primarily a printmaker, exploring the mediums of etching, mezzotints, lino and woodcuts. Inspired by the landscapes of Melbourne’s West, she is interested in drawing poetic connections between the industrial, the suburban and the natural worlds. Larissa also draws inspiration from her experience of illness and disability to investigate ideas of belonging and place, healing and change and ways that we can celebrate what we have here and now.

Larissa’s journey as a practising artist began a decade ago after a brain injury enhanced her visual perceptions. She has completed a Diploma in Visual Arts majoring in printmaking, and exhibits regularly, particularly in Melbourne’s West. She has held four successful solo shows in the annual Hobson’s Bay Art in Public Places, one of which was a runner up in 2009. Her work is represented in the collections of the Maribyrnong City Council, Mind, TAC and the Mental Health Foundation, as well as private collections in Australia and overseas.

larissamacfarlane.blogspot.com.au

This place is marked for past and future great handstands 2014, Woodcut on hosho, A/P, 30 x 45 cm

Duncan Maxwell

Tamar River from Trevallyn oil on cardboard, 19 x 28 cm Eye fillets, cucumbers and mustard oil on cardboard, 21 x 28 cm Lagoon Beach, Tamar River oil on cardboard, 17 x 28 cm

Elyss McCleary Elyss McCleary’s practice is involved in collecting and recreating works from the everyday occurrences of her surroundings and sourced archival imagery. Her process interchanges across mainly painting, drawing, photography and installation.

McCleary holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Drawing from RMIT University and Degree in Photography, National Arts School, Sydney. Recent projects include Bedrooms (Rubicon Ari, Melbourne) A Second Shadow, prelude and trail (The Lock Up, Newcastle, co-curated) , Estimating a Fort (C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne) and Drawn Together and Into the Vault Out of the Box co-curated at Arts Project Australia, Melbourne. She has been a finalist in the Brett Whitely Travelling Scholarship, (Highly Commended) Flanagin Art Prize ,Geoffrey Smart Drawing Prize and recipient of the Janet Holmes artist grant (NAVA). McCleary is currently doing her Masters of Contemporary Art at The University of Melbourne Faculty of the VCA.

elyssmccleary.com

Film Still (the eyes of laura mars) 2016, ink on paper, 23 x 30 cm

Michele Meister Michele Meister (b. 1966) was born in Lindau Germany and grew up in Lausanne in Switzerland and Uelzen, Germany. She studied Fine Arts at the Free International University Hamburg under Karin and Wolfgang Genoux, who were master students of Joseph Beuys. During this time Michele was first inspired to produce her own colours from basic pigments, as this gave her more artistic freedom.

After the completion of her studies in 1993, Michele moved to Santorini, Greece, where she had spent her Sabbatical Year (1991) painting and studying the Akrotiri Frescos, dating back to 1600 BC. From 19931995 Michele had several successful exhibitions in Hamburg and Santorini and in 1998 opened her own gallery ‘Gallery Kastelli’ in Santorini, where she painted and taught art classes on the ‘freedom of art’.

Many of her works produced during this period are now permanently exhibited in Santorini, and are also in private collections in New York, New Orleans, Athens, Berlin, Venice, London, Paris and Melbourne.

“By living with different languages, the language of painting has become most important to me because of it’s freedom and liberty. My paintings are not results but developmental milestones in the evolution of ‘The Painting’ that has yet to be painted.”

Last Michele has a German/French background and lived in many parts around the globe before relocating to Melbourne in 2004. On of the themes Michele has worked on since arriving in Australia is “the travel” for which he held an exhibition at 69 Smith Street Gallery. She found that nearly everyone around her has their own story how they arrived here. Michele wanted to capture people’s feelings while they are travelling and looking for a new place to be. Last (German for Load) represents a human travelling, not only with their suitcases, but with weight of memories and history on their shoulders.

michelemeister.jimdo.com

Last 2008, mixed media and collage on paper, 42 x 46 cm

Maria Mesterou The universe of Maria Mestérou is a world of mysterious objects. The strange burden that carry these objects also transforms the landscape where they are placed. They sometimes make room for an equally mysterious personage, knowingly sharing their silence yet maintaining a dialogue with the viewer. These are not still lifes in the usual sense. Perhaps looking for a kind of lost, supernatural dimension or form found in the natural, transferring to a waiting light, waiting for the final metamorphosis.

Born in Romania in 1941, Mestérou graduated from the Bucharest Institute of Plastic Arts. She was part of a group of young nonconformist artists painting for long periods ‘en plein air’ in a village in the Carpathians.

Mestérou first exhibited in France in 1970. She moved to Paris soon after where a workshop allowed her to devote herself fully to painting and printmaking. She has exhibited continuously in Europe since then with a major retrospective of her work held in 2011 at the Montulé Maison des Arts in the French city of Dreux where she once lived.

Her works are held in the collections of the French State, the City of Paris, the Prefecture of Hauts-deSeine, Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild, the Pernot-Ricard foundation of Gravelines Museum as well as foundations and collections in the US and private collections in France and worldwide. Her awards include the Bronze Medal of Merit for French Plastic Arts and Vésinet Show Award 1977. Mestérou is invited regularly to teach painting and techniques in training courses at the Manufacture des Gobelins and Mobilier National (Paris).

mesterou.com

Tempus AE watercolour on paper, 47 x 37 cm Tempus T watercolour on paper, 37 x 47 cm

Jiri Tibor Novak Jirí Tibor Novak is a Czech-born Australian artist, illustrator, and writer. Arriving in Australia in 1970 from Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion, Novak has become a respected artist, teacher and community worker. He is also a children’s book illustrator.

Tibor is well known for his quirky and engaging artworks which often pose more questions than they answer. Although he has embraced the Australian way of life, his Czech heritage and European influence are apparent in his work. Novak’s paintings are delicate, poetic and whimsical. He works with gouache and watercolour but also makes etchings and oil paintings.

He has been a member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) and in 1982 his story, Fish and Bird, was runner up in the UNESCO Noma Concours prize and was exhibited in the Biennale in Bratislavia. He has illustrated works for other authors including One Big Yo to Go, Christopher and The Pig Farmer.

Novak has exhibited widely in solo and group shows. His works are held in private collections in Australia, Czech Republic, England, Japan and Singapore. Public collections that hold his work include La Trobe University, Melbourne Australian National University, Canberra Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne Books Illustrated Gallery and Collection Dromkeen Children Book Collection Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne Alfred Deakin Prime Ministerial Library, Deakin University Fryer Library, University of Queensland National Library of Australia State Library of NSW Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne State Library of Victoria and the National Gallery of Victoria.

tibor.com.au

Untitled 1999, watercolour on paper, 47 x 52 cm

Rodney O’Keefe

Ritchie Ares Dona - Chandelier 2012, photograph, 47 x 61 cm (framed)

Marc Pascal Marc Pascal’s design practice is driven by his passion to empower spaces using light and colour. Marc draws his inspiration from the intelligence and beauty of forms observed in nature. Over the past two decades Marc’s work has encompassed lighting, ceramics, furniture objects, and larger installations. The boldness and freedom of Marc’s work very much reflects his nature, his objects are designed to bring an intimacy and a dynamic energy to the spaces they inhabit.

Marc encourages a collaborative process between the client and his studio, one of the key strengths of his lighting is the modular colouring system he employs where each and every light is “made to order” to the clients colour preferences.

Informed by his education in Fine Art, and Industrial Design, Marc manipulates materials and light as a means of evoking unique spacial experiences, he believes each piece should empower the spaces they inhabit.

Marc’s favourite part of the design process is the sensual experience of creating form, he strives to make every surface of the object vibrate in harmony. The precision and detailing in Marc’s work is driven by his commitment to producing high quality original products, he strives to reach a deep level of completion in each product he works on.

“I find that if i can quench my deepest sense of what it is I am designing, and this can take time, then my design will communicate to a lot of people. I do not feel I have finished a design until I have felt that deep sense of completion….”

Marc Pascal has achieved a measure of longevity with his distinctive and unique designs, his vibrant, joyous and dynamic kinetic light fittings are exhibited and sold internationally, with appearances in the design fairs of Melbourne, Tokyo, Milan, Singapore, Dubai and Seoul.

marcpascal.com

Eyoi yoi table light (energy hub series) 2016, mixed media, 40 x 56 cm

Jim Pavlidis Born in Melbourne in 1964, Jim Pavlidis studied Graphic Design at Swinburne Institute of Technology, and Visual Art at VCA, Melbourne.

Since 1985, he has been a freelance artist and illustrator for a variety of clients such as The Wilderness Society, Dynamo House, 21C Magazine and Move Records. He has worked as an artist for The Age newspaper, Melbourne, for over 20 years. Between 1995 and 1997, he worked in London for The Independent and Daily Mail newspapers, and in Paris where he was art director for The Paris Free Voice weekly newspaper.

As a painter and printmaker, Pavlidis has held regular solo exhibitions since 1994, and his work has been included in numerous group and invitation exhibitions in London, Hong Kong and throughout Australia.

In 2010 Pavlidis was awarded a State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship. In 2015 he travelled to Paris under a Churchill Fellowship to work in a lithography studio as well as winning the Rick Amor Print Prize.

jimpavlidis.com

Kicking Yips – After Pollock digital pigment inks on archival paper, 35 x 73 cm

Rosalind Price Artist statement Drawing, painting, printmaking and playing with natural materials – I use whatever is at hand to explore visual responses to the world. My focus tends to be on place: landscape and cityscape, domestic and public, familiar and foreign, internal and external. I fill sketchbooks on my travels around Australia and further afield.

I’m intrigued by the way we project our desires onto the physical world, and how the world pushes back - affecting our bodies and our moods, attracting or repelling, sustaining and destroying. I ponder the experience of being ‘a part of nature yet apart from nature’.

My earlier professional life as a publisher of books for young people, working closely with authors and artists, fuelled my interest in the power of images to stir emotions, evoke place, and enrich narrative. My current involvement with music and theatre also exerts a subtle influence on my approach to visual art.

My work has been exhibited in various group exhibitions at galleries such as Gipps St (Richmond), Linden (St Kilda), City Library (Melbourne) and the Collingwood and Cambridge Studio galleries (Collingwood).

About the work

By Ivanhoe Billabong is a student work – an early attempt at painting en plein air.

rosalindprice.com

By the Deua River oil on canvas, 38 x 76 cm Ivanhoe Billabong oil on board, 30 x 60 cm

Tim Price Tim Price is an artist who comfortably oscillates between numerous painting styles. Whether he is directing historical or political narratives with realist filmic sensibilities or leading less anatomically proportioned characters through exotic fantastical landscapes with absurd gestures and actions, the audience is invited to share the artist’s thoughtful yet jovial observations of the human experience. His works often depict scenes and environments from his everyday life, including having breakfast with friends and the silverbeet growing in his garden.

Asked what his influences were Price states “my influences at the moment could be briskly represented by five art things: Caravaggio, Hiroshige, The Castle (the movie), food packaging and Antipop Consortium.

I have a sense of a distorted and cut up representational style that I want to achieve in the near future, but I hope that I’ll move on to better things, whatever they’ll be. I wish I was more influenced by Kngwarreye, Malevich, or Pollock and their ontological being - but that’s what I get for being brought up on petty epics like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings.”

Price completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at the Australian National University in 2007 and is a current PhD candidate there. He has been exhibiting in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Hobart since 2007. Recent exhibitions by the artist have taken place at Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney, and Gallery 9, Sydney.

Stair Case 2016, oil on canvas, 59 x 61 cm

Charles Reddington (b.1929) Arriving in Australia in 1959, Chicago-born Charles Reddington had the happy knack of finding himself in the midst of a burgeoning art movement. Australian avant-garde painters were hungry for new styles to reflect the changing times and replace the local largely figurative tradition. Charles brought with him first hand knowledge of the abstract, modern styles from New York. He played a vital part in a pivotal moment in Australian art history which would influence generations of artists for decades to follow.

Robert Hughes said of Reddington: ‘an exquisite colourist... one of the few significant new arrivals in the last five years... and one of the few painters in Australia who are at home in the grand manner of abstract expressionism’.

Reddington remains one of Australia’s most distinctive and recognisable artists.

His work is in public collections in National Gallery of Australia; Art Gallery of NSW; National Gallery of Victoria; La Trobe University; Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery; The Newcastle Regional Art Gallery; Western Australian Art Gallery; Commonwealth Government Collection of Painting, Australia House, London; University of Wollongong; Phillippine Embassy, Canberra; University of Southern Illinois; Indiana State University; University of Kentucky.

Corporate, institutional and private collections that have works by Reddington include (in Australia): Rio Tinto Research & Development Centre, Melbourne; La Trobe Business Development College; Lucios Restaurant, Sydney; Dr Joseph Brown Collection, Melbourne; Ansett Corporation, Airport Sydney; Y s Advertising Agency, Sydney (in USA) Harold Mertz Public Collection, Planned Parenthood, Azriel, Kaplan & Osiol, Public Accounts Office, Chicago Corbett & Matthews, Attorneys at Law, Chicago; Elliot Petlak, Attorney at Law Office, Chicago.

Reddington’s awards include W.D. & H.O. Wills Painting Award, W.H.O Wills Corp., Sydney; The Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship, 1963; The Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship, 1965; Tumut Art Prize; Tamworth Art Prize; Toowoomba Art Prize; The Mosman Art Prize; The Maitland Art Prize; Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant; Indianapolis Museum of Art Merit Award: “Works on Paper”; Travel Grant from Greenwich, American Institute for Foreign Study, Connecticut to London; Research Grant, Indiana State University: “The Intalian Sense of Space, Old and New”; Art Alliance Merit Recognition, Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana; Merit Award, Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana Research Grant, Indiana State University, Visual Interpretation of the Australian Continent and Culture.

Another Redd acrylic on canvas, 71 x 71 cm

Cameron Robbins Cameron Robbins has been a practicing artist for 25 years. His work makes tangible the underlying structures and rhythms of natural forces. He has produced site-specific installations and exhibitions in art centres, disused buildings and outdoor sites in Australia, Japan, Norway, China, Germany and the UK, both self-funded and commissioned.

These inquiries employ structural devices including kinetic wind or water powered mechanical systems.

Their aesthetic is the result of both careful engineering and resourcefulness. The outputs of these sitespecific installations include wind drawings and sound compositions. These interpretations of the dynamics and scale of the physical world suggest the complexities of the unknown.

Cameron is based in Melbourne and studied Fine Art (Sculpture) at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Victorian College of the Arts to 1990; lectured in art and design at RMIT since 2000; awarded Australia Council Visual Arts Fellowship in 2015, and New Work Grants in 2011 and 2013, and various commissions.

Selected solo exhibitions include Var Jevn Dogn Equinox, 2015, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The Red Queen, 2014, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart; and Melbourne Now, 2013-14, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Selected group exhibitions, such as Motorenwerke, 2015, Galerie oqbo, Berlin; FreeRange, 2014, Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne; and the Hong Kong, and Korean International Art Fair’s in 2011. Robbin’s work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and Scienceworks, Museum of Victoria, amongst others.

In May 2016 Robbins will hold his first exhibition Field Lines at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart where he will have a permanent wind installation.

Anemograph, Royal Park This is a wind powered device i call an “Anemograph” (anemos = greek god of winds/graph = drawing). It is shown here in Royal Park responding to some light southwesterly winds over a period of eight minutes.

Wind drawing test, Melbourne Docklands. 1 week duration, March 2008 This is a copper plate etching created with the Wind Drawing Test Rig (see opposite).

cameronrobbins.com

Wind Drawing Test Rig

Anemograph, Royal Park 2015, C-type photograph, 58 x 86 cm Wind drawing test, Melbourne Docklands. 1 week duration, March 2008 2008, copper etching 1/6, 99 x 99 cm

Robbie Rowlands Robbie Rowlands is a Melbourne based artist whose work explores notions of stability and vulnerability through the manipulation of objects and environments. His repetitious and precise cuts and the resulting distortions reflect the inescapable passing of time that affects everything around us. Rowlands’ works have been described as ‘spotlighting the history, humanity and function’ of his subjects. His manipulated objects and spaces blur the boundaries between our fabricated world and the natural world.

Rowlands bases his sculptural work on things that exist at the fringes of our awareness, utilitarian objects such as lampposts or desks. He refashions them into something altogether different yet in a way that never allows their original identity to be shed. The mass produced and functional designs are softened and framed in terms of a new aesthetic, giving the object a renewed energy or sensibility. The effect is to reveal hidden potential in what had come to be regarded as outmoded. If the former object is largely unrecognizable in the new sculpture, the process is not one of violence, rather there is a sense of redemption, as if the object has been liberated from obsolescence, from forgetfulness. This redemptive sense is twofold; on the one hand the object has become something else, inhabiting a new and often sensuous form. On the other hand we can’t help reading this new form back into the old; we sense that the change is not entirely arbitrary, that maybe this new energy, this emerging beauty and potential was always there in the original object, even as it was sat on, written on, or passed by on the way to work. As such his work enables us to reflect upon the wider process of change, upon what our relation with things might suggest about us, and perhaps invites us to inject a little more care into the quotidian realm.

Robbie Rowlands was born in 1968 and lives and works in Melbourne, he graduated from The Victorian College of the Arts in 1999. Rowlands studied at Pratt Institute, New York after, his first solo exhibition FOUND came out of this work. Rowlands participated in the exhibitions Structure, Space and Place, at the Tower Hill Memorial, Kangaroo Ground, 2007 and 26 Surf Street, Merricks, 2007, The offering 2009.

robbierowlands.com.au

Fall to land - Farm shed - Wright Farm - Yeungroon digital C type prints, mounted on Di-Bond (aluminium), 30 x 45 cm

Isy Salmont

Untitled acrylic on wood, 59.5 x 59 cm

Tracy Sarroff Tracy Sarroff’s practice is cross-media, using a range of traditional and non-traditional materials, often in innovative ways. Ideas relating to ecology and overlapping concerns between art and science underlie many of her projects, whilst their form stems from basic structural compositions of living things, their growth and transformation. Patterns, structures, and fragments are sifted from the natural world and recombined.

What prevails is an interest in our relationships with ecology and science and the creative boundaries of what is both imaginary and real. Frequently using ideas that are allied to science fiction and science fact, her work can manifest an ambiguous natural and artificial engagement. Transgenics, biotechnology, botanical illustration, microscopy, and science fiction have been some themes fuelling her explorations to date.

Often which, can relate to contemporary society and new movements in scientific research. Her practice isn’t, however, always predictable. She takes unexpected tangents, which vary conceptually and explore a multitude of material and aesthetic interests.

Tracy Sarroff graduated from BA Fine Art (Hons), RMIT University in 2001 and has since exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has exhibited widely, including Sydney Contemporary, ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne Art Fair, Conny Dietzschold Gallery Sydney, James Dorahy Project Space Sydney, MARS Gallery, The Lock-Up Cultural Centre Newcastle, Departure Gallery London/UK, Shire Hall Gallery, Stafford/UK, Burghley House Sculpture Park/UK and The Bargehouse, London/UK. She has been a finalist in many national art prizes including The Paul Guest Prize, The Sunshine Coast Art Prize, Redland Art Awards and Substation Art Prize. She has also exhibited in artist-run galleries and participated in several artist residencies. Tracy is a past recipient for the Australia Council grant among others. In 2009 she was selected for the prestigious Economist Plaza commission by the Contemporary Art Society in central London, in 2010 she completed a commission for Staffordshire’s Arts and Museum Service/UK, and in 2015/16 she is working towards an ambitious public art commission ‘Birrarung Moat’ in Melbourne Docklands for the City of Melbourne.

tracysarroff.com

Poached Fission 2015, chalk pastel on paper, 59 x 61 cm

Melinda Schawel Melinda Schawel has always been drawn to the physicality of creative process, and allowed the non-rational act of making to guide the development of her atmospheric imagery. Previously this affinity for process has led her to explore printmaking, yet over recent years she has expanded her repertoire to incorporate numerous techniques executed on paper and wood. Through scraping, sanding, painting, perforating, drawing, cutting, drilling and tearing, Schawel crafts her artwork in a manually intensive process that belies the graceful abstracted visions that result.

Working with a pared back palette of neutral tones that are accented by bold reds and graphic yellows, Schawel’s works appear both primordial and feather-light. The artist strikes a balance between control and chaos as she manipulates her medium and the ever-present element of surprise to create shapes and forms of a largely variegated nature. These compositional entities are always disparate, and each bears its own distinct topography. At times they appear continental, like islands and landmasses seen from an aerial perspective floating in an ocean of glacial negative space. At other times they might seem like matter enlarged under a microscope, or leaves drifting past on a pavement. Part of the appeal of this work is its ability to slip so readily between the macro and the micro.

Born in Illinois, USA, Melinda Schawel received a BA in Fine Art and Communication from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1993 and a Postgraduate Degree in Printmaking from RMIT, Melbourne in 1996. She has exhibited regularly since 1995 and has been selected for a number of prestigious commissions including the Westin Hotel and the Park Hyatt. Her work has been published by Murtra Edicions in Spain and is represented in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Australia and the Royal Museum of Fine Art, Antwerp, Belgium.

Whisper Whisper is part of a 2015 series entitled ‘Out From Under Me,’ created while thinking a lot about the seemingly arbitrary sequence of events that shapes our lives and the temporary nature of things. It is a 2 plate etching, incorporating aquatint, spit bite & roll up. Whisper was part of the exhibition Magical, a swap folio curated by Rona Green and exhibited at Neospace 2015

melindaschawel.com

Whisper 2015, multi-plate etching, 38 x 38 cm

Bronwyn Seedeen

Koala Equity open edition print, 51 x 41 cm

Wolfgang Sievers Wolfgang Georg Sievers (1913-2007) was an acclaimed architectural and industrial photographer, both in Australia and internationally. His photographic oeuvre in Australia encompasses architecture, manufacturing industries, mining and workers from 1938 through to 1991.

Sievers initially learnt photography by illustrating his father’s books on the German architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841). He received his formal photographic training at the Contempora School for Applied Arts in Berlin from 1936 to 1938, where he also became an instructor. The Contempora was an offshoot of the Bauhaus in Weimar. The Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, was an innovative educational institution. Central to its philosophy was the unity of art, craft and technology, and the artist serving a social role. As a result, Sievers’ work was steeped in European Modernism and the New Objectivity movement prevalent in Germany and Russia, with its aesthetic of clean lines, pronounced camera angles, geometric forms, and subjects focused on modern life, industry and the machine.

Sievers left Nazi Germany to escape war service and persecution for his Jewish descent, migrating to Australia in 1938. He settled in Melbourne in 1939, establishing his photographic studio in South Yarra. His earliest clients were from the architectural and industrial fields, and in 1939 he received assignments from the Charles Ruwolt engineering works (later Vickers Ruwolt) and Bryant & May in Melbourne.

Sievers made a unique contribution to Australian photography, with his view of the dignity of the worker in modern life, photographing workers from a range of industries alongside the machinery of their working environments.

Throughout his life Sievers was a passionate advocate for human rights and an anti-war activist. In 1967 he protested Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. During the 1990s, Sievers compiled evidence of Nazi war criminals seeking refuge in Australia for the Australian Government and for the Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna. Sievers was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2002 for his services to photography.

The National Library of Australia holds Sievers’ negative archive and the State Library of Victoria holds his print collection. Sievers’ work is also represented in major institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Powerhouse Museum.

Foundry Casting 1968, silver gelatin photograph, 60 x 45 cm

Sophia Szilagyi “Light shimmers, darkness settles, the sea opens its arms to swallow up the sky. Sophia Szilagyi’s imagery evokes the natural world and imbues it with an emotional resonance through the artist’s skilful manipulation of diametrically opposed elements. Light abuts dark, the dense almost claustrophobic space in some works contrast with open seas and vast skies that imply the infinite in others. Imagery is constructed through digital printmaking techniques, layered to create textural complexities, while capturing the oscillations in mood and atmosphere that mirror the ebb and flow of human emotions. Fear, wonder, and danger exist in these images that capture the beauty and grandeur found in the physical world, while also charting an internal topography.” Marguerite Brown, July, 2011 A Melbourne based practicing artist since the early 1990s, Sophia Szilagyi works predominantly in digital printmaking. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, including a sell out show at James Makin Gallery in August 2011. She has also exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Photography and the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in NSW. In 2005 she was commissioned by the Print Council of Australia to produce an edition for their annual print commissions. Sophia is also featured in the recently launched book “New Romantics” by curator and author Simon Gregg. Her work is held in major collections around Australia including Artbank, the State Library of Victoria, and the Queensland University of Technology Art Museum.

Through her work she seeks to create a sense of fear, danger, and wonder that exists both in nature, and in the imagination. In capturing the beauty and grandeur found in the physical world, she also charts an internalised topography, giving form to unseen emotional and imaginative experience.

sophiaszilagyi.com

Warm winds I 2016, pigment inkjet print on hahnemuhle photo rag paper, 40 x 40 cm Almost loneliness moonlight 2015, pigment inkjet print on hahnemuhle photo rag paper, 55 x 40 cm Within time 2015, pigment inkjet print on hahnemuhle photo rag paper, 35 x 32 cm

Anna Taylor “In departing from the conventions of pictorial representation and intentional brushwork, a new receptivity also entered the working process; an invitation to the random flows of thin paint and substances. Taylor evolved a technique of flooding the surface and waiting for it to dry, and then following the intricacies of the edge of the stain, laying bare the simple beauty of the way liquid flows, resists and settles. The canvases appear to be sections lifted from something much larger rather than views complete in themselves. One flows into the next with a poignant quality of gentleness that might suggest to us a lighter touch in our contemporary relationship to the natural world.

The tracings ….. bring to our awareness the way the land both embodies and evokes memory.”

Anna Taylor’s arts practice spans 20 years and has exhibited continuously in solo and group shows. In 2007 Taylor completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction.

Artists statement Since spending 18 months travelling to and from Kakadu in throughout 2006-07 my work has been focussed on exploring the paradox of the minutiae of landscape repeated in the aerial view. My paintings document nature’s repetition of detail, pattern and line. Within a seamed rock held in the palm of my hand is the river cutting through the surface of land below. Nature’s forms repeat constantly; the cells of a sea sponge replicated within the dried bone cells of animals or humans.

Such echoes are endless.

We are linked by these astounding elements. My work is a celebration of nature and beauty; it’s solace.

annataylorart.com

Trace 11 2014, ink drawing & acrylic on canvas, 38 x 152 cm

Sarah Tomasetti Sarah Tomasetti holds a Master of Arts in Fine Art from RMIT and a Graduate Diploma in Italian Studies from La Trobe University. Drawn to explore the ancient method of fresco painting, she studied at the Laboratorio per Affresco di Vainello in Italy, where she learned, from a restorer’s perspective, how to create frescoes, obtaining a professional qualification in ‘Tecnica Pittura Murale’.

Sarah has held numerous solo exhibitions and has been featured in group exhibitions throughout Australia, Italy and Hong Kong, including the Salon des Refuses at S.H. Ervin Gallery in 2010 and 2011 and ‘Contemporary Australian Drawings at RMIT, also in 2011. Earlier this year, an ambitious project Slow Melt, in collaboration with installation artist Heather Hesterman, was a focal point for The Warming at Australian Galleries, part of the art+climate change 2015 event held in Melbourne across 23 public and private venues.

Sarah has been a finalist in awards including the Fleurieu Prize for Landscape and the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award. Her work is held in public and private collections including Artbank, Macquarie Bank National Australia Bank and the Grafton Regional Gallery.

Night Path The Night Path was made after a number of trips to Wilson’s Promontory observing the landscape at dusk.

For those who know the prom, it is a point on the Lilly Pilly track above Tidal River, where the path stretches up the hill, a ghostly white in the encroaching darkness. This series became a meditation on the descent into night; the penumbra, when the fixed becomes fused with the ephemeral.

The painting itself will change according to the light. When brighter, viewers can make out the foliage of the area, in particular a large black boy grass tree to the left of the path. As the light dims, only the path and an edge of light on the horizon will be visible.

sarahtomasetti.com.au

Night path 2008, oil on linen, 100 x 100 cm

Robert Trauer Born in Czechoslovakia in 1913, Robert Trauer arrived in Australia in 1949. A painter and printmaker, he studied extensively in Melbourne and exhibited regularly throughout Victoria. He died in 1985.

Lion 1976, aquatint 10/12 /Ed. II, 11 x 13 cm Nude 1967, pencil and wash, 14 x 13 cm

On the Beach 1976, pen and ink wash on paper, 27 x 25 cm Blue mood 1983, etching 4/30, 14 x 13 cm

Kate Tucker Kate Tucker received a Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2009.

Since then she has held solo exhibitions at Chapter House Lane, Helen Gory Galerie, Art Stage Singapore, Rubicon ARI, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Edwina Corlette Gallery and Platform Public Art Space. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at LON Gallery, Strange Neighbour, Dutton Gallery (Spring 1883), Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre, Tristian Koenig Gallery, Caves, Linden New Art, c3 Contemporary Art Space and Bus Projects. She has been a finalist in the Albany Art Prize, Bayside Acquisitive Art prize, The Churchie Emerging Art Prize (twice), Geelong Acquisitive Print Awards and The Archibald Prize.

Indiscriminate progress This work created at a time when I had just started exploring printed and found base cloths, as a way of activating the substrate and shifting the emphasis away from illusory space. The canvas was dyed using a batik technique and treated with encaustic wax before being painted. I was interested in achieving a physical distance between the base cloth and the painted surface, whilst maintaining ambiguity between foreground and background elements.

katetucker.com.au

Indiscriminate progress 2014, Batik, encaustic, oil on canvas on board, 42.5 x 37 cm, natural oak frame

Thornton Walker Thornton Walker was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1953, and emigrated to Australia, settling in Melbourne in 1965. He graduated with a Diploma of Art (Printmaking) from the Prahran College of Advanced Education in 1976, and began a Post Graduate Diploma (Printmaking) at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne in 1977. The artist’s first solo exhibition was held in Melbourne in 1980. He has continued to exhibit nationally ever since and with over forty solo exhibitions to his name, Thornton has become one of Australia’s most successful and renowned figurative tonal painters.

Walker’s work is represented in collections in the British Museum and Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan and throughout Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of Western Australia, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, Artbank, University of New South Wales, Philip Morris Arts Grant Collection: Parliament House, Canberra, Macquarie Bank and AXA Australia.

Of his practice in general Walker says - “I want to convey not a feeling of stillness but stillness itself, a reality removed from ‘normality’, an aspiration to a way of simply being and observing minus the baggage.”

thorntonwalker.com.au

Canis #II 2012, softground and aquatint 1/20, 19 x 24 cm

Sara Warner Education Diploma Fine Arts - Monash University (Caulfield) 1976 BA – Fine Arts, Deakin University 1986 Master of Arts, RMIT University 2001 Exhibitions •

Axiom Gallery, 1978 (g), 1979 (g)

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Christine Abrahams Gallery, Richmond, 1980 (g), 1982 (s)

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Realities Gallery, Toorak , 1983 (g)

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Manningham Art Gallery, Doncaster, 1986 (s)

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Stuart Gerstman Gallery, Richmond, Southbank 1992 (s), 1994 (s),

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Lindengate Art Gallery, Yarra Glen, 1995 (g), 2000 (s)

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Louis De Castella Winery, Heathcote, 2011 (s)

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Backspace Gallery, Ballarat, 2016 (g)

Collections •

Preston & Northcote Council

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Manningham Council

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Royal Children’s’ Hospital

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Latrobe University

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Greensborough Council

Dot’s Lilies 2015, oil on canvas, 76 x 38 cm