CATHERINE O’DONNELL Drawn in Fairfield 1 to 27 October 2016
CATHERINE O’DONNELL Drawn in Fairfield 1 to 27 October 2016
My drawings are an exploration of architecture, culture, history, and the urban environment with a current focus on 1960/70s housing estates. At first glance, the aesthetic qualities of these utilitarian dwellings may not be evident, these buildings are not always given the same value as other housing and have become a cultural signifier of lower socioeconomic communities across Western Sydney. Through my drawings I aim to extract a sense of humanity drawn from the fact that these are homes, along with the more formal aesthetics of these buildings. I employ realism as a catalyst to ignite the imagination of the viewer and invite them to look beyond the mundane and banal. To revisit these spaces imaginatively and find the aesthetic poetry embedded within the suburban landscape, while at the same time disrupting cultural prejudices that prevent people from seeing the underlying elegance of these simple buildings.
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 2’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
▶ ARTIST BIOGRAPHY (b. 1961. Quirindi, NSW, Australia) In late 2015, Catherine O’Donnell joined Brenda May Gallery as a represented artist following a particularly prolific two-year period, which included graduating with a Masters of Fine Arts from the National Art School, a residency at the British School at Rome, an Artist in Residence program and solo exhibition at Penrith Regional Art Gallery, a residency at Parramatta Artist Studios, exhibiting in multiple group shows in Australia and Italy, and receiving a Highly Commended at the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award. This year opened while O’Donnell’s exhibition A Notion of Home was on view at the Murray Art Museum Albury, and 2016 will also see her work at Newcastle Art Gallery and Bathurst Regional Art Gallery for Just Draw, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery in Windsor, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, and at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as one of six artists selected for the second edition of the Dobell Australian Drawing Biennale, from July to December. This show will coincide with her inaugural exhibition at Brenda May Gallery in late 2016. O’Donnell has exhibited in a solo capacity extensively across New South Wales at Wallspace Gallery, Elizabeth Farm in Parramatta, Blacktown Art Centre, Murray Art Museum Albury, Penrith Regional Gallery, Flinders Street Gallery, Boutwell Draper Gallery, Grafton Regional Gallery and the National Art School in Sydney. O’Donnell has also exhibited at the Pataka Museum in New Zealand as a part of the NZ International Arts Festival. Within these exhibitions, O’Donnell has presented refined bodies of works that explore human relationships with varying environments through precision and omission. This includes the detailed, monochromatic renderings of desolate urban environments that highlight both the traces of human existence and the overlooked landscapes we live in. In 2015 O’Donnell reversed this notion with her series of work Home/Front, drawing attention to the way in which soldiers and nurses occupy their temporary homes with their wartime families. In this series, some background information pertaining to time and place has been removed, taking visual focus away from the wartime situation to instead focus on camaraderie and identity. A number of galleries and organisations have collected O’Donnell’s work, including the Parliament House Art Collection, Artbank, Penrith Regional Gallery, Kedumba Collection of Contemporary Drawings, Pataka Museum in Porirua in New Zealand, Blacktown City Council and many private collections. O’Donnell also has two major works in the collection of Murray Art Museum Albury, acquired after she won the 2009 Albury Art Prize, enabling her to travel to Venice in Italy and complete a residency at the Scuola International di Grafica, where she developed the series Venetian Visions (2011).
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Side Window’ 2016, charcoal on paper - unframed, 102 x 66cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 3’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 4’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 5’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 6’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 7’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 8’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 10’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 12’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 15’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 16’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 18’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 17’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
Catherine O’Donnell, ‘Urban dwellings series 19’ 2016, pencil on paper, 25 x 56cm
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