The Quarterly 3.3

T H E Q U A R T E R LY MAY

SPACE | 409b George S treet Water loo NSW 2017 | mayspace.com.au

WINTER 2017

VOLUME 3

NUMBER 3

SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY CATHERINE O’DONNELL Urban Perspective 7 to 10 September 2017 My drawings are an exploration of the architecture, culture, and history of the urban environment with a current focus on 1960/70s housing estates. At first glance the qualities of these utilitarian dwellings may not be evident as all too often these houses are not 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 both the sense of humanity that comes with the fact that people live in these buildings and the more formal aesthetics of these places. 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 which prevent people from seeing the underlying elegance of these simple buildings.

Catherine O’Donnell, Urban perspective 2017 charcoal on paper, charcoal wall drawing, 135 x 57cm (paper size) Exhibition installation, MAY SPACE: FOURTEEN, MAY SPACE, March 2017

EXH IBIT ION C ALEND AR CHARLIE SHEARD Tableau and Poesia 13 June to 8 July 2017 My paintings are pure abstraction. I work with the basic elements of painting: colour, materiality and bodily energy (drawing). My experience as an abstract painter is that colours take a particular form (or shape) requisite at any given moment to the emotions held in and expressed through the body at that moment. Colour and form are therefore married to emotion in the moment, but in order to be meaningful, this marriage must be informed by art history and an adequate mastery of techniques and materials. My recent paintings are Poems and Tableaux of moods, emotions and spirit.

Charlie Sheard, Tableau #3 2015-2016 mixed media on linen, 214 x 198cm

KEVIN MCKAY Pavilion: South Cronulla Studies 13 June to 8 July 2017 This series of paintings and ink wash studies explores Sydney’s southern beachside suburb of Cronulla. It began with a small beachside pavilion. Like many others that dot Australia’s coastline, this structure houses a public toilet and change room and serves as an orientating landmark, demarking the space between the working city and foreshore leisure.

Despite its humble function, the pavilion represents a place of transition and like a classical temple, provides a sense of the metaphysical in its engagement with light and space. I look for the same in the suburban jumble that rises along the shore to obstruct and frame the empty space of sky and sea.

Kevin McKay, Oak Park Rock Pool 2017, oil on board, 23 x 35.5cm

ROBERT BOYNES Five Decades 11 to 29 July 2017 Robert Boynes’s art practice has seen an active five decades with physical moves across national and international boarders, transformations in thematic content and shifts in overall aesthetic. Five Decades will travel from his 1960s and 1970s neo-pop pieces that reflect his time in London and a fascination with trendy capitalist culture and swinging ’60s; via his thick, painterly canvases portraying massive desolate, drowning cities that were created in Australia, but Robert Boynes in his artist studio with the inspired by Los Angeles; to his multi-layered screen print/ diptych A Bigger Concern 2016 painting interventions of topographical cities and crowds in the 1990s and intimate contemplations of city life, social commentary, surveillance and human existence in the later years. This exhibition will explore Boynes’s conceptual and visual evolution throughout these decades through a curated selection of paintings chosen from his studio. Work by Boynes is held in every major art collection across Australia and this show will feature companion pieces, forerunners and alternate versions to these acquisitions as well as work that has never previously been exhibited in Australia.

MYLYN NGUYEN One day I will live in a forest

Mylyn Nguyen One day I will live in a forest 2017 watercolour on paper, resin, twine 12 x 15 x 7cm

1 to 19 August 2017 One day I will live in a forest with goats, rabbits, a dog and a river.

I will have fish come visit me every spring and winter, and in autumn and summer, we would be off to journey islands and valleys, mountains and skies.

I will learn how to talk to dragons and listen to flowers, bears, mosquitoes and moss.

I will invite every adventure to my home in the forest with my goats, rabbits, a dog and a river, and tea would be served.

CLAIRE ANNA WATSON Neoplasm

Claire Anna Watson Neoplasm (still) 2017 HD Video 4096 x 2160p

Black Box Projects 1 to 19 August 2017 Claire Anna Watson explores ephemeral matter as a vehicle for discussing our relationship with humanity and the environment. In “Neoplasm”, associations are linked between clinical procedures and the food we eat. In a surreal and visceral fashion, we are led to consider the slippage between plastic and natural realities and the extent to which humans have control over the environment. Watson reflects on how natural elements can become distorted and synthesised, creating new hybrid forms. We are asked to consider what humanity’s role might be in the ongoing customisation and distortion of the natural world and whether humans are unwittingly cultivating a world engulfed in mutations.

Nicole Welch Wildēornes Land #2 - Capertee Valley 2017 giclée print, face-mounted 80 x 142cm edition of 6

NICOLE WELCH Wildēornes Land 22 August to 16 September 2017

Nicole Welch’s Wildēorness Land investigates the Blue Mountains wilderness from a historical, cultural and ecological viewpoint. The exhibition draws upon archival records that illuminate early European romantic notions of Australian wilderness juxtaposed with contemporary ideas and concerns that reflect the inherent loss and uncertainty we now face for our natural environment.

Welch’s artistic process involves traversing through areas of bushland, where she locates historically and environmentally significant landscapes to create compositions using large-scale projectors, generators, spotlights and research-inspired objects. Installations are enacted and recorded in situ, resulting in a truly incongruous image that records in real time both past and present ideologies. She spent several weeks at BigCi artist residency near the Wollemi National Park where she researched and created works for this exhibition.

GA LL ERY NEWS JAMES GUPPY ▶ Purchased by The Parliament House Art Collection for the ANZAC Centenary.

James Guppy Red Poppy 2005 acrylic on linen 128.5 x 128.5cm

TODD FULLER, Icarus of the Hill ▶ Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 9 June to 30 July.

▶ Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 13 June to 8 July.

Todd Fuller’s hand-drawn films combine analogue filmmaking methodologies with drawing and painting. In March 2017, Fuller participated in Hill End’s Artist-in-Residence program which culminated in the animation Icarus of the Hill. The film combines his experiences with imagery from Australian art history and Greek mythology. The resulting work explores this significant place, its history, and our relationship to it.

Todd Fuller, Welcome to Donalds (detail) 2017, acrylic, chalk and charcoal on paper, 57 x 76cm

ROBERT BOYNES ▶ Robert Boynes: Modern Times, curated by Terence Maloon, to be opened by Jason Smith, ANU Drill Hall Gallery, 22 June to 13 August.

Robert Boynes, White light 2004, synthetic polymer paint on canvas triptych, 120 x 240cm. Purchased by National Gallery of Victoria, 2004.

MAY SPACE

409b George Street Wa t e r l o o N S W 2 0 1 7 www.mayspace.com.au info@mayspace.com.au t.+61 2 9318 1122 tuesday to saturday 10-5

Cover: Robert Boynes The Delay 2 2003 acrylic on canvas 120 x 120cm

MYLYN NGUYEN ▶ Something Else is Alive, Customs House, Sydney, curated by The Curators’ Department, August 2017 to February 2018.

Mylyn Nguyen, Sketch for sitespecific installation One day I will live in a forest (detail) 2017