South Western Times Art 2020 by Bunbury Regional Art Gallery

SOUTH WESTERN TIMES ART 2020 February 14 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; April 27, 2020

Bunbury Regional Art Gallery isÂ on Wardandi Noongar Land

SOUTH WESTERN TIMES ART 2020 February 14 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; April 27, 2020

CHALLENGING TIMES

Joanne Baitz, PhD Director | BRAG

The works on display in this South Western Times Art 2020 exhibition challenge us, they show us who we are and what we value, they remind us of where we have come from and where we are going. BRAG is proud to present this biennial survey of South Western Art and recognises the strength and talent of those who have contributed to it. This year, the exhibition has flourished under the careful and exacting eye of curator, Lee Kinsella. She has woven a narrative that embraces the complexity and contradictions of the South West. Kinsella thoughtfully and intelligently draws the viewer into an engagement with the remarkable creativity of this region and what it means to be in this place, atÂ this time. The quality of the work submitted for this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s survey demonstrates that the Visual Arts in the southwest of Western Australia is relevant, highly valued and thriving. A recent study by QUT showed that the creative industries in general is expanding rapidly, growing 40% faster than the Australian economy as a whole (QUT Creative Industries 2019)1. Although it is unusual to think in terms of the arts as an economic driver, with an appropriate level of State and Federal support this emerging trend represents a profound opportunity for economic growth within Bunbury and the Region. Despite the challenges of less than optimal funding for the arts, the City of Bunbury is well

positioned to expand the economic and cultural strength of the arts industry through its backing of the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery and other cultural programs. We are particularly grateful for the financial support we receive from them and from the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries. The machinations of federal governmental changes have seen the Department of Communication and the arts subsumed into theÂ new Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. Ensuring the visibility of the arts within this superportfolio will require effort and advocacy by the arts community at a state and local level. Furthermore, the loss of local tertiary education in the Fine Arts space at Bunbury Edith Cowan campus follows a broader trend in rationalising humanities courses within the university sector. This loss of knowledge and expertise will require a community response to ensure Bunbury remains the pre-eminent regional resource for the arts. It is through the arts that we learn to think critically, to challenge dogma, to communicate effectively and to interrogate and celebrate our culture and identity. Art teaches empathy and resilience; it encourages the kind of creative thinking and innovation that is necessary for a thriving and complex economy and society.

1. QUT Creative Industries 2019, What are the creative industries? viewed 8 January 2020, https:// www.qut.edu.au/ creative-industries/ about/what-arethe-creativeindustries accessed 08/01/20

It is therefore comforting to know that there are those who share this imperative and we thank all our patrons, supporters and sponsors. We are proud to partner once again with The South Western Times and have renamed the survey The South Western Times Art 2020 in recognition of their commitment to sharing local stories and allowing local voices to be heard above the overwhelming noise of international and national issues. Together, we can continue to grow and broaden our representation so that we truly reflect the many cultural voices and communities within the region. A debt of gratitude is owed to the extraordinary BRAG team who continue to amaze me with their dedication, ability, loyalty and determination, and to the artists who entrust us to tell their stories honestly and openly. They are the reason we exist; it is our responsibility, as a public gallery owned and managed by the City of Bunbury, to continue to strive for excellence and fairness in representation, to serve this community, to advocate on their behalf and to ensure that no matter what the arts will prevail.

Kim Perrier Carbonature series (2020) Jarrah, charcoal, stainless steel, galvanised steel 2,230mm × 900mm × 300mm

A FIERCE NECESSITY Lee Kinsella

1. Dorothy Hewett (1923–2002) was an Australian playright, poet and novelist. She grewup on a farm in the wheatbelt and her novel, The Toucher, published by McPhee Gribble in 1993, was set in the WA landscape. 2. Grahame, C. M. (1999). Reading Dorothy Hewett as boundary writer. Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Edith Cowan University, 1999. Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu. au/theses/1264, quoted from a conversation between Grahame and Dorothy Hewett, p 160-161.

3. Hunter, Callum, ‘Elders want to have a say’, The West Australian, 4 September 2019, https://thewest. com.au/news/ south-westerntimes/elders-wantto-have-a-say-ngb881307095z

Peter Hill The book burners (2019) Acrylic on book

The South Western Times Art 2020 exhibition is an opportunity to gain artists’ honest and direct assessment of pressing issues affecting this region – economic, social and environmental. This essay provides an overview of the themes that have emerged from this survey exhibition as staged in the former chapel and convent that is now the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery (BRAG). What is consistent is an understanding that the well-being of our community is directly related to the health of the place we inhabit. The stark and extreme country of the South West provides dramatic context to the daily lives of its people. Dorothy Hewett described her response to the landscape1: There’s something terribly fascinating about this because it’s so challenging and so mysterious, and yet also frightening in a way. And I’ve always wanted to set a novel in Albany because I’ve always felt that landscape is so beautiful and yet so foreboding, so threatening. It seemed to be the perfect place to try to bring together these ideas that I was wrestling with.2 This exhibition includes visual depictions of sweeping expanses of sublime sea and landscapes and closely observed renderings of textured surfaces and unique aspects of the landscape. A reveling in the exquisite and unruly details of native and introduced flora around her Albany home is central to Penny Baker’s practice, as is an acknowledgment of how animals and plants are interconnected by their reliance on rainfall.

Penny Baker and Helen Seiver’s fear for the precious and fragile habitat of the many local species of banksia – their survival is indicative of every living entity’s vulnerability to climate change. While Christine Blowfield campaigns to protect an area of national environmental significance by celebrating the majesty of ancient Swamp Paperbark trees, Melaleuca Rhaphiophylia, found in Gelorup. ‘Gelorup’ is the Nyoongar name for the region and old trees bear evidence of Aboriginal cultural activities occurring in this place in the past.3 Elizabeth Edmonds’ vast and primordial landscapes are created in response to her study of the deep history of this ancient continent in her capacity as a palieoecologist. She maps aspects of the country’s past by examining fossil material and cannot help but consider our future trajectory in the face of significant environmental change. While time is the principle guiding Edmonds, artist Simon Hemsley plays with notions of scale. Hemsley celebrates patterns that are found in nature and aligns the microscopic detail of human tissue samples with abstract aerial views of the waterways found in the Kimberley region in the north of our state. Also, at the microscopic level, the wax forms of artist Catherine Higham archive genetic material of plants. These objects preserve valuable pollens and other fibres from a diverse range of plant species to provide a visual and biological snapshot of different forest ecologies across the South West. Stasis and inertia are qualities that can be ascribed to Tony Windberg’s Island State, 2019-20. Windberg re-creates floating studies of Chatham

Island off the south west coast in response to sketches of the island that were completed during Matthew Flinders’ 1801-02 circumnavigation. The sketches appear airborne, as if untethered from actual experience of the country and Indigenous knowledge of the area, as a critique of colonial conceptions of Terra Australis – notions of the new land that they carried in their heads. Other works in this exhibition relate to identities in a state of flux and interior landscapes. Elisa Markes-Young describes her shifting and changing sense of identity that is the result of being born in one place, of one culture, and living in another. While Joshua de Gruchy documents a conscious process of transformation and transition in his works built upon repeated abstracted forms. A very different sense of transition is documented by artist Christopher Young. In this exhibition he has alluded to the de-personalised and brutal hospital rooms that bear witness to death, documenting another change from one state to another. In other cases, artists record a sense of dislocation and disconnection, a discrepancy between conceptions of self and the physical body as documented in Bianca Turri’s photographs, or social dislocation from others in society as viewed through the lens of maternity in Sheree Dohnt’s Mother’s Guilt. And then there are surreal expressions of suburbia and domestic life as Melissa Spencer’s laundry morphs into paint splats as a visual conflation of the uneasy nexus of domestic work and her creative life and artistic ambitions. In Jenny Barr’s case, shark fins carve through the

linoleum at her front door. There are disruptive ideas at play with visual forms that allude to invisible forces. Another example is Rizzy’s performance and installation piece that includes saccharine piped icing ‘underwear’ as evocative symbols of femininity draped, as if shed, in the choir stalls. Individuals and landscapes forged by fire is the impetus for the work of artist, musician and voluntary Captain of the Northcliffe Bush Fire Brigade, Peter Hill. Two major fire events have shaped him as a person and now his practice acknowledges the fire managers – the ones who hold the matches and those who battle with the unpredictable power of fire itself. Hill paints small portraits of the fire managers upon ‘Red Head’ match boxes. Fire is symbolic of the capacity for unlimited damage and devastation, and of new life. A charcoal figure rises from the burnt interior of the grey and weathered tree form as realised by artist Kim Perrier. The weight of the physical world sits on the ground floor gallery with artists choosing wood, glass, steel and found objects to fabricate their works. Britta Sorensen has amassed consumer waste to create her works in collaboration with members of the public. Her black and red works draw upon the powerful symbolism of these colours: black as darkness, power and death in contrast to the life-giving qualities of red – blood, love and life. On the back of these works resides the work white. Each work critiques the unsustainable production of waste and rubbish in our modern society. What is particularly confronting is that we are implicated.

Our histories are intertwined in these familiar objects and items of clothing, prompting a visceral response. The issues that Sorensen addresses are not going away. White does not speak of purity and lightness but is a grey and grubby work filled with the history of objects and people. It appears ghostly, like a melancholic specter. Personal association and memories are triggered when in proximity to these works of art. Chris Williamson’s Ground Control to Major Tom (Reboot), 2019 inspires evocations of music and traces multiple histories. In looking back over the 50 years since David Bowie wrote the iconic song, Williamson has presented a nostalgic cabinet of Melissa Spencer Saturday morning (2019) Oil on canvas two end panels of 460mm × 910mm; central panel of 1,510mm × 910mm

curiosities. Perhaps it is also a call to act: death and the passing of time is inevitable, so make use of today. The works of art in this exhibition allow us to reflect upon what it is that sustains us. I thank the artists for their generosity in so openly offering accounts of their engagements with the world, and to BRAG Director, Dr Joanne Baitz, and her team, for successfully staging this important exhibition. This is a survey of highly charged works that have been drawn from the personal experiences of artists from the South West. Our challenge, as the audience, is to recognise the intentions of the artists and respond with actions of our own.

Lee Kinsella is a curator of art at the University of Western Australia and freelance curator and writer.

ALICE ALDER

Based in her Capel studio, Alder predominantly works with oils on canvas. Her main points of interest in her oil paintings are landscapes or the environmental structure through contemporary art. Alder’s journey first began with creating watercolour illustration for her published books. Struggling to start a relationship with oil paints, she began to approach the oils using same techniques as watercolour. Creating a contemporary style, Alder has developed a raw and unvarnished truth of nature. Alder’s use of contemporary impressionism is rendered with loose, expressive brushwork and a focus on the effects of implied light to show subtle vitality of time. Recently, she has become drawn

Alice Alder Awaken the skies (2019) Oil on canvas 915mm × 915mm × 40mm

to the element of light within art. As a synesthete, Alder is greatly influenced by music whilst painting, experiencing the tones and cadence as visual information. Awaken the skies focuses on the light to define the bones of a landscape and focusing on an atmosphere in the creation. This has become her focus for the last year of exploration and studies, calling on the influence from the Old Masters such as J. M. W. Turner. The pastel hues of rose and peach bears a fresh take on an ever-changing state of our environment. The use of water markings and layers create an absence of romantic idealism in the art of landscapes.

In 2015 Alice Alder graduated from Edith Cowan University with a Double Major in Visual Arts and Media Studies. Since then she has worked as a graphic designer in the Bunbury area and showcased her contemporary art in an array of exhibitions in WA. In 2018 Alder funded her own solo exhibition, Beautiful Fades, at ArtGeo in Busselton. Following this successful show, Alder then went on to exhibit at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery in 2019, Finding Home. Currently Alder is working on a combination of digital artwork and large scale landscapes that challenge her point of view.

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CHRISTINE BAKER

This work is quite ambiguous in its meaning. It views sheep as a collective: distant, obscured, veiled versus the individual sheep: humanized, personalized, temperamental. My first encounter with sheep was as a rousy in a shearing team. No time to pet or get to know the sheep. Keep the sheep moving, time is money. Then came Clifford. It was June and lambing time. My cottage borders the paddock. I looked out the window and saw a ewe had given birth and the lamb was laying still on the ground. I watched for an hour or so before I decided to intervene. The lamb was big with a swollen head. I put him in the car and drove to the vet. The vet gave him an injection to relieve the swelling and said to see how he goes. I got the lamb milk, a stubby and teat, some castor oil and egg to replace the colostrum, and went home. I made the lamb a straw bed in the back porch and mixed up a supply of milk. He was demand-fed and grew well.

I called him Clifford and he played with Sydney the dog until he got too big and rough for Syd. Clifford didn’t know he was a sheep and freaked out when he was chased by a lamb. Clifford hated being shorn and remembered the shearer [a very nice man] from year to year. Always unwilling to give up his wool. Cliff loved eating anything, rubber, and lupins. He was a big boy and became a bit of a celebrity. Sadly Cliff got sick and died and was greatly missed but probably not by Robert the shearer. I am making clay sculptures to observe the personality of the individual sheep [Clifford]. The sculptures vary in size, placed in front of the painting at intervals to create distance or obscurity. The sheep are veiled to create a sense of obscurity.

Christine Baker has been creative all her life. She achieved a TAFE Preliminary Certificate in Art and Design but is largely self-taught. 12

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After working many years in the rural sector her focus is now on clay sculpture and acrylic painting. Christine has won numerous awards, mainly for painting.

Christine Baker Personality versus obscurity (2020) (detail) Acrylic on canvas plus earthenware clay and glazes 600mm × 600mm (painting) and five sculptures (various sizes)

PENNY BAKER

Living in the South West, one becomes increasingly aware of the importance that rain has on our native and farming environments, on agriculture and on our very basic need for water. Plants and animals delight in rain. In my three paintings I explore the delight of rain on native and introduced species, on farming crops and on our native birds/animals. Rain brings life and growth. Rain brings hope and newness of life to our unique environment, for us to delight in. Working with watercolour and rainwater my paintings are like floral arrangements, showing the need for balance within our environment, between native, introduced and farming. The main plant family included in my paintings is of the Banksia family, a well known and iconic Australian plant. Of the 173 Banksia species within Australia, the South West has the greatest

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diversity, with over 60 species recorded. This plant is a main food source to many insects, birds and other animals. Many Banksia species rely on rain to germinate. Sadly if our rainfall continues to drop they will be one of the many plant families threatened, causing a ripple effect through our environment. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing.” – John Keats Rain brings life and growth. Rain brings hope. Rain down on me.

Penny Baker lives near the beautiful Kalgan River in Albany, Western Australia. As a Fine Art graduate of Curtin University, she now delights in her garden, painting and raising a lovely family. Penny works in watercolour. Her work is inspired by the beauty of nature and her delight in it.

Penny Baker Rain down on me (2019) Watercolour, rainwater, Artline pen three paintings: 420mm Ă&#x2014; 580mm each

JENNY BARR

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea” – E.E. Cummings An unexpected birthday present is from the After much talk drawing series. The drawing is one of 25. A direct and idiosyncratic response to the unique interior environment contained within the walls of the small, original 1970s beach shack that is both her home and studio – Barr’s After much talk series is a richly layered exploration of patterns and interior design elements presented in conjunction with incongruous motifs, imagery and themes drawn from the brine and the salty deep. In these large-scale prints, the lines between inside and outside, environments both domestic and wild, and distinctions between nature and culture become blurred, then rendered moot and ultimately indistinguishable – all very real possibilities in this epoch of rising sea levels, extreme weather events and other increasingly common disruptions. Part of Barr’s ongoing dialogue between the discipline of drawing and the art of storytelling, these large-scale digital prints reconfigure

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previously orderly interiors. Via the introduction of strange unruly motifs drawn from the oceanic and natural worlds, these images function as fluid vehicles for her layered visual explorations of lived, and imaginary, space and spaces. Here the safety and orderliness of the patterns of interior floorcoverings are disrupted by turbulent waves, shark fins cut through linoleum shallows and grinning maws appear at front screen-doors. Elsewhere, three-masted clippers founder in maelstroms that inexplicably appear in rugs under easy chairs. Barr’s use of contemporary digital drawing technologies allows her to both work quickly and move seamlessly between the production of static imagery and experimentation with time lapses, ‘limited’ and ‘stop animation’ project work, and scale and size. Despite their surface menace, it is not without humour and whimsy that these narratives are constructed, bringing together as they do, elements both real and imagined, all drawn from the artist’s daily life in the South West. – Felix Ratcliff, Freelance Writer

Born in Canberra, Australia in 1971, Jenny Barr has now lived in remote coastal South West WA for over a decade. Initial studies and work in maritime archaeology and history ultimately gave way to her lifelong passion for drawing, with Jenny completing a BA Fine Art in Painting, Art History and Drawing at the National Art School, Sydney in 2000.

Jenny Barr An unexpected birthday present (2019) from the After much talk series Digital drawing print on paper 1,100mm × 1,100mm

AMANDA BELL

Inspired by stories of warmth, pain, sorrow and humour, I am emerging onto this path as a maker of things. These made objects are bound by colour and texture and informed by everyday stories of the heroic, using commonplace items such as teabags, and in this piece Everything is funny (The love song of Emjay and Princess Dark Clouds), used cardboard. Finding the charm in the humdrum, seeking the heroic in the domestic, gives me the ability to find beauty amongst the pain. I am attempting to explore these ideas in my objects. Our stories made real. Everything is funny (The love song of Emjay and Princess Dark Clouds), inspired by highly personal experiences of loving and brokenness, also attempts to say something about multi-layered human stories of trauma, and discard and loss. This piece also honours those who have, and those who love those with PTSD.

The love song of Emjay and Princess Dark Clouds Light dancing in A darkened van discarded by all else Eddie’s yarl licks into corners and turns back in a wet embrace He was brave, I say He let me love him, I say To his sister As she wept I am Altered.

Amanda Bell is a Yamatji woman, born on Whadjuk Country and has lived most of her life on Wadandi Country. She is a maker of things. After some years soullessly toiling in the public service; making is freedom!

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Currently living in Undalup/Andalup (Busselton), Amanda uses recycled materials in some of her works, experiments with natural dyes and fabrics, and paints with non-traditional materials to explore what is inside and beneath.

Amanda Bell Everything is funny (The love song of Emjay and Princess Dark Clouds) (2019) (detail) Installation, dimensions variable

CHRISTINE BLOWFIELD

Some places that are so familiar to us can yield treasures. Treasure, that you never thought or expected to be there. Our environment often throws us treasures, it’s whether we see them, admire them, enjoy them and protect them. I have found such a treasure. One that we need to acknowledge and protect. In a quiet, eerie but comforting, paperback swamp in the South West locality of Gelorup, is a Mother tree. A glorious Swamp Paperbark, Melaleuca Rhaphiophylia. She has a base that is 4.9 metres and towers above this cathedral of smaller paperbarks. She is the protector, the guardian. My work captures her sprawling all over my canvas with texture and light filled moments that take you there, to that cathedral.

She is of significance; she fills the canvas and delights the viewer. She wishes to tell you about her journey, about her lifetime. She wishes to be heard. This area is so important to our environment; it is a filter and gives us new, refreshed air and vitality. How dare we threaten her? Let me be heard is a window to this beautiful Matriarch’s soul – her voice. This area is part of the controversial Bunbury Outer Ring Road Development. I will let you decide, if she is important to us, or more importantly, our environment?

Christine Blowfield feels some things, items, places and memories are incredibly important to us. They form us and shape us. Our environment is part of this shaping and forming. She tries to capture her local environment, the South West of Western Australia. Its Flora is so unique and beautiful. Texture, colour and atmosphere are what Christine craves to show the viewer. Working in acrylic gives her flexibility to include texture and other elements. 20

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Christine has exhibited Australia-wide and is represented both nationally and internationally. She has been incredibly fortunate to have been recognized in some notable Art Awards for her work.

Artist Christine Blowfield standing next to the largest registered Swamp Paperbark in Australia. Gelorup, WA.

TARA BOULEVARD

Creativity is the peak human experience. Cultures have survived for thousands of years, against thousands of odds through creative expression – song, dance, story telling, mark making. Imagine a world where each person stepped up into their life with the full expression of their unique vision. Can you imagine that? Take a moment now to imagine the feeling of receiving everything you could ever dream of, would you be prepared if that came for you tomorrow? So often we live in fear, as diluted versions of ourselves, living to satisfy the putrid paradigms of capitalism and the patriarchy. I am done with being palatable. I have marinated over the concept of impressing an audience versus having impact on an audience. I have stewed over how my work can return humanity to the human experience. My work

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connects the concept of ritual to the idea of infinite potential. By exploring the darkest wallows of our souls we can excavate the boggy swamp and bring to the surface a deeper understanding of ourselves, and our terrifying power. I designed my own urn and ceremony when I decided to divorce from all of the arbitrary bullshit and tired old patterns I no longer wanted in my life. I wrote down the greatest barriers I had created in my life and torched these scripts. They aren’t my stories anymore. I laughed at how pathetically small and insignificant they were and poured the ash into my urn. The urn represents a body, a vessel. It has a mouth to ingest, a throat which acts as a passage to the darkness, and a belly, the chasm which digests and will hold the ashes of my enemies.

Tara Boulevard is a badass bitch who is no longer silenced by the systems which are designed to disconnect people from the sensual joy of human experience. Led by a calling to slay the status quo, Tara creates high voltage art to spark play with destiny.

Tara Boulevard Ashes of my enemies II (2019) Ceramic 270mm × 180mm × 180mm

JEANA CASTELLI

I am very drawn to the mystery that the Australian landscape contains in its layers of colour and texture. Within these layers a story unfolds whether it’s in its natural state or as a result of human intervention. My work in recent years is focused on the connection between human beings and our environment. This work is a reflection of human apathy that our behaviour has a devastating impact on our planet. It depicts the ravages and consequences of our actions as a result. The destruction and damage caused to our natural habitat by open cut mining is unquestionable.

Jeana Castelli Connection (2020) (detail) Acrylic on canvas 1,220mm × 920mm

There is however a certain surreal beauty with every layer uncovered in the midst of its destruction and aftermath. There is a sense of irony in the mining process that the beauty of our earth emerges with each layer that appears and reminds us how precious our planet is. My hope is that this work inspires more awareness around our relationship to the planet and our place within it.

Jeana Castelli was born in the South West town of Donnybrook in 1950 to Italian immigrants. Art and the creative process has always been an integral part of her life. She has participated in exhibitions in Perth and the South West including three solo exhibitions in Bunbury. Jeana has also been commissioned to do a number of works. Her work has been published in the Sydney-based national Art/Edit magazine and she has also been invited to exhibit in the Agora Gallery Chelsea, NY. Her work can be seen on Bluethumb Online gallery and she is also represented by the Margaret River Gallery and 360 Gallery in Perth. The Australian landscape is a great source of Jeana’s inspiration with its ruggedness and richness of colour and serenity. Jeana enjoys experimenting with various techniques, and a variety of mediums, which give her the freedom to create and look at the landscape from a new perspective encouraging the viewer to find their own mystery in her work.

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REBECCA CORPS

In this self-portrait Rebecca examines the ecology within, forming the inside outside and making the intangible tangible. The swirling rusted steel embodies the negative thoughts that can take over a mind. They attack from all angles and work on an endless loop that is hard to escape from. In some instances the attack goes unnoticed until the mind is drowning beneath them. Disconnected from the body, Rebecca has created three states of mind using natural materials and the form of a human skull. The darker skull was created from vines and she uses this to signify her most ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ self. Using distortion and meadow hay for the other two skulls, these exude instability, with the wide-eyed version seeming to drown. All are separated by rusty, tangled wire on which travels the thoughts that haunt, divide and disturb. This portrait of self is also that of chaos amidst a journey to find balance and the struggle to be released from the grip of negative thoughts.

Rebecca Corps Self portrait (2020) (detail) Rusted wire and stitched natural materials 700mm × 1,000mm × 1,200mm

Rebecca Corps’ previous work as a dressmaker led to an interest in textile sculpture. This was expanded into steel during her Bachelor of Arts Honours and the creation of “Maali” for WA Day. During a recent residency in Finland she was able to experiment further with natural and found materials.

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JULIE COX

My artwork has always contained a sense of fragility and delicacy. My creative processes are simple, repetitive and meditative. Materials are natural and simple. This time of year, summer, we see a quick change in colour of the land from green to brown to white. Grasses become sun-bleached as the earth dries under the harshness of the Australian sun. For many years I’ve worked with grasses that grow on our farm in Roelands. I’ve grown up with them and have seen how they change with the seasons. Slowly, I’ve developed new methods and introduced new materials to my art practice; all simple and natural. This piece is a fusion of grasses and methods, inspired by the fading colours of winter to the brilliance of sun-bleached white-gold.

Julie Cox was born in Bunbury and currently lives in Roelands. Since completing a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) in 1998, Julie’s art practice has been sporadic, occurring in conjunction (when time allows) with her fulltime employment in Forest Management and Environmental Conversation. Inspiration for her ephemeral work is drawn from nature. Materials are natural (grasses, seeds, leaves) and processes are simple and repetitive (weaving, wrapping, tying). Her work is delicate and often contains a sense of fragility. Her aim is to amplify the beauty of natural forms and to present simple objects in a new context.

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Exhibitions include: South West Times Survey, Bunbury Biennale, South West Stories, The Director’s Cut 2017, Alternative Archive. Julie’s aim is to become a full-time artist.

Julie Cox Sun (2020) (detail) Grasses, flyscreen 1,400mm × 1,400mm

CASSI-JO DAVIS

On September the 20th 1915, Dressmaker Elizabeth Jane Gordon left her husband of nine years and her three children. She fled into the dark Fremantle night with her lover taking only a few items from her childhood in England. She was only 28 years old. She disappeared for six years, suddenly arriving in Williams in 1921 on the train with a push cart and supplies and set off on foot for Quindanning. A single alone woman in a barely settled part of Western Australia, she became increasingly isolated and moved, turning to the forest between Collie, Waroona and Dwellingup. She made a living from hunting Kangaroos with her pack of wild dogs, living by the connected waterways. Constantly moving, roving, escaping … sleeping in logs, dressing in sacks and only bare feet she carved out an extreme existence, declining offers of help or shelter in perfect educated English. She was named ‘Kangaroo Kate’ by the settlers in the area.

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There are records of rare sightings, stories told by early settlers. Folklore of our own romantic legend. Someone found her hidden skin bag containing a lamp, condensed milk, photos, childhood belongings. A sighting, ‘Kangaroo Kate’ standing in front of a huge Jarrah tree with her dog pack protecting her, described as looking like an Indian Princess. Strong, courageous, independent. At one with her bush. She gave the evil eye. A scary woman. But was she? ‘Kangaroo Kate’ disappeared from Waroona Train Station, March 19th 1930. She bought a ticket to Perth but never arrived. She was only 43 and was never seen again. I go to Dwellingup and I camp by Nanga Brook. I can feel her there … questions swirling, unanswered … What tragedy did she endure to choose that life? I want to tell her story in old textiles and stitch … I too am a dressmaker and sometimes I want to disappear …

Cassi-Jo Davis studied Visual Art at Curtin University and began her love affair with textiles, combining fabric with paint and using stitch as a drawing tool. Her work is about women, their struggles and their beauty. She is represented in many public and private Art Collections.

Cassie-Jo Davis Kangaroo Kate (2020) (detail) Installation: acrylic, textiles, embroidery, kangaroo skin, found objects 1,150mm Ă&#x2014; 750mm

MERLE TOPSI DAVIS

On a road trip into our WA outback I was staggered at the waste dumped on the road verges and I also witnessed massive farm and station rubbish tips. Our primary producers who don’t live near town waste stations over generations have found it difficult to dispose of their waste and have created their own sites on their land. Some of it they are able to reuse and recycle but items like polypropylene binder twine and ropes, plastic silage covers, plastic engine oil and chemical containers, petrol drums, old fencing wire and old engines, machinery, batteries, feed and fertilizer bags, animal medicines and dead livestock etc. overwhelm the farmer. If it is BURNT, the ash ends up in dams and waterways, on crops, and produces toxic fumes. If it is BURIED, the heavy metals, chemicals and poisons leach into the soil.

If it is DUMPED, it covers large areas of viable land or natural bush or gullies to prevent erosion, but breaks down polluting the area. This “basket” has been constructed by weaving, knotting, wrapping, threading and stitching farm waste to convey that even waste can produce a functional and artistic form. In a future apocalyptic world that is over-populated and covered in pollution and waste we could adapt and still create and survive. Humans have a history of creating containers and vessels to carry and store things, all produced with what is sustainable and practicable for the setting and time. Gully dump basket … is this a sign of the times?

Merle Topsi Davis is a multimedia artist, art teacher and community arts facilitator who specializes in textiles and recycling to express her concerns for the critical state of the environment. 32

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Widely exhibited in WA and interstate, including BRAG, ArtGeo, Maunsell Wickes Gallery Sydney, and Sculpture By The Sea, Bondi, NSW 2019.

Merle Topsi Davis Gully dump basket (2019) Black polypropylene binder twine, sisal and synthetic ropes, wire, chain, rubber, leather, plastic, metal farm shed oddments, webbing, mesh and acrylic paint 650mm × 450mm

TONY DAVIS

The construction of illogically extravagant garden follies popular in the eighteenth century onwards, are at total odds with practicality and functionality. The same could be said for some contemporary architecture such as in Dubai, where ostentatious facility and “artistic” statement have overridden functionality, economic good sense, ergonomics, site specificality and environmental, sustainable responsibility. Donald Judd (American Minimalist) made the assertion that, “… if it’s not functional, it must be Art …” Split Folly explores the increasing overlap and intersections between sculpture and architecture, and is inspired by structures that had OTHER than practical applications, but those of spiritual and cultural mantles. Split Folly is created as both an improbable architectural structure (with strong Minimalist inspired form), but strongly references

and pays homage to the many great ancient temples, tombs and spiritual and cultural structures built by man throughout the world. These structures are a source of great wonderment, mystery and reverence and paint a picture of human cultural history. They also appear to sit comfortably in their respective landscapes, adding credibility to their particular story of “place”. Without the specificality of site available in the gallery situation, I have used wood (Jarrah) as my principal medium, it (trees) being an organic link between earth, sky, sun and water upon which human existence depends. The language of wood also archives time and place. The folly’s split intimates a space within, compressed and unrevealed … a secret space of perhaps some mysterious personal or spiritual significance, and hopefully a source of engagement and contemplation.

A graduate of WA Institute of Technology (WAIT), Tony Davis held the first of seven solo exhibitions at the Desborough Gallery in 1973. Tony Davis Split folly (2019) Jarrah and COR-TEN steel 1,850mm × 1,200mm × 350mm

He is a painter, sculptor and fine wood craftsman, who participated in many group exhibitions in Perth, Sydney and regional WA. Represented in many collections including Minderoo, Kerry Stokes and Curtin, Tony exhibited 18 times in Sculpture By The Sea (Cottesloe, Bondi and Aarhus) since 2010.

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JOSHUA DE GRUCHY

This is one of Joshua’s recent pieces Ecdysis where he describes a drastic transition both in his lifestyle and mind set. ‘Ecdysis’ is the scientific word for the action of a snake shedding its skin or an insect casting off its outer shell. In this circumstance it has been translated to define the release of old habits and beliefs to make room for new views, opportunities and a fresh sense of self.

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Joshua de Gruchy is an emerging artist who has grown and created his style in the South West. He works with acrylic on canvas while also practising in oil, aerosol paint and inks on paper. His focus and aim is to explain the characteristics of the mind through vibrant and chaotic clusters of faces that flow together in harmony.

Joshua de Gruchy Ecdysis (2019) Acrylic on canvas 1,200mm × 600mm × 40mm

ANT DEBBO

The Spoon dress and the Pea shelling dress are particular dresses that Kate has worn throughout our time together. They have signified particular events in our lives. These are representations of the roles she plays and my perception of the hats that she wears. They signify for me an unfolding into self through having children and natural events. I could waffle on about the use of the medium but I don’t want to.

Anthony Debbo works as a furniture maker/shopfitter/carpenter in the south west where he immigrated to eight years ago beginning a new start working for two of the prominent furniture galleries in the region. Going on his own again was the turning point in the pursuit towards fulfilling creative potential as a maker and artist. He has enjoyed two exhibitions with his beautiful wife Kate which were well received, and the work has complimented each other as opposites, paintings/sculptures and connected like peas and carrots.

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Currently he is working on a large scale outdoor sculpture, enjoying a new interaction with the viewer being able to traverse the sculpture and enter it. “The process is incredible, I love it.”

Anthony Debbo Pea shelling dress (2019) Marri 1,100mm Ă&#x2014; 550mm Ă&#x2014; 50mm

KATE DEBBO

Kate Debbo paints large abstract landscapes, florals and more figurative works in acrylic and oil paints. Works are inspired by the raw beauty and everyday occurrences around her. This might be the wildness in the landscape, the beautiful colours of a piece of fabric or drawn from a collection of memories. She hopes to paint a spontaneous emotional sensation rather than a direct observation and considers each piece to be a mental snapshot or a page out of her so-called journal. Kate sometimes explores the symbolically charged form of the horse and also foreign animals within the landscape. She is fascinated with the unexpected ‘twist in the tale’ of everyday life. Firstly, as a woman with motherly and domestic roles and as an immigrant, these often surprising friendships and associations that emerge in the work are a link to a more magical world and a nostalgic look at her past.

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Kate likes to explore the relationships between thick and thin patches of colour and form. Thick impasto is contrasted with thin layers of paint that are poured on and then wiped away, always leaving a trace of the history behind. Spontaneous and intuitive mark making with her hands and the use of non traditional tools and techniques allow her to investigate the inherent potential of the medium of oil paint. Lucky stars (2019) is inspired by the urge to create something life affirming and beautiful out of unexpected, dramatic circumstances. It speaks of the imbalance within balance, the beautiful in the ugly and the joy in the heartache. Through all of her work, Kate hopes to convey a sense of energy, evoke a sense of joy and seeks to capture the magic in the everyday passing of time.

Kate Debbo currently lives and works in Margaret River, WA.

Kate Debbo Lucky stars (2019) (detail) Oil and acrylic on canvas 1,350mm × 2,000mm

SUE DENNIS

This work for the South Western Times Art 2020 exhibition, Beneath the skin, is motivated by a narrative that lies just beneath the surface of this ancient land. My interest in creating artist books and pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a book, combine here with my love of printmaking, working with clay and the metaphor of clay being of the earth. Key to my work is communication and the paradox of physical and spiritual connectedness. These thoughts and ideas are often explored through the mediums of the artist’s book, printmaking, clay-work, and sculptural installations which are often paper-based. This work was made by impressing found kangaroo bones, and the bones and teeth of sheep, into clay. Bones and teeth being the hard parts remaining beneath the land’s skin are juxtaposed,

Sue Dennis Beneath the skin (2019) Artist book: clay, natural earth and fibres Open: 150mm × 180mm × 90mm

native and domestic animals connect and then interact. The hardened clay impressions were then rubbed with natural pigments from local earth and rock, before being fired. Hand-twined plant fibres have been used to bind the separate pieces into a book form. Beneath the skin, is an attempt on my part to understand and tell a story of a recent history of change, and probe a physical and spiritual history, recording in a small way the cycle of life and death, change and continuity, as may be seen written in the soil. This earth and these connections make up the land we stand on today. This clay book-form is inspired by ancient texts and early writing forms.

Sue Dennis lives and works in Donnybrook, and holds a BA in Visual Arts. She is a founding member of The South West Printmakers, and taught Printmaking at TAFE and now at workshops. A regular exhibitor in the South West and Perth, Sue has artworks held in the City of Bunbury Art Collection.

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SHEREE DOHNT

Mother’s guilt is a new work based on a series of recently completed paintings dealing with post-partum mental health and the inner conflict surrounding my own desires as an artist, wife and mother. Symbolism is a key element to my work as I explore ways to convey intense feelings when reacting to major life experiences. My own aesthetic of line drawing, watercolour wash, gouache splatters and dots, symbolises the delirium related to fatigue, while busy, flat-patterned backgrounds reference a disconnect from my surroundings, isolated from the outside world.

Sheree Dohnt Mother’s guilt (2019) (detail) Ink, watercolour and gouache on paper 695mm × 885mm (triptych)

Fleshy ‘womb-like’ patterns surround the figures, however, an opening to the heavens gives hope to a future of identity separate from ‘mother’. Including my cockatiel in the portrait is an intention to symbolise my own fertility; he fights for my affection now that I am consumed by motherhood and this adds to my ‘mother’s guilt’.

Sheree Dohnt is a Bunbury artist who uses her paintings to express her inner turmoil of identity as mother, wife, daughter and as an individual. Dohnt depicts the quieter, mostly unseen moments of motherhood expressing her own feelings of joy, despair, exhaustion and deep love.

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YVONNE DORRICOTT

1. M. Auping on Hamish Fulton in, A Nomad among Builders. sighted in; NATURE, ed. J. Kastner. pub. 2012 (p.37)

2. R. Solnit, A Field Guide To Getting Lost. pub. 2017. (p. 175)

My principle research interests lie in human relationships to the natural landscape. I’m using walking to develop an understanding of natural processes within nature. To discover through exploration, curiosity and even nosiness how the natural world functions, its rhythms, textures and cyclical recurring actions. “Walking is presented as the most basic dialogue with nature”… “nature as a physical experience.”1 (M. Auping) This project started as a walk to Z-Bend lookout in Kalbarri National Park, on the 22nd, September 2019. With this work I’m attempting to place the abstract and the real together in a dialogue, to find the essence of the subject. This began the Shadow work, along with a reading at the outset, which stated ‘if you create a shadow you exist’. The shadow is not an object and yet it documents the presence of an object. This shadowy presence floats and moves with time.

Yvonne Dorricott Z-Bend shadow (2020) (detail) Etching on wood, wood, string 1,400mm × 450mm (panel A) 1,400mm × 450mm (panel B) 2,000mm × 450mm (part C)

“Shadows that crawl along the ground, caressing the surface of the earth, growing and shrinking as their makers move nearer or farther from the surface.”2 (R. Solnit) The shadows I have captured while walking have become fixed as still images onto panels to document presence, time and the position of the sun on that day in September. The pacing line is concrete evidence of the actual walk. Almost like the ball of string taken into a cave so you can find your way out, or back to the beginning of your journey. And the use of ancient Quipu knots records the number of paces taken to form a visual record.

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ELIZABETH EDMONDS

Some decades ago, I ventured out to collect a sediment core from a lake in the wilderness to study fossil material that would tell me about the Holocene landscape and climate history of the southwest for the last 6,000 years. It was a pivotal moment. The wilderness drew me in. Such a vital, visceral place. The work is about layers in the landscape. Each colour, line or sweeping stroke is like a layer of history – layers in temporal and spatial scale. They can be old weathered mountain chains, granite peaks, valleys, marine incursions or contemporary dune systems. Layer upon layer, built over thousands of years. Vast, stoic and old but fragile and vulnerable to change.

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Elizabeth Edmonds is an artist and palaeoecologist investigating landscapes at temporal and spatial scales. Her drawing and painting practice combines art and science, exploring fine detailed studies of the natural world counterbalanced with large atmospheric landscapes. These landscapes provide a visual narrative of past natural environments and future changes complicated by climate and human interaction.

Elizabeth Edmonds Holocene (2020) (detail) Acrylic and ink on canvas 910mm × 910mm

NATALIA FORD

Can emptiness as a concept hold a key experience of the ultimate reality and act as a transformative force? I was experimenting with coiling in ceramics when I realised that the empty space forming by the walls of the pot I was crafting, was holding sounds. There’s a process in creativity … a mental process and all mental processes are aiming to serve the human condition. Extending from this the artwork itself has only one purpose. To serve the human condition. The artwork acts as a transformative experience by reflecting human emotions and by effecting one’s mindset. It is a way to reconnect with the self, to overcome and transcend and possibly offset the duality of the self and the cosmos. The pot is conceptually empty (as it is not a vacuumed space) and it acts like a drum. Scientifically the sound is produced by the vibration of the

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vessel itself. The ceramic pot is accommodating the original sound rather than the reflected sound of the environment. It can be perceived as a capsule of a reality that normally we fail to attend. The pot acts as a proof. A proof of the Alchemical value what is out … is inside. There is a proverb that captures a quite negative meaning of emptiness. “Empty vessels make the most noise”. Those with the least knowledge usually speak the most and create the most fuss. But here the fact is that the empty vessel vibrates and carries sound. And why is that a human concern and why there is the need of fullness as opposing to the emptiness? That could be a matter of overcoming and accepting that all could be one. Emptiness is suggested as an antidote to our human frustrations and as an offering to our intellectual build up.

Natalia Ford has a master degree in Fine Arts and a past career in television news production. Her work is influenced mainly from philosophy, social sciences and physiology. Art expression has a very wide spectrum in her understanding, she is always combining methods and art media and defines herself as a conceptual artist while the core of her work is deeply humanitarian.

Natalia Ford in her studio Photograph: Lauren Trickett

ANDREW FRAZER

My wife and I moved onto a semi-rural property a few years back to make room for our family to grow in experience, created memories and connection back to the land. I’ve discovered/am discovering as a young father that there are many correlations between Australian native flora & human relationships. Their inspiring resilient qualities that do not simply survive harsh conditions, but thrive under them to provide bursts of visual beauty that remind me again and again that life is full of seasons. I’m confronted with the notion that pain is not necessarily harmful if it makes us aware of the need for healthy change. I’m learning to listen.

Andrew Frazer Learning to listen (2019) (detail) Acrylic on canvas 1,230mm × 925mm × 50mm

Andrew Frazer is a multidisciplinary artist from Gelorup, Western Australia. Influenced by common shared stories that remind us of our humanity, Andrew’s art draws upon our inner-child through subtle textures, whimsical characters and imaginative driven landscapes. From public murals, hand lettering, design and illustration, Andrew has been commissioned by various clients from around the world in commercial and private settings.

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MARK FRANCIS GREY-SMITH

Girt is one of a series of small sculptures that explores the emergence of drawing into three dimensional form and space. This idea was first developed in 2011 in the design of the Pemberton ‘Artscape’ as seen in the multi panel balustrade in the main street of Pemberton in Western Australia. The negative cube at the centre of these works allows for the dynamic interaction of multiple views of pattern, positive and negative space and line as edge. The work has six alternative views as the base can be any of the sides. The material is bisque fired earthenware paper clay.

Mark Francis Grey-Smith has been practising sculpture since 1973 after training in London at the Chelsea School of Art. He has had 12 solo and 20 major group exhibitions. He has also taught sculpture and drawing at Canberra School of Art and Curtin University during this period. Mark’s work is a continuation of the developments in sculpture since the turn of the 20th century. The work is informed and inspired by the deep, interconnected structures and patters of nature.

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The amazing growth of our understanding of natural systems and processes, of which we are a part, is a contentious inspiration. His work often uses the small structures in nature and combines this with exploring how we perceive and interact with three dimensional form and space.

Mark Francis Grey-Smith Girt (2019) Bisque fired paper clay 380mm × 355mm × 325mm

ANNELISE GROTIAN

Since living in Australia I have been exploring the sculptural qualities of stoneware clay. My work starts with the interest in form. There is no difference if it is a form of a horse, head or coiled pot. I need the more abstract form of the vessel to create my horses or heads. The process is generally a long one and there are no shortcuts. If I am satisfied with the object, the process of refining ideas starts. Sometimes it results in a single form, like a boat carrying the story. More often I use the principle of the series or installation. With the technique of installation they become sculptures with an architectural quality. Through cut outs, laying down, fragments and negative space they formulate a new concept. The work is no longer only ceramic but properly sculptural through the size and their place in space.

Annelise Grotian Taking a square for a walk (2016) (Installation detail) Stoneware clay 1,500mm × 1,000mm × 750mm

Lately I started to integrate other materials like metal or plexiglass. The new work I created for the survey looks into movement, dance, playfulness and commediadell’arte. I choose the form of spinning tops. Through the technique of super sizing the visual impact of the spinning tops changes. The pieces are handbuilt using the coiling techniques. Stoneware clay is fired to 1,250°C. Coming from drawing, and drawing still is an independent part of my arts practice, the work will be monochrome achieved through oxides and slips.

Annelise Grotian was born in Hamburg, Germany and after completing a Diploma: Ingenieur graduating in Fashion/Textil-design in 1976, she migrated to Australia in 2009. Having to find new ways to show her art, Annelise carefully exhibited work and got results. She won a prize in BRAG’s South West Art Now 2018 and was offered a solo exhibition, titled: CLAY.

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SHAYNE HADLEY

As a painter I often find hope while reflecting upon the evolution of a work. Especially in the moment that a piece takes on a life of its own, creating patterns, connections and pathways beyond the original intention. When personal and social meanings evolve from formal origins. While working FIFO in the Northwest I was seeking a means to reconnect with creativity. In a book gifted to me on Giacometti, I found a mention of him drawing a skull for a year. Thinking this a practical project, I purchased an anatomically correct plastic skull. Travelling with the skull I drew it nightly on site and produced oil studies from it while home on break. I started thinking of my early art school days at Claremont. We drew from real skeletons, apparently sourced from India. I remembered how the knowledge of the skeleton’s authenticity imparted

a life, a brevity to the bones. Their stories became questions, they became defined by what was absent. I wondered if my plastic skull, though cast from a real skull, would provide this perception of a history or create a different absence. I remembered a friend telling me of her first visit to the medical school’s cadaver room. Her perceptions of the limbs, flesh and organs being wondrous but knowable, mechanical. It was in the cranium that she found something intangible, something moving. I remember she said it was “the place where the living had been lived” and how “time had been created and contained within that space”. I think of her and the finality and void created by absence, of the powerful constant of life evolving, of the warmth of remembering joy.

Shayne Hadley was born in 1963 in Cairns, QLD and grew up along the northern beaches of Perth.

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He studied at Carine TAFE, Claremont School of Art and Edith Cowan University before being employed at the University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University and Margaret River TAFE. Shayne now lives in Margaret River.

Shayne Hadley Meditations upon a plastic skull (20162019) (detail) Oil on panel 1,220mm × 2,415mm

ROSLYN HAMDORF

I predominantly paint abstract Australian landscapes, both outback and coastal. I have spent a lot of time this year painting in the desert as well as our local coastline. I tend to focus on large brutal aspects of our land and then erode them down to explore concepts of tension, balance and quiet reflective spaces. Watching for whales I spend a lot of time in Meelup Regional Park, sometimes just sitting on a rock and looking out to sea. It’s an old, worn piece of coastline and was once joined to land that is now South East India. That idea of land that has eroded and changed and endured runs through my work.

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Roslyn Hamdorf is a landscape painter who is interested in the forces of nature that form our unique landscapes and the relationship that erosion and balance play. Her work has been exhibited in the BRAG South West Art Now 2018 and The City of Busselton Art Award 2016, 2018, 2019. She has been a participant in the Margaret River Open Studios for the past 3 years. Represented by Yallingup Galleries.

Roslyn Hamdorf Watching for whales (2019) Acrylic on canvas 1,020mm × 760mm × 30mm

SUZANNA HAY

“By Daring and By Doing” is my mantra. I have this motto pinned up my studio where I can see it. I believe that is it only by “having a go” that one can achieve any mastery over the watercolour medium. Watercolour paint is both my enchantress and tormentor. Water brings this transparent medium to life and it can bloom, blend and bleed in the most magical fashion. My paintings start with an initial wash using the four colours I have chosen for the whole piece. Sadly some paintings start and end right at this stage. But if the magic happens, then it’s happy dance time and the painting takes on a life of its own. I prefer to denote colours by pigment number because I find some commercial names as instructive as the names given to lipsticks. I mostly let the pigments blend on the paper. When I am moved to use a dot technique I find the process quite meditative.

Suzanna Hay After the deluge (2019) (detail) Watercolour on paper 455mm × 545mm × 1.50mm

After letting the first wash do its thing I gradually move to more and more controlled techniques and love to add fine detail that will reward close inspection. It’s the vastness of the northern Australian landscape that makes my heart skip a beat. Our skies are bigger here. Our red outback dirt stretches on forever. At once it makes you feel small and insignificant but at the same time your spirit soars to fill the space. This painting was inspired by a flood which swept through a plain leaving only the tops of the riverbank trees to delineate where the rivers once made their way across the dry earth. I strive to convey a little of that sense of vastness in my work. Enough words, I’ve got to go and wet a brush.

Suzanna Hay is a West Australian watercolour artist. She describes her technique as “creatively coaxing chaos”. Landscapes form most of her subject matter. Suzanna is an active member of the Busselton Art Society and the Watercolour Society of Western Australia. Her work has attracted a variety of awards in the south west.

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SIMON HEMSLEY

Melanoma is a major health problem for Australians because of our outdoor life style and also the depletion of the ozone layer allowing extreme UV exposure on some days. My submission aims to increase people’s awareness of Melanoma. This work is inspired by looking at histopatholoy specimens and relating it to abstraction in the environment. It reaches back to my time in the Kimberley where the interaction between the extreme weather conditions, be it the heat or extreme flooding, is both destructive and regenerative. The invasion of the land by the 10 metre tides on a twice daily basis erodes the surrounding land but is held in check by the mangroves and provides a healthy habitat for the estuarine animals and plants. Likewise the massive floods erode in a serpentine way clearing the rivers of debris but also reshaping and creating the stark beauty of the interface between the land and the sea.

Simon Hemsley Under the microscope (2020) (detail) Mixed media, ochre, acrylic and inks 1,200mm × 900mm

Wherever the land meets the ocean, such as the basalt rocks in Bunbury, this process continues with climate change increasing the ferocity of weather events, reshaping the environment. A similar beauty can be seen when viewing histological specimens, especially melanoma. This skin cancer may start as a small change of pigmentation but rapidly invades the local tissues, growing, eroding and ultimately engulfing. The visual similarity between nature on a grand scale when seen from above, compared to the viewing of histological specimens under higher magnification, is striking. I have incorporated sketched images of the flood plains in the East Kimberley with images from under the microscope to illustrate the sometimes unstoppable power of nature. I have used raw titanium dioxide, mixing with ochres, watercolour and acrylic, to depict the fragility and uncertainty in our lives. I hope to inspire people to live each day as it comes knowing that tomorrow is uncertain for many of us.

Traditionally a watercolourist Simon Hemsley has been experimenting with ochres collected from Aboriginal artists in the Kimberley and other raw pigments and combining them with acrylics and watercolour. He has a special interest in figurative and anatomical art and uses art to teach anatomy to the medical students at the Rural Clinical School in the south west.

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CATHERINE HIGHAM

New work reflects a change of home environment from Williams, to Manypeaks on the South Coast of Western Australia. I am influenced by the rich biodiversity in the Manypeaks area: The flora and fauna surrounding my home inform my practice. Continuing my interest in found materials, I am currently working with beeswax produced by bees on my farm, in encaustic painting processes. The term ‘waggle’ used in the title for the new work, Fieldwork | Waggle, refers to the waggle dance, a movement made by bees at their hive, to communicate the direction and distance of flowering plants. Bees forage on nectar and pollen from flora in a three kilometre radius to their hive. Fieldwork encompasses vast distances between hives in the South West, including Wilga, Boyup Brook, Walpole, Denmark, Manypeaks and Ravensthorpe. The collection of honey from these sites by a professional beekeeper represent

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different forest ecologies including dominant plant species; Jarrah, Marri, Mallee, Hakea and Yate. The colour of honey produced by bees, is subtly different, depending on the species of flowering plants. Honey collected on our farm contains a yellow coloured nectar from Hakea Cucallata. Translucent honey colours collected so far have ranged from lemon (Hakea, Karri and Marri), olive (Yate) to amber (Jarrah). Beeswax used in encaustic processes is mixed with translucent pigments to denote a range of locations and plant species. Observations from fieldwork are temporal, based on current observations, however honey could be described as a time capsule of life itself. Microscopic pollens and bacteria are held in suspended animation in honey from flowering plants that carry DNA, the genetic material that is a continuum of ancient, living, and unknown futures.

Catherine Higham is an artist with Tasmanian/West Australian heritage. Methodology includes research based practice, on environmental themes with varied materials and processes. Exhibiting widely with four solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in national and international venues. Qualifications include; BCA(Honours), GradCert (Design & Technology) and GradDipEd. Works held in public collections.

Catherine Higham Wild Thing (2019) (detail) Encaustic; beeswax and pigment on hexagonal panels Dimensions variable

PETER HILL

Fire is an integral part of our environment and particularly so where I live. As a long time Northcliffe resident I have lived through two large bushfires in 2011 and 2015. I am Captain of the Northcliffe Bush Fire Brigade by circumstance. I am a product of these two big fires. In this role I am involved in the difficult discussion relating to fire management. We have a land shaped by fire and burning is one of the tools we use to try to adapt to a changing climate. A contentious tool, especially when you get into the details about how much, how often, when and where.

Many of my days are consumed in this role as a volunteer. Hence the fire diary. A Redheads match box was the starting point for this artwork and is part of an extensive collection of matchbox paintings that I started 8 years ago. As the painting has progressed I have swapped the Redhead symbol for small portraits of fire managers. The ones with the matches.

Peter Hill was born in Manjimup and has worked and lived nearby in Northcliffe for the past 20 years. Country and our connection to it has been at the core of his artworks throughout his career.

Peter Hill Cross box (2018) (detail) Acrylic on marri

Peter employs a variety of approaches in his artistic exploration ranging from two and three dimensional gallery artworks, site specific outdoor works and as a songwriter/musician. He has exhibited in Perth and Melbourne in numerous solo and group shows and is represented in many public collections such as the AGWA collection.

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SHARON HINCHLIFFE

Embracing the storytelling style that has emerged in my work, my painting Do it now, or grow old is a depiction of one of my favourite songs – Australia by The Shins. I was recently commissioned to draw my interpretation of a song which I found to have been a delightful exploration. The project allowed me to recognise my art and how it can be portrayed. I am grateful for the couple that helped me make that discovery by trusting me to visually reconstruct one of their favourite tunes. I have consequently been inspired to focus on creating more visual interpretations of songs. In selecting a subject for this painting, “Australia” was an easy choice. I wanted to work with a song bursting with figurative lyrics and I love the allegorical way The Shins convey their message. I understand this song to be about the meaning of life and navigating the contrast between idealism and reality – a contemplation that resonates with many of us.

Sharon Hinchliffe Do it now, or grow old (2020) (detail) Acrylic, ink, collage on canvas 910mm × 1,220mm

The characters in the painting move through a series of metaphors which are described in the lyrics. The main image is an android-like figure (unable to articulate emotion) holding onto a flower, depicting new life (embryos nestled among the petals). The contrast of a lifeless figure looking to a symbol of new life creates a theme. The tentacles at the bottom of the painting represents the unknown, pitfalls and risks; the imagery at the top of the painting denotes nature and its beauty; and the building to the right depicts “home”. The song makes me ponder the meaning of life and hopefully this is conveyed in the painting. It is a heavy subject, but like the uplifting melody throughout the song, the characters in the painting bring a lightness to the subject matter making this topic easier to contemplate.

Sharon Hinchliffe’s paintings and illustrations often become the trigger for stories to develop and flourish. Using a variety of mediums such as pen, ink, collage, acrylic, aerosol and watercolour paints, she builds up forms in her works through intricate line work and detailing, creating imaginary landscapes populated with strangely familiar creatures.

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Sue Kalab The swan-ness of a swan (2019) Watercolour 750mm Ã&#x2014; 550mm

SUE KALAB

I sit for hours with binoculars and telescope waiting for rare glimpses of migrating Arctic Circle shorebirds in the whispering reed-beds of Leschenault Estuary, questing the feeding grounds for energy-enrichment for their epic flight to Siberia to nest. A favourite place is where the Preston River enters the estuary. It is sheltered and picturesque when the sou’ westerly blows. Because it is isolated and a long walk, I take my dog. This particular afternoon Black Swans, native to Australia, were idling on the river, scarcely moving, only their long graceful necks arching. I took a series of photographs to catch the poetry and light. So I paint with knowledge and experience, and a sort of magic that arises, which I can’t quite explain, “the swan-ness of the swan”. As a fine art student at Claremont School of Art, lecturer Robin Phillips said unforgettably to “paint the tree-ness of a tree”.

Following art school, I spent some years as a creative expression art therapist at Graylands Hospital. Then since the early 1980s my working art life has been dedicated to Australian Nature. I’ve been a member of Australian Conservation Foundation, BirdLife Australia and ArtSource since 1993, and founder-convenor of BirdLife Bunbury since 2011. I’ve had my “inner-national experience” in three distinct regions of Australia: in the southeast corner in Mallacoota Victoria, a village on the wilderness coast in Croajingolong National Park; the north-west in the Pilbara on a desert Aboriginal community learning a different time and reality, which reinforced the value of my role with art and the natural world, and now I live and work in Bunbury in south-western Australia, by the bush and beach.

Sue Kalab is an established professional artist who specializes in watercolours of Australian nature. She is widely known for her voluntary conservation advocacy and for the past decade, her work with birds in Bunbury-Leschenault.

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PETER KOVACSY

I choose mainly formal solutions to develop contemporary forms that do not follow logical criteria but are based only on subjective associations which invite the viewer to make intuitive connections. By applying abstraction, I create work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. Often my sculptures are notable for their refined finish and tactile nature. This is of great importance as it bears witness to my understanding of craftsmanship. With a subtle minimalistic approach, I consider making art a craft which is executed using clear formal rules and which should always refer to social reality.

My practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for manoeuvring with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of sculpture: my meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. By focusing on techniques and materials, I employ rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles. Much of my work doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted.

Peter Kovacsy, born 1953, Perth, Western Australia Peter works as a visual artist and designer-maker, utilising glass, wood, ceramics and metals. His studio practise focuses on large scale glass sculpture made from cast lead crystal. His dream to become self-employed as a creative started when he established his studio/gallery complex in Pemberton, Western Australia 30 years ago. 74

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One of Peter’s biggest achievements was realised in 2006 with the publication of the book Peter Kovacsy A Studio Practice and retrospective exhibition.

Peter Kovacsy Inner space #2 (2019) Jarrah, clear lead crystal 1,180mm × 630mm × 160mm

DANIEL KUS

Although I am interested in other art practices, like painting and printmaking, I am more inclined towards sculpture with its ability to create artworks of space and presence. By sourcing and then combining various materials, I am intrigued with the process, the figuring out of how to use and put materials together, in creating work. But it is also the satisfaction of working with my hands, as well as being taught growing up about the benefits of hard work, that I find myself driven towards sculpture.

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Living in Gelorup, Dan Kus completed his Bachelor of Arts at Edith Cowan University in 2014, followed by his Bachelor of Arts Honours course in 2015. During his first year of Honours, Dan, along with two fellow visual arts Honours students, developed their first public artwork, The Rescue, under the mentorship and guidance of Alex Mickle.

Daniel Kus Scarlet robin (2019) (detail) Mixed media

CLAIRE LINAKER

My painting is a black and white portrait of a homeless man, painted with acrylic on canvas. I was inspired to do this artwork by the rise of people on the streets and without homes, I have been seeing more and more of these people around Bunbury without a home. The message of this painting is that something more needs to be done about this, and that everyone should be aware of how hard some people’s lives are. I show the emotions of the man and emphasise them by the dark shades and the man’s sad face, and his dirty begging hands. If you look closely you would notice the stub of a finger on his clasped hands, this symbolises the hardship and difficulty that may be in this man’s life. I used the black and white tones to draw attention to certain areas in the painting. The plain black background instigates the white in the man’s face to stand out more and makes the wrinkles and emotion on his face more noticeable, the black also

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adds drama and depth to the artwork. The simple shades I used also represent the sadness and seriousness of the art piece and helps to enhance the message of the painting that I’m trying to portray. The composition of the painting makes it easy to look at and draws your attention from the begging hands up to the sad eyes. This composition I believe makes the message of the art more noticeable and clearer. The purpose of this artwork was to draw attention to the issue of homelessness and to remind people that not everyone is lucky to have a home and to know where they will be sleeping at night. And I think this artwork does a good job at getting this message across. The face in this painting though is not the face of a man from Bunbury, it is based on a photo by Lee Jeffries (lee-jeffries.co.uk).

Claire Linaker Homeless (2019) Acrylic on canvas after an image by Lee Jeffries (lee-jeffries.co.uk) 610mm × 450mm

ALICE LINFORD FORTE

Through my art I try to express myself as authentically as possible. My work is an extension of my mood, executed through colours, shapes, lines and empty spaces. My works are built on layer upon layer of spontaneity and experimentation, which makes the process all the more exciting and unpredictable for me. Rarely do I have a vision of what I would like a finished piece to look like. It’s the emotion and energy transmitted on a moment to moment basis that gives each work true, raw character and a point of difference. As haphazard as my approach to painting is, I love that it embodies so many characteristics of my lifestyle; the motions of shifting, changing, moving and experimenting, experiencing new cultures and environments and adopting a very ‘trial and error’ attitude toward any task I pursue. Every now and again I dabble in more figurative painting, but abstract is what enables me to really let the imagination and emotion run their course.

I live quite a nomadic lifestyle, and the travel is what stimulates new energy, technique and inspiration. Growing up in a small creative hub in the isolated South West of Australia has enabled me to pursue my passion in the arts with a free and uninhibited approach. I enjoy my unforeseeable path as an artist, as it encourages me to be proactive and dynamic. I’m never bored because my style is constantly evolving, and I’m certainly never short of fresh ideas. Oils have been my chosen medium for the last few years and I savour the time they allow me to sculpt layers into a piece. The more depth within a painting, the more people are able to identify with the content as they let the imagination wander. I let the intuition lead and the rest follows. The result is a kind of visual escapism.

Alice Forte grew up in Margaret River, Western Australia, but flew the nest straight after high school. Alice Linford Forte Journey north (2019) (detail) Oil on canvas 980mm × 1,680mm

Since then she spent an extensive period of time as a professional artist, travelling and exhibiting her work in England, Europe, Morocco and Indonesia, stopping here, there and everywhere in between. For the past six years Alice has been represented by the Margaret River Gallery.

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ELISA MARKES-YOUNG

I was born in Poland and left at 16. To this day my memories of the place define for me the feeling of being at home. When I go back I’m awestruck by its beauty. It fills me with colours, sounds and smells like no other place. And yet, and yet… I feel displaced, in-between, never arrived. I don’t belong here but I don’t belong there either. For well over a decade now I have been exploring the conflicts between the past and present, memory and reality, and the question of what and where is home. Using old skills learnt as a child and textile techniques I try to preserve a link to my past. My imagery is firmly rooted in Eastern European folklore. It speaks of memories of home and landscapes left behind. It aims to express the feeling of missing and holding on to something that can never be regained.

Elisa Markes-Young Stories from a place that was home #02 (2019) (detail) Found head scarf, hand embroidery Approx. 2,000mm × 1,200mm

These pieces are part of a series of works that aim to evoke a place I can’t ever leave behind even though it is long gone. Maybe it was never there to start with. Where home used to be is part place and part a vaporous, unfixed, fluid ideal. Like memories, it is fleeting and subjective, something we make up in our mind like a story to comfort us and cheer us up. It’s special and fantastic. The boring bits covered up, missing parts replaced by brightly coloured embellishments.

Elisa Markes-Young is a self-taught German artist of Polish origin. In Australia since 2002, she lives and works in Margaret River, Western Australia. Her work is held in various public, civil and private collections across Australia, England and Germany.

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LESLEY MEANEY

As one ages, there are many more visual experiences to draw upon. As a result, there is a tendency, as my practice evolves, that sometimes current works appear destined to become ‘memoirs’. My passion for lingering and loitering in the bush, especially in spring when the kangaroo paws and other wildflowers are in bloom, played a role in this colonnaded, wildflower-stained image.

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Artist, Teacher, Curator, Writer, Lesley Meaney was born in England and arrived in Australia with a National Diploma in Design (NDD) and a Post Graduate Art Teacher’s Diploma (ATD) University of Liverpool. Her practice over the last 50 years reveals a vast range of skills: virtuosity and versatility both in technique and image-making, and a constantly shifting focus between abstraction and representation. Her 28th solo exhibition – BECOMING AUSTRALIAN – opened in October at the Janet Holmes à Court Gallery in West Perth. This was a Survey of her 50 year practice, along with the launch of her book BECOMING AUSTRALIAN – an Artist’s Journey.

Lesley Meaney Kangaroo paw shroud (2019) (detail) Acrylic, ink and stitching on canvas 1,190mm × 1,330mm × 30mm

KATHARINA MEISTER

“Art is the conscience of mankind.” – Friedrich Hebel Climate Art is the term I would use to describe my own creative practice. Over the last ten years I have developed five series addressing different environmental topics. In these, I question our relation to Mother Nature, address the interaction between urban areas and the natural environments, deal with philosophical and moral aspects of climate change, or ponder on questions such as how homes of climate refugees could look like. Currently I am working on a series titled Winged Seeds. In this, I try to compare nature’s way of life and reproduction with the principals of human life and population growth. My favourite medium is paper: it is an active material that can move and by this means come alive. In my art I use this material in all its versatility; I use it for detailed drawings, paper cut outs and to make voluminous sculptures.

With my art I hope to bridge the gap between art and science. This is because I see tremendous surplus in the fusion of art and science, especially in such an overarching problem as climate change. Hence, I want to use my art to present this topic from a more creative and emotional point of view. I want to convert scientific facts into visual form to thus offer an additional way to look into this subject. “Ecological transformation requires every one of us to apply our gifts to the best of our ability on behalf of this precious planet.” – Heather Lyn Mann

Katharina Meister is a German born visual artist, who has lived in WA since 2012. Katharina graduated from the Staatliche Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe in 2007 with a Master Degree in Fine Arts. The artist was juried into the Künstlerbund Baden-Württemberg, a prominent organization dedicated to promoting excellence in the profession of fine art. A multiple award winner, she has received a six month residency at the Otmar Alt Foundation in Hamm, Germany and the 1st Prize at the Art Fair Karlsruhe, Germany. 86

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Her artwork is included in art collections such as the Federal Government Department for Environmental Concern Berlin, Germany.

Katharina Meister Balancesphere (2018/19) (detail) Papercut, mixed media 400mm × 805mm × 70mm

KELLEE MERRITT

FLASH is a watercolour painting of a 1929 Auburn Boat-Tailed Speedster automobile exhibited at a recent car show. Produced in the USA during the Great Depression it is surprising that this Auburn was created and also survived in such a harsh economic time. If given a voice imagine the stories this car could tell of the places it has been, the people it has transported and the events it has witnessed. This automobile is an example of human creative ingenuity with metal, glass and a few other materials being transformed into a thing of great beauty and function. It is also by the care and consideration of human hands that this historic vehicle is preserved to the present day. My overall vision for this piece, as with most of my artwork, is to develop an audiences appreciation for the beauty in everyday objects and the stories they potentially hold.

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Kellee Merritt is an award winning local artist with a background in Graphic Design, Illustration and Art teaching. Kellee specialises in watercolour and is known for her highly detailed depictions of everyday subjects, often in unusual compositions. She focuses on creating the illusion of tactile surfaces, both natural and man-made.

Kellee Merritt The artist with FLASHÂ (2019) Watercolour 700mm Ă&#x2014; 540mm

KATERINA KATHERINE PAPAS

This body of work, is about the ‘liminal spaces in between’ two places, Bunbury and Perth. Of growing and learning to exist between two cultures. It is of the liminal space between individuating from my family and on becoming my ‘own’ person. While learning to become a photojournalist, I learnt about human culture throughout history and popular culture. This thirst for understanding our humanness, then lead me to further Masters work in researching the human condition in love, life, death and pain. It was here that I was exposed to the spaces in between the ‘others’, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual quests for meaning, and of a desperate need to understand their own existence. I was now and had become, the ‘space in between’, for many recipients in my psychotherapy practice. The Space between for those hospitalised with their body in pain, or of their mind in pain, of those in active addiction, of those incarcerated in the justice system, of those broken hearted, of those lost, of those who had lost all hope.

Katerina Katherine Papas The space between - deep blue (2019) (detail) Acrylic on canvas 1,200mm × 1,000mm

On this journey of modelling myself a human heart, I found painting. Painting for me was always about putting onto canvas this ‘space in between’ that I was holding for myself and, for others. I use acrylic paints and canvas and once I commence a piece, I cannot stop until the ‘magic’ stops. I have always painted intuitively, and have never commenced a piece with the finished view in mind. This ‘magic that happens’, is I believe, another ‘Liminal Space’. When the process of painting is over, the painting then takes on another form for the viewer. It then becomes the ‘spaces in between’ the viewer and the painting. It is endless.

Katerina Katherine Papas is a mother of two children, an Art Psychotherapist, Artist/Painter, Photographer and Musician. She has worked as a documentary photographer, and then publically exhibited photographic art shows over the years. Katherine has now turned her attention to abstract painting, landscapes, skyscapes, seascapes, but also, within the images, capturing our humanness through her and the viewers imaginative interpretation.

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KIM PERRIER

The Carbonature style of sculpture represents an equality that exists between humanity and nature portrayed in charcoal and signifying the bond that all life forms have in carbon. In a time when humanity’s existence is threatened by our over-use of carbon a symbol such as this is timely. This style of sculpture I have called Carbonature is the culmination of 12 years of exploration and discovery yet encompasses my life’s journey. The growth of 3 completely new styles representing and replicating the human form has been a humbling experience. Discovering our DNA is glued together by two carbon sugars and that every carbon life form shares these same two sugars, became a profound and redefining statement about equality. Life’s journey is one of discovery about self, the natural world, spirit and Earth’s magic; yet words and thoughts are shallow when compared to inspiration. A visual or audible inspiration speaks

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to a deeper uncluttered self not subject to bias or instant prejudgements. I find that the Carbonature work communicates to this part of me; every time I see a piece it’s like the first time somehow, it reflects itself corresponding to my moment in time. The sculpture’s dialogue changes dependant on where my mind is at or the circumstances of my life in that moment. The work is not bound by predetermined contrivance. I have the honour of creating a public sculpture water garden in Bridgetown called Carbonature ‘Beyond Time’. Twenty five large scale charcoal sculptures have been created and will be placed in this garden. I wonder what they will say as one tribe, what message will people take away, what inspiration will be gained about humanity’s connection to life, death, spirit or equality. I do know that the basic message is about celebrating this unique carbon realm.

Resident of Bridgetown since 1978, Vancouver School of Art 1972 Sculptor in wood, metal, cast glass, stone, exotic materials. Australian National Gallery, Canberra, WA State Gallery, Gallery of the NT Darwin. National Mapping Library, Canberra. WA Sculptor Scholarship Award, Sculptures by the Sea, Peoples Choice Award, Bondi 2015.

Kim Perrier Carbonature series (2020) Jarrah, charcoal, stainless steel, galvanised steel 2,230mm × 900mm × 300mm

GERALDINE PETERKIN

I work in fibre art using contemporary hand and machine embroidery techniques. This piece entitled Cosmograph [Jerusalem] is worked principally in a Japanese technique called BORO. I have processed and abstracted my ideas, which have been inspired by recollections and experiences of a recent trip to Jerusalem where I was able to witness and observe the colours, symbols, icons, and religious fervor of the three major religions that call Jerusalem a spiritually significant place – their common centre. Cosmography is the ancient science that seeks to map a place particularly as it represents heaven and earth. Today, our earth seems far from heaven. Our global predicament appears to be driven by all the forces that religious persons might call antireligious: a cacophony of control, power, greed, with a sense of separation, instead of surrender, acceptance, sharing, and unity – spirituality at its most fundamental and common basic human

Geraldine Peterkin Cosmograph [Jerusalem] (2019) (detail) Fibreart/embroidery 1,200mm × 1,500mm

need. I believe in a strong, unbreakable bond with whatever force or power that brings forth life, and wish to express that bond as a strong, clear hope that this force or power will drive people to act responsibly for the wellbeing and health of our planet. I have moved away from creating large fabric bowls to larger 2-dimensional pieces. Cosmograph [Jerusalem] uses [as a ground] an original painting ground sheet from the 1960’s [saved by my Mother – a legacy of the Great Depression]. Much of the thread and fabric has been hand-dyed to create the exact colours necessary. As well as Japanese BORO it also incorporates some other more traditional stitch techniques, particularly stitches similar to ones used in the Bayeux Tapestry and also Celtic design. While it only took me one year to create, this piece represents a lifetime of my work, passion and drive.

After studies in the 1960’s at St Martin’s School of Art, London [now part of the University of the Arts, London] Geraldine Peterkin attended the Fine Art Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria under Oskar Kokoschka. She moved to teaching High School Art, including Art Specials at Applecross Senior High School, and post-graduate studies at the Western Australian Institute of Technology [now Curtin University]. In the 1990’s she undertook the Teacher Training course with the Embroiderers’ Guild of WA. Her work is represented in the Guild Collection. More recently Geraldine has been invited to teach and lecture at the Embroiderers’ Guild Conference in Perth. Her connection with the Embroiderers’ Guild is ongoing.

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PAUL REYNOLDS

The Observations of a behaviourist revisits formative moments in life both through location and interaction and their effect on the construction of belief values. My artistic chronicles on these moments in life are merged with a bit of humour, honesty and a hint of cynicism but my work is created in silence and people essentially will observe in silence; people will construct their ownÂ story.

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Paul Reynolds (b. 1968, Luton, UK) studied at Claremont School of Art in 1997 before receiving his BA Curtin University in 1990. He returned to study acquiring his Graduate Diploma of Education from ECU in 1999. In 2010 he acquired his Graduate Certificate in Arts and Entertainment Management from Deakin University. Whilst a student and throughout his teaching career Reynolds has regularly exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions throughout WA. His work is included in corporate and private collections both nationally and internationally.

Paul Reynolds Reflections of a behaviourist (2019) (detail of work in progress) Gesso and pencil on board 890mm × 600mm × 30mm (panel 1) 890mm × 450mm × 30mm (panel 2) 890mm × 600mm × 30mm (panel 3)

RIZZY

Through my work I explore the essence of femininity. Notions of purity, softness and society’s expectations of women are examined using materials that reference the female experience. Crystalline sparkly sugar against delicate luxurious icing creates curvaceous lines, feminine form and intricate undergarments. With a realistic and cheeky viewpoint, utilizing pin-up girl imagery and my own body, it is not merely the act of making beautiful objects, the processes and experimentation involved, the information acquired, is just as significant.

Rizzy Trail (2020) (detail) Icing, found objects Installation: size variable

This work investigates domesticity, ideas of feminine beauty and its illusions. The scope of traditionally “women’s work” and women’s presence in the home being highlighted by the replication of a domestic scene. Ivory icing is used to recreate a counterfeit trail of clothes left on the floor, awaiting the unending task of washing. Home sweet home…

Graduating from Central TAFE in 2007, Rizzy was awarded with a residency and a slot in PICA’s Hatched exhibition. Curating and contributing to a range of group shows led to her being granted a studio and residential apartment through Artsource. In 2014 Rizzy won Best Visual Arts Award at Fringe World festival for her performance work entitled Eat Me.

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LIZ ROYCE

This artwork is testament to the irreversible changes to the environment wrought by climate change. Majestic trees, veterans of possibility some 400 years of climatic variations … drought, flood and fire … have now succumbed … unable to adapt to an insidious and gradual decrease in rainfall and a shrinking water table, making even the deepest root system incapable of receiving the nourishment of life giving water. An army of skeletal giants is all that remains … branches reaching like bony fingers to the skies … indeed a testament of what is now lost … In the creation of this work I attempted to demonstrate the enormity of these standing skeletal giants and how very inconceivable it is to equate such power, adaptability and strength to a final demise as victim to the vagaries of climate.

I have placed sections of the image on different geometric planes in an attempt to highlight aspects of its place within the immediate environment …its base and the surrounds, trunk and branches and finally where tree intercepts sky. Textural areas were created with relief print areas. Bark from the tree was utilised as a basis for a relief printbloc, then added to the image. A minimal use of colour and its bleeding out in sections is an illustration of loss of life of the tree and its changing state from one which is instrumental in nurturing new life … as home to countless living creatures, to one which can no longer sustain life … The colour of life to the monochromatic hue of death.

Liz Royce is an artist located in Gelorup in the southwest of WA. Living surrounded by old growth forest and native bush, she is inspired to create elements of her environment. Her art practice includes painting, printmaking and illustration. She has evolved a style incorporating all of these and works in a contemporary format.

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She studied at TAFE in Art/Design and completed a B Ed with an Art Major at Edith Cowan, incorporating these in a teaching career. She has exhibited widely in the Southwest both individually, in groups (latterly with the Southwest Printmakers) and also in yearly exhibitions including the Southwest Survey and Art Extraordinaire.

Liz Royce A death (2019) (detail) Mixed media on paper (including gouache, watercolour, linocut print) 1,000mm × 780mm

HELEN SEIVER

All but one (living species) of Banksia are endemic to Australia. The South West is the centre of biodiversity with over 90% of species occurring only here. Banksias are ancient trees (fossilised pollen 65 and 59 million years old), they are food trees for a variety of nectivorous animals, birds and insects and they rely on rainfall (no species tolerates annual rainfall of less than 200 ml). Infrequent bushfires are beneficial but too frequent and hot bushfires reduce and eliminate populations. So where does this leave the Banksia with respect to climate change, lack of rainfall and now frequent fire storms? This work uses the exposure of the Banksia to climate change as a symbol of the vulnerability of all.

Helen Seiver 200ml per year or extinction (2019/20) (detail of work in progress) Paper, ink, gesso and thread 800mm × 2,500mm approx

Helen Seiver is a studio artist living in the South West of Western Australia. Her arts practice includes sculpture, installation and painting. She is working with a variety of mediums including domestic and found objects to explore their unique quality of suggesting time, place and era.

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JESSICA SEROKA

My paintings are inspired by my love of interior design and modern art. I usually stick to my favourite colour palette – pinks, blues, gold and greys. My abstract pieces are created by layering colours and using lots of water to create fluid elements. Canvas is the surface I love to work on with acrylic and metallic paint. I finish each piece off by adding touches of metallic gold for shine and contrast. The look I always aim to achieve is a happy, eye-catching abstract piece that is on trend, well balanced with what I like to call clean areas and messy areas, layering, colours peeking through, texture, depth, concrete and fluid elements.

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My paintings are usually very pretty, soft and feminine however sometimes I use darker tones for a moodier, more dramatic look. I enjoy painting and find it quite relaxing, fun and exciting all at the same time. I love the constant excitement of ‘what might I create this time’.

Jessica Seroka is an abstract artist living in Bunbury, Western Australia. She has been practising art for about 10 years and is influenced by the latest interior design trends. She works from home creating her layered, acrylic abstract pieces on canvas.

Jessica Seroka New beginnings (2019) (detail) Acrylic on canvas 910mm × 910mm

SUE SMORTHWAITE

Sue Smorthwaite is a mixed media and textile artist living in Yallingup. Inspired by the huge potential for hand-made felt as an artistic medium and inspired by nature and objects around her, she uses natural wools to create her sculptures. Sue is continuously exploring new techniques and ways of expressing the world around us through her felt art. For her piece Reef knot, the use of colour and form express the natural state of vibrancy of our reefs and the rapid degradation currently underway as a result of human pollution and global warming. These are reversible processes if we have the political will and individual capacity to accept lower material living standards. The knot can be viewed as the tipping point in one direction, which can, by definition, be undone and the process reversed.

Sue Smorthwaite Reef knot (2019) (detail) Handmade felt, wool, silks, silk cocoons, found objects, threads and wire 1,500mm × 450mm

The Reef knot started out as many flat resist shapes. Several layers of Merino wool tops were laid out around the first side of each resist. With soap, water and working with her hands, the wools were worked to the prefelt stage. This was then repeated on the second side of each resist. By adding more resists and using different felting techniques to create the corals, Sue has included found objects at different stages, adding dimension and texture to the flat shapes. Once dry, the resists were then removed and further embellishment and stitching was done. Re-wetting the work and with wet soapy hands each piece was shaped and felted to the final size (allowing for up to 40% shrinkage). The pieces were then stitched together, knotted and supported on the stand.

Sue Smorthwaite has exhibited at SWAN 2016 and 2018, Bunbury; Teapots 12th Invitational Exhibition, Pittsburgh, USA; The Melbourne Teapot Exhibition 2019 (Winner Non-Functional Teapot Section and People’s Choice Award) and Sculpture by the Bay, Dunsborough, (Small Sculpture Prize Winner 2019). Her work is sold through the Studio Gallery, Yallingup.

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ANNE SORENSEN

My motivation for creating this piece is to make an emotional connection by creating a physical thing. My daily work environment has these lovely creatures often within metres of me, impossible to ignore. Their delicacy and vulnerability has me considering how we all in our own way protect them, and of course ourselves. So I ask the question: What can I do to alter my behaviour to be kinder to our world? In my small way I can contribute to better practices. This work is made using glass powders; layer upon layer, each layer fired separately, to build up the colours. Patiently exploring the effects that time and temperature changes have on the glass powders colours and textures, I am drawing a parallel with our behaviour towards our effect on our natural world.

I feel glass is the perfect medium for this piece as it can be fragile and delicate in appearance and behaviour. However by its nature, it needs to be treated carefully, has complex requirements when heated and cooled or it can react badly due to the stress being placed upon it. Much as with our planet. By framing the glass with Marri timber sourced from the firewood pile of a local timber mill, the timber has been saved and the glass has become protected by the framing.

Anne Sorensen has been a glass artist for thirty years. Working from her studio in Bouvard, Western Australia. The last ten years devoted to kiln formed glass. 108

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Much of her work is based on an emotional response to events in her daily life, or simply an appreciation of her natural environment.

Anne Sorensen Contemplate (2019) (detail) Marri and glass 1,900mm × 380mm × 250mm

BRITTA SORENSEN

Black/red is a juxtaposition. The original two textile panels were knotted with audience participation during the Margaret River Region Open Studios 2019. It was rewarding for me to coax the public into an active, contributory art experience, which left many surprised by their responses. My challenge was to turn the contributions into a cohesive artwork that speaks of the power and associations with the colours black and red. Black proved to be quite confronting as it evokes darkness, death, depression and despair but also culturally is associated with sophistication, seriousness, power and strength. Red was much easier and joyous for participants to work with; love, lust, warmth and care being the most common associations. Many participants were responding to the sense of ‘inner body’ like blood, heart, organs, womb, but also present were the heat of passion, anger and rage. Personally I loved working with the richness and symbolism of

red, but was surprised and humored by my visceral response: the proximity caused intense hot flushes. I have chosen to juxtapose black and red to represent both the drama of death and of being alive. These are inter-dependent opposites and equally strong. We constantly utilize their effects in social/cultural practices. The materials chosen for Black/red have all had previous lives; clothing is worn and torn, carrying traces of a previous life. I work with used and discarded materials only. This is as much an environmental anti-consumption statement (Australians send 6,000kg of clothing to landfill every 10 minutes, according to the ABC’s War on Waste), as it is an attempt to capture previous ownership and usage thus adding deeper layers of meaning and story to the process. The absurd journey of waste is temporarily halted in order to contemplate the past, pay a little respect, allowing an encore.

Britta Sorensen is a multi-disciplinary artist, activist and change-maker. She is an environment-taught, fourth generation artist originating from the border country of Germany/Denmark and has lived in Margaret River for the last 25 years. 110

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Consumerism, community, identity and belonging are the themes she explores in her installations and participatory processes.

Britta Sorensen Black/red (2019) (detail) Assemblage of textiles, paper, found objects on wire, two canvasses, charcoal, rose petals 2,000mm × 2,600mm × 2,000mm approx

MELISSA SPENCER

The duality of everyday working life coupled with domestic requirements versus the desire to fulfill creative ambition is the theme explored in this work. Surprisingly, the repetitive mundane chore of hanging out weekend washing eventuated in an inspiring experience recently when a touch of dramatic atmospheric conditions saw the wet laundry items take on a life of their own. A creative opportunity arose as the sheets and tablecloth became animated, billowing up into the sky, taking on a surreal new form. The painting began as a single panel, featuring a singular stark white tablecloth on a clothes line. It evolved to incorporate further creative and playful aspects, with the addition of intense colour in the form of somewhat aggressive and menacing imaginative paint ‘splats’, which in a way represent myself and artistic intentions, playing off the colourful visual repetition of the pegs. Saturday morning wash day was no longer boring.

Melissa Spencer Saturday morning (2019) (detail) Oil on canvas two end panels of 460mm × 910mm; central panel of 1,510mm × 910mm

Visual Art teacher: BSHS 2007-2014: South Western Times Survey 2010: SW Survey – Dale Alcock Acquisition Prize 2007/10: ‘Those Who Can’ – Art Educators – ArtGeo 2008/10: ‘Christmas Shop’/Painting tutor – BRAG 2006: ‘Surrealisme’ – ArtGeo Diploma of Education WACAE 1989 Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) Curtin 1988

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FRANCES SULLIVAN-RHODES

Materials are voluble of places and of values. Painting at the edge of land and sea, at the edge of regional and urban Western Australia, my practice has started to take on the character of the landscape in which I work: scenes interrupted by or emerging from balga resin and ash and gold, materials that are very much tied to the landscape in which I live and have lived and been involved, from the Wheat-belt to the coast, via Boddington and Dwellingup, along with pattern and ornament from domestic decoration. I am interested in exposing the construction of landscapes by painting overtly altered landscapes, populated by figures and creatures from classical imagery as well

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as portraits of my own children involved in finding their place in the landscape, alongside the roos and Carnabys and wrens that we often encounter on our walks around the estuary. The figures seem to be coming or going out of or into the landscape, unfixed. That sort of indeterminacy is important to me as I see it as significant of a closeness with nature. I see the frame as part of the work. It is a heavy gilt frame, something that is imposed on these landscapes, but the frame is also a reminder of an inherited aesthetic, something from somewhere else that creates a difficulty and discord which the painting attempts to ameliorate.

Frances Sullivan-Rhodes is an artist from the Peel region. Her practice spans painting, photography, sculpture, installation and curation, emerging from an interest in migrancy’s effect on perception of places, particularly as a migrant who negotiates inherited aesthetic sensibilities and the history and culture and landscape of WA.

Frances SullivanRhodes Lost Eden: After Cranach (2019) Mixed media on marine ply 300mm × 300mm

ROSEMARY TAYLOR

The past, the present, the landscape, its history, its form and its people: these are the elements that I try to convey through my photographs thereby creating an image that illustrates my feeling of ‘place’ and of ‘belonging.’ My training preceded the digital age and included every aspect of photography: the fundamental use of light; composition and design; darkroom techniques and associated processes to produce the finished print. The work of early photographers and particularly the artists of the 1950s and 1960s – Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Rosalyn Drexler – has had a huge impact on how I visualise my work. Advertising and Fashion photography of that era has also had a significant influence. I had the opportunity to explore the use of digital manipulation of my photographs early in 2000 when, with a fellow artist (a painter) we were awarded a small UK Lotteries Arts4Everyone Grant.

At this point I discovered how I could use the new technology to change the mood and accentuate the style of my images. I have always been interested in the built environment both past and present. Frequently, old buildings have gone to make way for the new adding to the palimpsest of what was there. The built environment illustrates Bunbury’s history since first settlement. Victorian and Art Deco styles can be easily recognised standing wall to wall with other, newer, architectural innovations. The city centre is changing and, of necessity, new suburbs with their own local amenities are being built. The landscape everywhere continues to change, reshaped by people and increasingly by nature. It is a representation of these changes and their impact that I seek to convey at the South Western Times Art 2020 Exhibition.

Rosemary Taylor trained as a photographer in London and later experimented with computerised image manipulation. Her work today combines both techniques. 116

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She has exhibited her work in the UK and since moving to Bunbury has participated in the Tree Street Art Safari in 2017 and 2018.

Rosemary Taylor Reshaping the landscape (2019) (detail) Digitally manipulated photography 375mm × 1,790mm

IAN THWAITES

Ian is a full-time teacher of woodworking and furniture design, with students aged from 12 to 79 years and he has a degree in Industrial Arts. He has been exploring his artistic side since he first began studying in 1980. Over the years he has completed many studio furniture commissions and has a lot left to explore in that area. He has always been drawn back to the wood lathe as a means to shape wood and bring to fruition ideas for sculptural objects. A pivotal moment in his development as an artist was reading a book called the Purpose of the Object by a Canadian designer/maker named Steven Hogbin. He was cutting and segmenting his turned work and re-assembling to produce some very different pieces, conjuring images of movement and intriguing the viewer to wonder how. Ian’s interpretation on this cut and re assembled technique was to create boats by removing a wedge

section from a textured bowl to create a sweeping curvilinear formed hull. He has often featured this “Tumble Home” yacht hull profile with its curvaceous and billowy form. “I think, that within all of us, there is a sense of wonderment when seeing a boat sail purposefully out to sea. The image raising several questions… Who is on board? Where are they going? What is their cargo? Where have they been?” The transference of this intrigue has led him to use his boats as an extended metaphor to make statements and observations on many topics: global financial crisis, vanity, global warming international politics, human nature, or just to stimulate the human predilection with sailing away to another life place or reality!

Ian Thwaites is a wood artist born in the early sixties. He lives and works with his partner Sarah in the beautiful Margaret River region of Western Australia where there is a vibrant and diverse artist community.

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A common technique has purveyed through his lifetime to date in the use of the wood lathe to shape sculptural objects in a variety of woods. The most common of these has been the theme of boats and their capacity to carry and convey cargoes over sometimes treacherous waters. Using this analogy for life he is constantly creating sculptures to explore a mix of current, political, environmental themes as well as some universally identifiable human traits.

Ian Thwaites in his studio Photograph: Bryan Timmons

NEIL TURNER

Woven through all of Neil Turner’s artwork is a deep respect for the material and the natural forces that have acted upon it. He looks for the quiet ripples eroded in soil by wind, the delicate eddies left by water, and the swirling lick of flames. Neil works in negative, observing the subtle interplay of light and shadow and creating fluid forms from solid wood. He relies on the wood to direct him, working with grain direction and pattern, blemishes and voids. His work reflects influences from his past and incorporates elements of the present environment. The combination of these ideas from past and present has proved challenging bearing in mind they must complement one another and maintain a balance.

Neil Turner Aftermath (2020) (detail) Sheoak, charred sandalwood 460mm × 280mm

The final destination is a piece that will inspire close inspection; thinking and feeling that the work is at peace in its surroundings. Turner primarily uses Australian timbers and works in a highly sympathetic way with the material, the natural features of the timber informing the finished piece.

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BIANCA TURRI

Dysmorphia Unrealistic expectation and pressure of how our body should appear, the warped perception that has been fed to us over the years of how human form and shape should look. Often the reflection we see in the mirror is not the image seen by everyone surrounding you. Coming up for air Often there are times in this life where we feel like we need to take a minute and come up for air. But for one reason or another feel as if we are drowning. This is a daily struggle for some people; that feeling of anxiety and fear can be completely overwhelming.

Bianca Turri Dysmorphia (2019) (detail) Photographic digital image printed on fine art cotton rag paper 750mm × 850mm

Bianca Turri is a multi award winning Master photographer who resides in the South West. She loves to create and chase light. Creating form and motion with her imagery, to have people questioning what they are seeing. Telling stories through visual communication, in particular by photographing people, is something she is very passionate about. This has seen her complete a number of community projects to raise awareness of social issues in and around our community.

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ROSS VAUGHAN

Vaughan’s style is intense and passionate. This work responds to the challenges faced by him and those in his art class. Doorways signify potential journeys and transformations; they allow transition or escape from otherwise closed spaces. In Doorway 2020 Vaughan uses brushstroke and paint as a metaphysical doorway, immersing himself in the transformative practice of painting. The physicality and materiality of Abstract Expressionism draws attention to the act of painting itself. This physical act paradoxically liberates the painter from the limits of the body, allowing unhindered transition through various states of being. Doorway is a work inspired by the students in Vaughan’s art classes held at the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery.

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Ross Vaughan has a lived disability and runs an art class for people with the same issues. He graduated from WAAPA in 1994 and holds a postgraduate Diploma in Interactive Media from Edith Cowan University. His works are held in several collections including Alinta Gas, Enable WA, and the City of Vincent. Vaughan has participated as a facilitator and artist in the 2018 and 2019 Mental Health Week exhibitions at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery. Vaughan is the recipient of a 2019 City of Bunbury grant.

Ross Vaughan Doorways for Elissa (2019) (detail) Acrylic on canvas 1,000mm × 1,500mm

MARY WALLACE

I trained as a tableware maker and still love making dishes for daily use. I like to think my pieces will become part of a household, being used often and becoming valued for their aesthetics as well as their usefulness. However I also love the challenges of working with porcelain which I throw on the potters wheel and then carve. This work is more decorative in nature and has changed over the years from geometric patterns to my current work which is focussed on native WA flora. It has developed from working with one of the world’s most respected porcelain carvers, Jeon Seong Keun, at his studio in South Korea. With

Mary Wallace Vase from the Silver Princess series (2019) Carved porcelain 310mm × 220mm diameter Photograph: Daniel Webb

the assistance of the Department of Culture and the Arts of Western Australia, I have been able to develop the technique to reflect my Australian home. Two of my favourite subjects are the Kangaroo Paw and the Eucalyptus Caesia (the Silver Princess). It is the Silver Princess I have chosen for this exhibition. My piece has been wheel thrown in fine Australian porcelain. When the clay is sufficiently firm, I have carved the pattern of the Silver Princess into and through the wall of the pot. Carving such as this takes many hours to complete. The pot is glazed in a Celadon glaze and fired to 1,300°C in a reduction gas kiln.

Mary Wallace has been a potter for 40 years. Her workshop, Spiral Studio, is near Denmark. She trained as a tableware maker which forms the mainstay of the pottery. She also loves to work with porcelain which she carves to create decorative pieces. WA wildflowers are the focus for this work.

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JILL WARNOCK

Jill Warnock’s artwork is based on a search for the inherent qualities of light, colour and form that embraces the basic elements of beauty. Her art practice, Envirotransparism (which she has trademarked) incorporates a mixed media approach of painting, installation and photography. She creates layers that explore these aesthetic elements and reveals them in abstraction. Her inspiration is drawn from both natural and urban environments and her work reflects how she interprets the world in which she lives. She is strongly influenced by topical issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis, global warming and plastic proliferation. She paints

initially on acetate or Perspex, then creates an installation in a selected environment which she then photographs and prints onto a variety of surfaces. She prints onto Perspex, aluminium, glass, tiles, textiles, and fabric. She also incorporates the upcycling of materials to produce sculptural works. Her art practice has continued to evolve as she develops new concepts and explores a variety of mediums using painting and printing techniques. Transcendent macrocosm, explores the world of the imagination and represents the complexity and fragility of the cosmos. This work grew in complexity following her work on coral reefs.

Jill Warnock is a practicing Visual Artist working from her home studio. She graduated from Curtin University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Contemporary Art and Design. She had her first solo exhibition at The Arts Margaret River Cultural Centre Gallery in 2012. In 2013 she won the best Emerging Artist Award at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery’s The South West Survey Exhibition. She exhibited in the 2016 South West Survey Exhibition (Syrian Blood) and has participated in the Margaret River Open Studios Event since its inauguration from 2014 until 2018. 128

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In 2019 she entered Sculpture by the Bay with Loggerhead’s Dichotomy, a work revealing the juxtaposition between old and new technology.

Jillian Warnock Transcendent macrocosm (2019) (detail) Mixed media 1,100mm × 900mm × 15mm

CHARLOTTE WHITE

My work is an exercise in experimentation and a creative escape. I am constantly inspired by the natural beauty surrounding us, and in particular the delicate colourfulness of capturing a temporary moment in time within the natural organic “botanical world” with each piece being a vibrant expression of the natural world. I work primarily on ply, which by serendipity started due to availability but I quickly fell in love with the way the grain and texture adds to the piece. With two small children, finding solid blocks of time to paint are few and far between and the use of watercolours therefore also began as a medium of convenience, one that I soon became obsessed with. The subject matter, the grainy backdrop and medium were for me, a match made in heaven, giving an effect that I wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. Watercolour is a medium that can constantly be reworked and used at any time.

Charlotte White Bougainvillea (2020) (detail) Watercolour on ply 1,200mm × 900mm

In combining the transparency of watercolours built in layers upon a wooden base, I challenge my own skill base balancing the competing tensions of mastering the use of my chosen medium with the realistic representation of nature’s beauty. Using watercolours in a non-traditional sense, plus the wood grain incorporated with the transparency of my medium, work together to create depth. I use positive and negative spaces, balancing how they need each other to create well-rounded interesting artworks. The silence of the space tends to speak volumes while the subject matter along with the medium and wooden-base work hand-inhand to create dimension and expression. Each work is different from the next, my pieces have become a journey of both building realistic representations with layers of colour, as well as a skill-building exercise which continues to extend my creative practice.

With a background in Fashion & Textiles, a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Visual Arts) and a Graduate Diploma of Education, Charlotte White has crafted her art in the Southwest for 15 years. When not mothering her two small children, Charlotte dedicates time to her creative expressions, exhibitions and tutoring at Stirling Street Arts Centre.

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PAULA WIEGMINK

Surprise at how smaller birds manage to not only attack but to successfully fend off larger birds of prey was the inspiration for Magpie manoeuvres. The behaviour of ‘mobbing’ is a term used when smaller birds fend off larger birds protecting their nests and environment. Speed enables these birds to successfully fend off hostile predators. They usually attack the bigger bird from behind or above to avoid the larger bird’s talons. This only goes to show that being small is not necessarily a limitation. Magpies are notorious for swooping on humans, no doubt an effective deterrent in protecting their young, not unlike human behaviour. Nature and wildlife constantly inspire me. I enjoy researching and learning more about the animal or bird’s behaviour patterns and environment. With this knowledge I hoped to create a painting with feeling and movement which accurately portrays my subject in a realistic form.

Paula Wiegmink Magpie manoeuvres (2019) Acrylic on canvas 1,225mm × 940mm

I chose to paint in acrylic using a multi layering method on canvas. The wonderful wheatbelt landscape and moody sky provided the perfect backdrop for Magpie manoeuvres. The artwork depicts an Australian magpie (Cracticus tibicen) pursuing a whistling kite (Haliastur sphenurus). Through my art I hope to draw attention to the wonders of nature that surround us every day. Many species in Australia are now under threat of extinction. Painting nature gives me a great deal of pleasure and constantly makes me aware of this extraordinary part of the world we live in. Western Australia is rich in diversity and provides me with endless material that I hope will be around for many years to come.

Paula Wiegmink was born in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and immigrated to Western Australia in 1994. After residing in Perth for 20 years, she and her husband relocated to Dunsborough, WA. She has a passion for wildlife, nature, travel and photography and currently paints full time.

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CHRIS WILLIAMSON

This year is perhaps an appropriate point at which to reflect on the soundtrack to our lives. This work acts as a memorial and a meditation on those enduring lyrics written fifty years ago and asks us to remember when, in our youthful imagination, we could fly with our heroes who left earth to touch the stars. We could not believe that they, who broke free from earth’s gravity, had feet of clay just like us. This assemblage, employing re-cycled elements, found objects and text, continues my current concern to create a visual form which can carry

meaning, connecting the viewer with the past. By appropriating the form of those grand memorial tablets found on church walls, I make artworks which hopefully will resonate with the many rather than the few. I aim to celebrate human ideas and aspirations which all can hold dear, irrespective of status, background or perceived worth. Music can be a powerful and effective trigger to memories. I try to give emotions and memories a solid, tactile form. Memento Mori.

Chris Williamson trained at Sheffield and Leeds Colleges of Art and subsequently worked in advertising and educational design in UK. Since 2009, after a 35-year freelance career in UK and WA, he has concentrated on his personal art practice. His re-working of detritus is an evocative response to the passage of time. 134

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Williamson is represented in the permanent collections of Bunbury and Busselton and many private collections in Australia, NZ and UK.

Chris Williamson Ground Control to Major Tom (reboot) (2019) (detail) Timber, pigments, found objects and text 1,550mm × 850mm × 140mm variable Photograph: Christopher Young

TONY WINDBERG

The distinctive form of Chatham Island off the south west WA coast was the second view of Australia to be depicted on Matthew Flinders’ 1801-02 circumnavigation. The mission to accurately map the gaps in the southern continent of Terra Australis also required accurate coastal profiles to be drawn up. I have been referencing these European inward looking views in a series of artworks which investigate the persistence of colonial attitudes over time. In the diptych Island State, Chatham Island is also shown as seen from a tourist lookout, an opposing viewpoint looking back out to sea over two centuries later. The symbolism of ‘island’ has shifted from the ‘blank slate’ of Terra Nullius to that of wilderness, a refuge from the consequent effects of occupation. Earth pigments and ash form the basis of each panel, a terra firma foundation of solid land

Tony Windberg Island state 1 (2019-2020) (detail) Earth pigments, ash, iron oxide, copper, pencil, oil paint 520mm × 2,040mm × 35mm

onto which an artistic battle then plays out. In the process of creating the artwork, there is a distinct shift between the artwork’s first stages, where orderly drawing techniques describe the landscape in detail, and later stages, where the image is subject to intense ‘visual disintegration’. This contrast between order and chaos mirrors the relationship between Man and Nature, an underlying preoccupation of Romantic art, and a continual theme within my work. Passage of time is inferred by the treatment of the materials used in the artworks, such as the deliberate oxidation of iron and copper based paint (which is then sealed). The use of copper echoes the copperplate engraving process used to reproduce the coastal images in Flinders’ 1814 publication A Voyage to Terra Australis. Weathering processes are also suggested with techniques involving abrasion and partial removal of layers of materials.

Tony Windberg graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) from Curtin University in 1986. He has held numerous solo shows and exhibited in prestigious national and state group exhibitions. Tony’s artwork has won numerous awards and is represented in WA and nationally in numerous private, public and corporate collections.

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MICHAEL WISE

The final ascensions of Hugh Mann is an installation composed of digital prints, figurative sculptures and video in a coastal narrative which examines human otherness in an environmental fantasy. The symbolic figure of Hugh Mann plays with a fanciful notion of humanity ascending to an alternative realm leaving the earth in a pristine state and taking humanity’s waste with it. The sculptural figures are composed of recycled aluminium that combines traditional sculpture-making in a digital interplay between reality and fiction.

Michael Wise The final ascension of Hugh Mann (Redgate Beach) (2019) (detail) Canson rag print & aluminium sculpture, video 900mm × 1,350mm

Dr. Michael Wise’s current research and art practice involves the creative processes of video, painting, photography and sculpture. He responds to his life experience of the beach and the dangers which are embedded in its image. He portrays the beach as a site that has a twofold function of pleasure and terror, where beauty and death can exist in the same instance. He also examines the beach through a framework of historical precedents, human otherness and environmental sensitivity.

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MADDISSON WITMITZ

I think of Sweet cactaceae as a quirky reflection of the triviality of pop culture. Fidget spinners, “dabbing” and small cactus plants are just some of the strange objects and actions people do and buy to remain a relevant member of society. My artwork depicts a bold, fruity set of plants, predominantly cacti, flowering upwards like a sort of bouquet. Cacti represent perseverance and strength and creating them in such a childish way in my artwork directly contrasts that. I created this work with a digital illustration app and a stylus pen, a preferred medium of mine, as it is convenient and allows the production of clean, controlled and editable works. Both the subject matter and the media used to create this artwork reflect pop culture and the current digital age, as we live in a world where

Maddisson Witmitz Sweet cactaceae (2019) (detail) Digital drawing print 210mm × 297mm

in order to obtain a sense of belonging, youths conform to trends and fads and are very concerned with “going viral” and having lots of followers. I made the decision to create my artwork in a cartoonish fashion, with unrealistically simplified details and bright colours that are rarely seen so bold in the species of plants featured, to inspire a playful sentiment within the audience. Also, I personally enjoy creating artworks with bold colours and clean lines that are visually pleasing to the eye and create a vibrant and balanced aesthetic. To me, my artwork represents a lighthearted take on the trends and fads our society adopts, and it also displays the use of digital devices in my creation process.

Maddisson Witmitz is an emerging artist based in Busselton, Western Australia, who is currently attending year 12 classes at Manea Senior College in Bunbury. She works with digital technology to produce bold and colourful artworks, taking into consideration popular trends and fads, and incorporating their ideas into her works. Maddisson Witmitz plans on developing more artworks under the guidance of the MSC 2020 art course.

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CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Eight looks at end-of-life cultural experiences; how people respond to such experiences; and the environments and institutions they encounter. Utilising spaces such as hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and funeral homes, it addresses the paradox of highly-charged, emotive events in seemingly sterile and controlled spaces. The sterility of these places should be calming and reassuring but Christopher found the ‘otherness’ difficult to overlook in his own experience. This project stems from visits to funeral homes when Christopher’s father was diagnosed with a terminal illness. The ﬁrst was a macabre behindthe-scenes tour and later for his funeral. He found both experiences disturbing and thus far unique in his adult life. “My relationship with my father was distant and often dysfunctional. Our collective apathy left us with limited shared adult experiences as well as an inability to communicate. Despite his diagnosis and the associated ‘deadline’, we never found the language to sit down to discuss his looming death.”

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Despite it being inevitable, death is not something we freely discuss. It is often seen as a taboo subject, especially intergenerationally. The passing of a loved one can be further complicated by the foreignness of the surrounding experiences. This is particularly the case with ‘stoic’ men, even more so those in regional communities. As death is inescapable and inevitably part of everyone’s experience, this series has opened a dialogue with Christopher’s audience that has been enriching for all involved. The series also includes anonymous interviews with people about their own end-of-life experiences. In 2020, it will tour to Albany and Bunbury and will include an expansive public program – death cafés, artist talks, etc. – that will encourage people to discuss these issues more freely. A limited-edition book was launched in 2019 that includes the work, interviews and experimental works.

Isolation is a recurring theme in Christopher Young’s life and artwork – the remoteness of growing up in semi-rural New Zealand, the loneliness of living in Germany as a poor German speaker and lately the geographic and ideological seclusion of life in Australia, have all coloured his artistic practice.

Christopher Young Eight #82 (2019) (detail) Lightjet print in an edition of 5 800mm × 640mm

ARTISTS Alice Alder �� 11 Christine Baker ��12 Penny Baker ��14 Jenny Barr ��16 Amanda Bell ��18 Christine Blowfield ��20 Tara Boulevard ��22 Jeana Castelli ��25 Rebecca Corps �� 27 Julie Cox ��28 Cassi-Jo Davis ��30 Merle Topsi Davis ��32 Tony Davis ��35 Joshua De Gruchy ��36 Ant Debbo ��38 Kate Debbo ��40 Sue Dennis ��43 Sheree Dohnt ��45 Yvonne Dorricott �� 47 Elizabeth Edmonds ��48 Natalia Ford ��50 Andrew Frazer ��53 Mark Francis Grey-Smith ��54 Annelise Grotian �� 57 Shayne Hadley ��58 Roslyn Hamdorf ��60 Suzanna Hay ��63 Simon Hemsley ��65 Catherine Higham ��66 Peter Hill ��69 Sharon Hinchliffe �� 71 Sue Kalab ��73 Peter Kovacsy ��74 Daniel Kus ��76 144

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Claire Linaker ��78 Alice Linford Forte �� 81 Elisa Markes-Young ��83 Lesley Meaney ��84 Katharina Meister ��86 Kellee Merritt ��88 Katerina Katherine Papas �� 91 Kim Perrier ��92 Geraldine Peterkin ��95 Paul Reynolds ��96 Rizzy ��99 Liz Royce ��100 Helen Seiver ��103 Jessica Seroka ��104 Sue Smorthwaite ��107 Anne Sorensen ��108 Britta Sorensen ��110 Melissa Spencer ��113 Frances Sullivan-Rhodes ��114 Rosemary Taylor ��116 Ian Thwaites ��118 Neil Turner ��121 Bianca Turri ��123 Ross Vaughan ��124 Mary Wallace ��127 Jill Warnock ��128 Charlotte White ��131 Paula Wiegmink ��133 Chris Williamson ��134 Tony Windberg ��137 Michael Wise ��139 Maddisson Witmitz ��141 Christopher Young ��142

LIST OF ARTWORKS Alice Alder Awaken the skies (2019) Oil on canvas 915mm × 915mm × 40mm Christine Baker Personality versus obscurity (2020) Acrylic on canvas plus earthenware clay and glazes 600mm × 600mm (painting) and five sculptures (various sizes) Penny Baker Rain down on me (2019) Watercolour, rainwater, Artline pen three paintings: 420mm × 580mm each Jenny Barr An unexpected birthday present (2019) from the After much talk series Digital drawing print on paper 1,100mm × 1,100mm Jenny Barr Quietly sinks keep spilling (2019) from the After much talk series Digital drawing print on paper 490mm × 490 mm Jenny Barr The civility of French Earl Grey at 4pm was slowly escaping (2019) from the After much talk series Digital drawing print on paper 490mm × 490 mm

Jenny Barr The floor was circling all domestic and dangerous (2019) from the After much talk series Digital drawing print on paper 490mm × 490 mm Jenny Barr Untitled house (2019) from the After much talk series Digital drawing print on paper 490mm × 490 mm Amanda Bell Everything is funny (The love song of Emjay and Princess Dark Clouds) (2019) Installation, dimensions variable Christine Blowfield Let me be heard (2020) Acrylic on canvas 1,524mm × 1,219mm Tara Boulevard Ashes of my enemies II (2019) Ceramic 270mm × 180mm × 180mm Jeana Castelli Connection (2020) Acrylic on canvas 1,220mm × 920mm Rebecca Corps Self portrait (2020) Rusted wire and stitched natural materials 700mm × 1,000mm × 1,200mm

Julie Cox Sun (2020) Grasses, flyscreen 1,400mm × 1,400mm Cassie-Jo Davis Kangaroo Kate (2020) Installation: acrylic, textiles, embroidery, kangaroo skin, found objects 1,150mm × 750mm Merle Topsi Davis Farm gully dump basket (2019) Woven, knotted and stitched farm dump debris 400mm × 450mm Merle Topsi Davis Farm gully dump container (2019) Woven, knotted and stitched farm dump debris 470mm × 400mm Tony Davis Split folly (2019) Jarrah and COR-TEN steel 1,850mm × 1,200mm × 350mm Joshua de Gruchy A place to wait (2020) Acrylic on canvas 1,200mm × 600mm × 40mm Kate Debbo Lucky stars (2019) Oil and acrylic on canvas 1,350mm × 2,000mm

LIST OF ARTWORKS Anthony Debbo Spoon dress (2019) Marri 1,700mm × 350mm × 50mm

Andrew Frazer Learning to listen (2019) Acrylic on canvas 1,230mm × 925mm × 50mm

Catherine Higham Waggle | Fieldwork (2020) Encaustic on board 750mm × 1,200mm (variable)

Anthony Debbo Pea shelling dress (2019) Marri 1,100mm × 550mm × 50mm

Mark Francis Grey-Smith Girt (2019) Bisque fired paper clay 380mm × 355mm × 325mm

Peter Hill Fire diary (2020) Acrylic, pen, burnt jarrah 1,200mm × 1,270mm

Sue Dennis Beneath the skin (2019) Artist book: clay, natural earth and fibres Open: 150mm × 180mm × 90mm

Annelise Grotian Courting (2020) Stoneware clay 1,000mm × 1,000mm × 1,100mm

Sharon Hinchliffe Do it now, or grow old (2020) Acrylic, ink, collage on canvas 910mm × 1,220mm

Shayne Hadley Meditations upon a plastic skull (2016-2019) Oil on panel 1,220mm × 2,415mm

Sue Kalab The swan-ness of a swan (2019) Watercolour 750mm × 550mm

Sheree Dohnt Mother’s guilt (2019) Ink, watercolour and gouache on paper 695mm × 885mm (triptych) Yvonne Dorricott Z-Bend shadow (2020) Etching on wood, wood, string 1,400mm × 450mm (panel A) 1,400mm × 450mm (panel B) 2,000mm × 450mm (part C) Elizabeth Edmonds Holocene (2020) Acrylic and ink on canvas 910mm × 910mm Natalia Ford Emptiness (2019) Stoneware and porcelain 52mm × 430mm

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Roslyn Hamdorf Watching for whales (2019) Acrylic on canvas 1,020mm × 760mm × 30mm Suzanna Hay After the deluge (2019) Watercolour on paper 455mm × 545mm × 1.50mm Simon Hemsley Under the microscope (2020) Mixed media, ochre, acrylic and inks 1,200mm × 900mm

Peter Kovacsy Inner space #2 (2019) Jarrah, clear lead crystal 1,180mm × 630mm × 160mm Daniel Kus Deer skull (2020) Mixed media 300mm × 300mm × 550mm Claire Linaker Homeless (2019) Acrylic on canvas after an image by Lee Jeffries (lee-jeffries.co.uk) 610mm × 450mm Alice Linford Forte Journey north (2019) Oil on canvas 980mm × 1,680mm

Elisa Markes-Young Stories from a place that was home #01 (2019) Hand-embroidered photograph, paper and textile. Photography by Christopher Young. Approx. 900mm × 1,600mm Elisa Markes-Young Stories from a place that was home #02 (2019) Found head scarf, hand embroidery Approx. 2,000mm × 1,200mm Lesley Meaney Kangaroo paw shroud (2019) Acrylic, ink and stitching on canvas 1,190mm × 1,330mm × 30mm Katharina Meister Locomotion against overpopulation (2019-20) Papercut, mixed media 400mm × 805mm × 70mm Kellee Merritt FLASH (2019) Watercolour 700mm × 540mm Katerina Katherine Papas The space between - deep blue (2019) Acrylic on canvas 1,200mm × 1,000mm

Kim Perrier Carbonature series (2020) Jarrah, charcoal, stainless steel, galvanised steel 2,230mm × 900mm × 300mm

Sue Smorthwaite Reef knot (2019) Handmade felt, wool, silks, silk cocoons, found objects, threads and wire 1,500mm × 450mm

Geraldine Peterkin Cosmograph [Jerusalem] (2019) Fibreart/embroidery 1,200mm × 1,500mm

Anne Sorensen Contemplate (2019) Marri and glass 1,900mm × 380mm × 250mm

Paul Reynolds Reflections of a behaviourist (2019) Gesso and pencil on board 890mm × 600mm × 30mm (panel 1) 890mm × 450mm × 30mm (panel 2) 890mm × 600mm × 30mm (panel 3)

Britta Sorensen White (2019) Assemblage of fabrics, fibre, paper, bone on wire, plastic chair 2,000mm × 1,300mm × 2,000mm approx

Rizzy Trail (2020) Icing, found objects Installation: size variable

Britta Sorensen Black/red (2019) Assemblage of textiles, paper, found objects on wire, two canvasses, charcoal, rose petals 2,000mm × 2,600mm × 2,000mm approx

Liz Royce A death (2019) Mixed media on paper (including gouache, watercolour, linocut print) 1,000mm × 780mm Helen Seiver 200ml per year or extinction (2019-20) Paper, ink, gesso and thread 800mm × 2,500mm approx Jessica Seroka New beginnings (2019) Acrylic on canvas 910mm × 910mm

Melissa Spencer Saturday morning (2019) Oil on canvas two end panels of 460mm × 910mm; central panel of 1,510mm × 910mm Frances Sullivan-Rhodes A place beyond words: marvellous, strange and wonderful (2020) Mixed media on marine ply 970mm × 1,370mm × 120mm

LIST OF ARTWORKS Rosemary Taylor Reshaping the landscape (2019) Digitally manipulated photography 375mm × 1,790mm

Jillian Warnock Transcendent macrocosm (2019) Mixed media 1,100mm × 900mm × 15mm

Ian Thwaites Take flight (2020) Sheoak, Huon pine, found plastic waste 450mm × 350mm × 600mm

Charlotte White Bougainvillea (2020) Watercolour on ply 1,200mm × 900mm

Neil Turner Aftermath (2020) Sheoak, charred sandalwood 460mm × 280mm

Paula Wiegmink Magpie manoeuvres (2019) Acrylic on canvas 1,225mm × 940mm

Bianca Turri Dysmorphia (2019) Photographic digital image printed on fine art cotton rag paper 750mm × 850mm

Chris Williamson Ground Control to Major Tom (reboot) (2019) Timber, pigments, found objects and text 1,550mm × 850mm × 140mm variable

Bianca Turri Coming up for air (2019) Photographic digital image printed on fine art cotton rag paper 750mm × 850mm Ross Vaughan Doorways for Elissa (2019) Acrylic on canvas 2 canvases: 1,000mm × 1,500mm each Mary Wallace Vase from the Silver Princess series (2019) Carved porcelain 310mm × 220mm diameter

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Tony Windberg Island state 1 (2019-2020) Earth pigments, ash, iron oxide, copper, pencil, oil paint 520mm × 2,040mm × 35mm Tony Windberg Island state 2 (2019-2020) Earth pigments, ash, iron oxide, pencil, conte crayon, oil paint 520mm × 2,040mm × 35mm

Michael Wise The final ascension of Hugh Mann (West Beach) (2019) Canson rag print & aluminium sculpture, video 900mm × 1,350mm Michael Wise The final ascension of Hugh Mann (Redgate Beach) (2019) Canson rag print & aluminium sculpture, video 900mm × 1,350mm Maddisson Witmitz Sweet cactaceae (2019) Digital drawing print 210mm × 297mm Christopher Young Eight #81 (2019) Lightjet print in an edition of 5 1,000mm × 800mm Christopher Young Eight #82 (2019) Lightjet print in an edition of 5 800mm × 640mm Christopher Young Untitled (2020) Found chair, digitallyprinted magazines 1,000mm × 1,000mm × 800mm

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Bunbury Regional Art Gallery Team Dr Joanne Baitz Director BRAG

Government Partner Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries

Sam Beard Marketing Officer

South Western Times Art 2020 Sponsors and Supporters City of Bunbury South Western Times/The Bunbury Herald Geographe Wine Industry Association Otherside Brewing Co. Hotel Lord Forrest Bunbury Quality Hotel Lighthouse Labelmakers Group Pty Ltd

Dean Buck Assistant Gallery Officer Anna Edmundson Administration and Operations Coordinator Donna Fortescue Gallery Officer Simon Long Exhibitions Officer Caroline Lunel Collections Curator/Registrar Karen Morgan Noongar Arts Officer Amber Norrish Education Officer Sam Beard, Sheree Dohnt, Daniel Kus, Stephanie Lloyd-Smith, Suellen Turner Gallery Attendants Bunbury Regional Art Gallery is owned and managed by the City of Bunbury

Sponsors of the Winemakers of Geographe Art Prize Aylesbury Estate Barton Jones Wines Ferguson Hart Estate Fifth Estate Wines Green Door Wines Oakway Estate Saint Aidan Wines Vineyard 28 Willow Bridge Estate Windfall Wines Emerging Art Award Sponsor Jacksons Drawing Supplies

CREDITS First published in 2020 by Bunbury Regional Art Gallery 64 Wittenoom Street Bunbury WA 6230 Australia www.brag.org.au This publication is copyright and all rights are reserved. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced or communicated to the public by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be directed to the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia. Title: South Western Times Art 2020 ISBN: 978-0-9953569-5-5 Other Authors: Joanne Baitz Editor: Anna Edmundson Designer: Christopher Young Photographer: All images courtesy of the artists unless otherwise noted. Please note that indicative images of artists’ works have been included in this publication in instances where the work for the exhibition was not final at the time of printing.

© Bunbury Regional Art Gallery 2020 Published in conjunction with the exhibition South Western Times Art 2020, an exhibition curated by Lee Kinsella and held at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, 64 Wittenoom Street, Bunbury, 14 February – 27 April 2020.

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This publication contains the names and images of Indigenous people who may have passed away.

Cover Shayne Hadley Meditations upon a plastic skull (20162019) (detail) Oil on panel 1,220mm × 2,415mm

AN TLE FR EM A U S T T WES