The Glasshouse Regional Gallery is proud to present Silent Rooms
and Portals to Uncertain Shores by renowned Australian artist Wendy Stavrianos. This exhibition continues the Gallery’s series of exciting
Silent Rooms and Portals to Uncertain Shores
projects featuring Port Macquarie-Hastings Council Art Collection artists. This series of exhibitions provides an avenue to showcase current work of each artist and provide a context for the Collection. In Silent Rooms and Portals to Uncertain Shores Stavrianos continues her personal and poetic investigation into the human condition and memory. Her works are a reaction to current events and explore a connection with the natural environment and the personal. Through the juxtaposition of abstraction and image, Stavrianos explores ‘the intersections of personal and sacred geometries’. Her use of a limited palette creates an emotional tension within the works that heightens meaning and evokes reflection. I would like to sincerely thank Wendy Stavrianos for sharing this
Born in Melbourne 1941, lives and works in rural Victoria. Victorian painter, sculptor and print maker Wendy Stavrianos has held regular solo exhibitions since 1967 in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
Many of the works shown here were first seen in the critically acclaimed
Melancholy flesh Where once joy teemed, Half-open eyes in weary awakening, Can you see, soul all too ripe, What shall I become when fallen on earth? The path of the dead is in the living, It is we who are the river of wraiths, It is they who are the seed bursting in our dreams,
She was awarded a Diploma of Fine Art, Royal Melbourne Institute of
2016 exhibition at Langford 120: ‘Wendy Stavrianos: Silent Rooms
Technology (1961) and an M.A. Fine Art, Monash University (1997).
and Portals to Uncertain Shores’. The Bridge paintings relate to an iron
Stavrianos has an extensive exhibition history and has been widely
railway bridge in outer Melbourne, seared in the artist’s memory through
shown in all States in Australia as well as in various international forums.
childhood trauma. Sections of the bridge are reimagined as decaying
Throughout her career Stavrianos has had more than 50 solo exhibitions
organic structures that hint at the dresses, veils, skins, timbers and
and was a Sulman finalist 2001, 2002, 2007 and 2009.
communication lines of many earlier works. The textured central form in
Examples of Stavrianos works are in major public and regional art galleries
Bridge 2, for instance, recalls both the regenerative sands of her 1985 Mungo Woman (Night Series) and the charred remains of trees seen in
Theirs is the distance that remains for us,
her magnificent Mantles paintings of 1991–92.
And theirs is the shadow that gives weight to names.
The framing and composition of the images reflect the artist’s enduring
Guiseppe Ungaretti1
fascination with the paintings of Giotto, wherein moments and meeting
Structured Space, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 92x92cm
places of the human and divine are depicted in everyday surroundings,
magnificent body of work. It has been a pleasure to work with Wendy
as if on a stage. Stavrianos, somewhat similarly, transforms the bridge
to develop this exhibition and accompanying catalogue. I would like to thank Laura Murray Cree for her insightful essay that provides a context
Biography
fragment as a portal leading to and from shadowy domestic spaces of
The work of Wendy Stavrianos has always reflected the continuity and
lived experience where objects, wires, webs, fluttering cloth and natural
connectedness of earth and self. Not only, for her, identification with the
elements represent a symbolic narrative of the psyche. Depicted in the
body of earth, the forms and folds of landscape, but also with nature’s
muted tones of a restricted palette, barriers between the known and
Niomi Sands
seasons and cycles, patterns and processes – birth and death, love and
unknown seem to empty out through insubstantial nets, or join in a unity
loss, light and dark. Stavrianos is drawn to tamed and wild nature, its
of light.
Glasshouse Regional Gallery
inherent violence and vulnerability; to literature, music and mystery; and
for Wendy’s work, and the staff at Nicholas Thompson Gallery and Langford 120 Gallery for their generous support with this exhibition. Curator
and private collections overseas and throughout Australia, including:
Portal 3, mixed media on paper, 56x76cm
Introduction
NGA; NGV; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Vic; Art Gallery WA; Darwin Art Gallery; Macquarie University NSW; La Trobe University, Melbourne; Queensland University of Technology; Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Qld; Regional galleries at Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Ararat, Geelong, Glasshouse Regional Gallery, Port Macquarie; Logan, Qld; Maitland, NSW; Swan Hill, Vic; Artbank, Ballieu Myer; BHP, Crown Casino, NAB.
Wendy Stavrianos calls the works in this exhibition her ‘old woman
not least, to the treacherous fault-lines hidden within our human nature.
paintings’. They gather strength through understatement and erasure.
Her recent work reveals a preoccupation with space and time, and what
What remains is the primacy of nature, recaptured in rooms that reach
she calls ‘the intersections of personal and sacred geometries’.
out from the recesses of the creative imagination to the wilderness
The drama of the artist’s oeuvre is played out at sites of physical and
beyond the verandah’s edge; to landscapes at the perimeters of
psychological significance in her life. Melbourne and country Victoria
experience; to what is secret, sacred, held in shadows. The meaning of
form the bookends to these sites, which also encompass Darwin’s
a single life held within porous filaments of light, the notes and silences
tropical forests, Lake Mungo’s ancient seabed, the rocks and waters of
of universal song.
Tanja in southern New South Wales and time spent in Europe. Within
Laura Murray Cree
each environment Stavrianos has found an existential mirroring of her
1 From ‘Pity’, the fragment of a poem of importance for the artist, in Carlo L. Golino (ed.), Contemporary Italian Poetry: An Anthology, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1962, p. 125.
own creative passion, conflict, violation and healing; and, through decades of artistic endeavour, she has gathered a powerful personal geometry and iconography to fathom the ‘intersections’ of her inner and outer worlds.
Suspended in Time and Memory, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 147x177cm Emerging into Focus, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 147x177cm
Fragments of a Room, acrylic on canvas, 2016,147x177cm Lost Room 2, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 61x71cm
List of works Bridge 2 [Relic], acrylic on canvas, 2016, 180x195cm Emerging into Focus, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 147x177cm Fragments of a Room, acrylic on canvas, 2016,147x177cm Lost Room 1, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 61x71cm Lost Room 2, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 61x71cm Lost Room 3, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 61x71cm Portal 3, mixed media on paper, 56x76cm Portal 13, acrylic on paper, 2016, 56x76cm Portal to Uncertain Shores 1, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 180x195cm Portal to Uncertain Shores 2, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 180x195cm Structured Space, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 92x92cm Suspended in Time and Memory, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 147x177cm Threads of Night and Light, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 122x122cm Veiled Remnants, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 92x92cm
Silent Rooms and Portals to Uncertain Shores: Wendy Stavrianos A Glasshouse exhibition Glasshouse Regional Gallery 20 May - 25 June 2017 Niomi Sands: Gallery Curator | Bridget Purtill & Anne-Marie McWhirter: Gallery Assistants Marie Taylor: Graphic Design | Olive Communications: Catalogue Printing
All works courtesy of the artist and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Victoria.
This publication is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of research, study or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without permission Enquiries should be made to Glasshouse Regional Gallery. The Glasshouse Regional Gallery would like to especially thank Wendy Stavrianos, the staff at Nicholas Thompson Gallery and Langford 120 Gallery and Laura Murray Cree for their generous support with this exhibition. Special thanks to the Glasshouse Technical Team and Volunteers for all their hard work on installing this exhibition.
Wendy Stavrianos, Laura Murray Cree and Niomi Sands: Text Copyright Wendy Stavrianos: Image & Photography Copyright
The Glasshouse is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW
© Glasshouse Regional Gallery 2017
Printed on recycled paper
Cnr Clarence & Hay Streets Port Macquarie
Lost Room 1, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 61x71cm
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Portal to Uncertain Shores I, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 180x195cm (detail)
Veiled Remnants, acrylic on canvas, 2016, 92x92cm
Wendy Stavrianos
Silent Rooms and Portals to Uncertain Shores 20 May - 25 June 2017 GLASSHOUSE PORT MACQUARIE REGIONAL GALLERY