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HAZELHURST ART ON PAPER AWARD 2021 22 January – 27 March 2022
Margaret Ackland | Belinda Allen | Suzanne Archer | Sharna Barker | Emma Beer | Lee Bethel | Yikartu Bumba | Peter Burke | Cardwell + McLachlan Michelle Cawthorn | Tanya Chaitow | Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen | Jacky Cheng Louisa Chircop | Matthew Clarke | Renato Colangelo | David Corbet Danielle Creenaune | Simon Cuthbert | Emily Dabron | Ellen Dahl | Mahani Del Borrello | Liz Donley | Jacqui Driver | Christine Druitt-Preston | David Eastwood | Tatjana Este | Rachel Farag | Robert Fielding | Todd Fuller Silvi Glattauer | Karen Golland | Gilbert Grace | Yvette Hamilton | Geoff Harvey | Kendal Heyes | Nick Heynsbergh | Naomi Hobson | Anna Hoyle Amber-rose Hulme | Phil James | Freya Jobbins | Roslyn Kean | Nicole Kelly Martin King | Jennifer Leahy | Jenna Lee | Rosemary Lee | Belem Lett Michael Lindeman | Kevin McKay | Jennifer Mills | Stephanie Monteith Fiona Mosby | Sarah Mufford | Xanthe Muston | Kathie Najar | Eunice Napapangka Jack | Mitjili Napurrula | Eva Nolan | Catherine O’Donnell Yuria Okamura | Becc Ország | Kenzee Patterson | Beth Peters | Steven John Pettenon | Jasmine Poole | Brian Robinson | Annika Romeyn | Britt Salt | Nick Santoro | Douglas Schofield | Kurt Schranzer | Peter Sharp Liz Shreeve | William Smeets | Paul Snell | Kurt Sorensen | Laura Stark Anne Starling | Karen Stephens | Desmond Taylor | Sherna Teperson Kerry Toomey | Teo Treloar | Zev Tropp | Kate Vassallo | Paul White | Cleo Wilkinson | Belinda Yee | Christopher Zanko | Zuza Zochowski | Tianli Zu
Hazelhurst Arts Centre acknowledges the Dharawal people as the Traditional Custodians of the land within the Sutherland Shire. We value and celebrate Dharawal culture & language, and acknowledge Dharawal people’s continuing connection to the land, the sea and community. We pay respect to the Elders and their families, past, present and emerging, and through them, to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
AWARDS $15,000 Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award $5,000 Young & Early Career Artist Award $5,000 Local Artist Award
sponsored by the Friends of Hazelhurst
Four Week Artist Residency Award awarded by the Hazelhurst Preparator team
$1,000 People’s Choice Award
Local Artist Award sponsor
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INTRODUCTION The works in the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2021 demonstrate the materiality of paper, its versatility and the possibilities of paper as a medium. Held every two years since 2001, the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award is a significant national exhibition that aims to promote excellence and innovation in the field of art on paper, while supporting artists working with this medium. This year marks its eleventh exhibition. Originally planned for 2021, the exhibition was rescheduled to early 2022 due to the extended Covid-19 lockdown in New South Wales. This year entries were received by over 700 artists from across the country. The final selection of 93 works includes painting, drawing, collage, photography, printmaking, papercuts, sculpture and video. Strong themes that emerged among the works include a focus on the environment and the devastation of the 2019/2020 bushfires, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the entries are highly detailed and meditative, showing the artist’s hand at work. Thank you to Artist Paul Williams and Independent Curator Sarah Rose, who along with myself and Assistant Curator Naomi Stewart formed the selection panel and went through an enjoyable yet challenging and lengthy process to select for the 93 finalists. Thank you to Glenn Barkley, Artist and Curator, and Maryanne Coutts, Head of Drawing at the National Art School, for undertaking the difficult task of selecting the award recipients. Congratulations to all of this year’s award winners and finalists. Hazelhurst would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Friends of Hazelhurst who sponsor the Local Artist Award. In addition, thank you to the Sutherland Shire Council for their ongoing support of Hazelhurst Arts Centre. Carrie Kibbler Curator
AWARD WINNERS Martin King strangerlands II 2021 Winner: Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2021 Rachel Farag Trick of the Light [Skinned Jesus] 2021 Winner: Young & Early Career Artist Award Stephanie Monteith Night Drawing 2021 Winner: Local Artist Award Kurt Sorensen All things must have an end #1 2020 Winner: Four Week Artist Residency Award David Eastwood Prop 2021 Highly Commended Emily Dabron The Pangolin 2021 Winner: People’s Choice Award
2021 AWARD JUDGES Glenn Barkley, Artist and Curator Maryanne Coutts, Head of Drawing, National Art School /7
MARGARET ACKLAND
I’ve always loved the small controlled world of still life and it’s a theme I’ve returned to often throughout my career, especially when I feel uncertain. During the lockdown of 2021 I constructed a small set that I could move around and used small everyday objects that would reflect and distort the limited world of my apartment. The more I painted the more was revealed. Long sustained looking was rewarded with all sorts of unexpected, sometimes inverted images. It seemed an apt response to these strange times.
Stripes, Glass, Metal, Self 2021 watercolour on paper 90 x 80 cm Artist is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
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BELINDA ALLEN
Black Heart 1 is part of the larger series, Bushfire suite, inspired by the horrific bushfires of 2019/20 on the NSW South Coast. A catastrophic bushfire season in Australia became a metaphor for global political and environmental problems. ‘Black heart’ refers to darkness inherent in our ideas of Australian land and belonging, darkness at the heart of our political system and its dependence on fossil fuels, and the compellingly beautiful blackness of charcoal in vistas of our devastated landscapes.
These images show beauty in devastation while reminding us of human complicity in damage and destruction of the landscape. The awesome symmetry of arching forest branches is reminiscent of architecture of Gothic cathedrals, while the mandala format evokes the mandalas of eastern spiritual practice, inviting an immersive and meditative experience of place.
Bushfire suite: Black Heart 1 (v1-3) 2020 pigment prints on cotton rag paper, edition 2/10 60 x 42 cm each (paper)
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SUZANNE ARCHER In 2019 I made my first paper sculpture since art school many years ago. I enjoyed the process and decided that I would eventually make some more. The works in his exhibition are the first new works using the random process of building the figures from torn paper sourced from my box of rejected works on paper. The two figures have faces on either side of their heads suggesting their dual personalities.
me over a number of years with the last set made of paper. Eventually I decided I wanted to expand my process and starting with a mask/head the first pieces grew and grew to incorporate a simplified body.
Two Double-Faced Characters from the Mistaken Identity Series were constructed and painted over several days. The forms were not pre-conceived, so they grew organically and as the paper was In the past I have made work that already painted the additional has engaged with the way we see paint was applied as part of the ourselves and the way others see construction process. I enjoyed us, particularly when we don’t the spontaneous approach & the realise, we are being observed. surprising flexibility and strength The way we have a private self and of the paper. The text included on a very different public persona! the works reflects my continued This led me to make many preoccupation with automatic sculptural ‘masks’ which engaged writing.
Two Double-Faced Characters from the Mistaken Identity Series 2021 various scrap papers with acrylic and oil paint, a paper mat, two metal frames 83 x 69 x 39 cm Artist is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne
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SHARNA BARKER
Sharna Barker is a visual artist predominately based in painting and sculpture. Her practice is centred on an interest in the body/self, led by concepts of embodiment such as empathy, relationality, and reflexivity. Fold, Hang, Wrap (3 parts) is part of an ongoing series entitled Potentials. Through the work, Sharna explores ways of visualising actions, movements, and sensations, encouraging hints of weight and tension in the work, and moments of calm and curiosity. Fold, Hang, Wrap (3 parts) takes the materiality of paper as a grounding and malleable structure, subtly
manipulating soft and organic shapes to find markers for bodily awareness. Covered in paint, and contoured through the body, these paper forms are rolled, hung, wrapped, and folded; some finding hints of latex, calico, and thread. In her experiments with paper, Sharna attempts to negotiate the relationship of the artist’s and spectator’s body by a shifting relation to material and form.
Fold, Hang, Wrap (3 parts) 2021 paper, acrylic paint, latex, thread, calico, wire, plaster 185 X 100 X 38 cm
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EMMA BEER
The primary focus and creative rationale of my work is to explore what abstract painting can be. My work operates in the productive tension between two distinct histories of Modernist abstraction: hard-edged geometric abstraction, and expressionist gestural painting. These works were made from the kitchen table during the current pandemic, while our communities were in lockdown. When making paintings I strive to capture a balance between elegance and poise within the fluid, sometimes rough, and honest handlings of paint.
getting to know thy self from the kitchen table, or not 2020 gouache on paper 42 x 32 cm each (approx)
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LEE BETHEL
During lockdown I wasn’t looking for a new subject, the subjects flew to me. From a window in my studio I watched birds in the birdbath. The circular composition replicates the bird bath and the cut out silhouettes with reflected colour reminds me of the filtered light while I quietly observed the birds.
Hope is the thing with feathers 2021 watercolour on hand cut paper 160 x 115 cm Artist is represented by Egg & Dart, Thirroul
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YIKARTU BUMBA
When Martu paint, it’s like a map. Martu draw story on the ground and on the canvas, and all the circle and line there are the hunting areas and different waters and tracks where people used to walk, and [some you] can’t cross, like boundaries.
Untitled 2020 acrylic on paper 51 x 66 cm Artist is represented by Martumili Artists, Newman WA
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PETER BURKE
My recent work involves collecting handwritten notes that have been left behind in public places such as car parks, supermarket aisles and sidewalks. In their original locations they are seemingly banal, but when they are detached from their original contexts, they make compelling artefacts. Through drawing these objects, I explore how they can offer humorous and poetic insights into the human condition. Rendering these inconsequential objects as works of art is a way of noticing the unnoticed, and revealing social narratives. The drawing in this exhibition is a replica of a small,
old handwritten note I found in a studio doorway in Melbourne, enlarged onto a monumental scale. The message has a unique form and presentation. The handwriting, faded paper and adhesive tape are visually intriguing. It is difficult to tell if the note has been scrawled in haste or penned carefully, but somehow the ordinary message reveals a broader relationship to time, space, and people.
Please Turn Off Lights When Leaving For The Day 2020 mixed media on paper 226 x 150 cm
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MICHELLE CAWTHORN
A Tiger in the Rain forms part of a larger body of work that explores autobiographical memories of a childhood home and garden that no longer exists. The large-scale work takes its title from the 1979 smooth jazz album ‘Tiger in the Rain’ by Michael Franks that my parents often played when we lived there. Many of the songs reference lush tropical gardens, budding flowers, and ripe fruits, conveying a languid sensuousness that celebrates the pursuit of pleasure, while the cover features the 1891 painting Tiger in a Tropical Storm by Henri Rousseau.
Using repetitive mark-making to aid in the retrieval of long-term memories, I have attempted to convey a sense of the garden as I remember it. From the tussle of overgrown bushes by the back fence, to the buds growing out from flowering trees, and the hairlike filaments on the underside of grass, the shapes combine in a visual metaphor for my pubescent self. Stamen yellows and petal pink arcs loop through the scene, and at the centre, the brown and tan stripes of my 70s t-shirt, nestled in the tangle my suburban idyll.
A Tiger in the Rain 2019 archival pen, watercolour, white gouache, acrylic wash and Indian ink on Hahnemühle paper 158 x 216 cm Artist is represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney
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TANYA CHAITOW
In these two drawings I search for the mysterious shadow of my past which is deeply rooted in my South African heritage. Growing up in a post-colonial apartheid society, the deep roots of the African landscape and animals hold me captive to a world of shamanistic storytelling where animals and humans interact with the spirit world. These anthropomorphic plants and creatures cast their shadows within my subconscious and draw me into their netherworld. As the upside-down Boab tree – which legend has it, keeps walking with its roots in the air – so do I keep searching for the other half of my shadow and the deep pull of my roots. The darkness of the shadow cannot exist without the light
nor light exist without casting its shadow in the shape of the object that blocks the light. It is this return to my roots and the dichotomy of the human dilemma that I explore in my drawing, where reality and imagination are infused in an interplay of narratives. These two drawings are about discovering the other half of my shadow. Through the process of drawing, the medium of the charcoal and its malleability, I explore its relationship between light and shadow and the possibilities that lie beyond the shadow of the mark.
Frame of mind (1 and 2) 2019 charcoal, gouache, collage, conte on paper 160 x 240 cm Artist is represented by Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney
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CINDY YUEN-ZHE CHEN
Sonic Ink Vibrations: Tidal Cluster was created by vibrating ink on water using resonant frequencies of sound feedback compositions recorded at tidal pools in Middle Harbour, Sydney. The sounds of birds, waves and insects were simultaneously recorded and reflected off the curved hollows of sandstone at low tide. This process generated extreme high and low frequency sound feedback that was used to activate ‘suminagashi’ or floating ink. This experimental technique combines traditional Japanese ink marbling with acoustic technologies to integrate my drawing, listening and sound practices.
Sonic Ink Vibrations: Tidal Cluster 2021 Chinese and Japanese ink on Wenzhou paper 23.5 cm dia (large work), 19 cm dia (small work) Artist is represented by Anthea Polson Art, Queensland
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JACKY CHENG
In 2019, I came across an article about a Shanghai-based company that has been ordered to stop clearing land at Yakka Munga cattle station in the Kimberley. Because of “unauthorised clearing” under the Environmental Protection Act. Upon reading the news, I felt the burden on my shoulder - relatively everything that has to do with the purchasing power parity of China and my identity as a Chinese descendent living and working on Yawuru Country. This brought intense examination of my role in the community I now call home. The Best Kept Secret is a response to speak of land and Country’s’ precarity and preciousness amidst our ongoing awareness on climate change. As a visitor, I came for the poetry. Then, I stay because of the stories.
Tyvek is used as a conservation tool in museums to protect works and is used in this piece to simulate longevity. Each layer is hand-cut and emits emotional relationship with the Traditional Owners of this Country. My practice is fundamentally about identity and awareness through cultural activities and memories of home; country and relationships. My significant concern and deep interests are about correlating and weaving narratives from my native experiences whilst mapping the esoteric and social relationships of my origins and my new found home, environment, and social surroundings. It amplified my awareness towards my Chinese heritage and continue to question my notion of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ - ‘here and there’ and the ‘in between’.
The Best Kept Secret 2020 Tyvek paper, recycled acrylic case, Kasuri paper thread 19 x 35 x 26 cm
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LOUISA CHIRCOP
This work aims to resurrect the female image from the grave of Western Art and is a reconstruction from the stream of subconscious detritus from my mind as a conscious awakening about the human condition.
Rokeby Venus let down your hair 2019 mixed media and photomontage on Arches 76 x 56 cm (paper size)
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MATTHEW CLARKE
This drawing is titled Wallaby Town Drawing. It is in my naïve and primitive style. It is how I perceive wallabies and their interactions with their environment which can be urban or rural.
Wallaby Town Drawing 2019 fineliner on paper 70 x 100 cm Artist is represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth
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RENATO COLANGELO
Hyphae 1 was produced from film altered by an organic process. The content on the film was no longer recognizable; the once intelligible memories were transcoded by the biological process of mycelium propagation.
Hyphae 1 2021 silver gelatin print – fibre based on Ilford Art 300 73 x 103 cm Artist is represented by Eden and the Willow, Sydney
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DAVID CORBET
This work was produced over the long winter lockdown of 2021 – a small watercolour each day (on average) for 84 days. Cumulatively the project provides a subjective record of the ever-changing skies and seas over the Port Hacking estuary and the surrounding Royal National Park. Watercolour is a contemplative and intuitive medium, in which we must relinquish control, and learn to embrace the wayward flow of pigment, happy accidents (and sometimes, downright failures). All of this and more is visible in these tiny A6-sized sheets, and together, hopefully, they tell a story of a unique time in our lives, watching the skies for signs and wonders.
84 Nocturnes, Port Hacking 2021 watercolour on 300g cotton blend cold-pressed paper 100 x 173 cm
(detail)
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DANIELLE CREENAUNE
Epic is a response to the full circle from when I first arrived in the snow-covered Catalan Pyrenees in 2000 to where I am now 20 years later living by the escarpment in Australia. These places have had a profound impact on my practice and life over this period living abroad. Each marks the skyline in a dramatic way, both offering the promise of something new and unknown while also a constancy and refuge. This work challenges traditional approaches to lithography, drawing and landscape within my practice. Some plates were molded over rock platforms, creating 3D forms and textured surfaces atypical to lithography.
Responding to this intervention, I drew onto the plate using these incidental textures, creating a physical landscape on the surface on the matrix. Some sections of the image use Mokulito (lithography on wood) combining natural wood grain textures with painterly qualities of lithography. Other elements use textures present on the underside of the lithography limestone, and sections using plate lithography reveal mountainous landscapes through the rhythm of line and contour in a graphic way that is new to my drawing practice.
Epic 2021 lithograph, Mokulito (wood lithograph), andrelief print, edition 1/3 107 x 177 cm Artist is represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne
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SIMON CUTHBERT
This work is from the series Where’s Alice? Victoria Station London. The site of IRA bombing campaign in 1973 and 1991. This image is key to the series in which disorientation and the ordinary conceals a complex and sometimes violent past.
Down the rabbit hole 2019 inkjet print of photograph, edition 2/6 100 x 125 cm Artist is represented by Despard Gallery, Hobart
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EMILY DABRON
Pangolins are the world’s most trafficked mammal. When threatened, the Pangolin will roll into a ball to protect itself or its young from predators. Unfortunately, this makes them incredibly easy for poachers to catch. The plight of the Pangolin was brought to the attention of the world, in David Attenborough’s documentary, which follows Maria Diekmann, founder of the Rare and Endangered Species Trust. Maria formed a special relationship with Honey Bun the Pangolin after her rescue and rehabilitation as an infant. Previously, not much was known about Pangolins however their close and trusting relationship meant Maria was able to observe and study Honey Bun in her natural environment, collecting and updating data about the species. Pangolins are native to Africa and
The Pangolin 2021 ballpoint pen on paper 83 x 105 cm
Asia, however their numbers are in significant decline and the species is threatened due to poaching for their scales and meat, used for traditional Asian medicine and foods. Many people have not heard of Pangolins, or know their story. I believe my art practice can raise awareness about these vulnerable creatures and the terrible threat they are facing. The pure simplicity of black pen on paper allows me to capture extraordinary detail and demonstrate the raw beauty of these animals, showcasing them as they are in their most defenceless state. Considering the ‘circle’ as a nod to Karma; how you treat others will decide how the universe ultimately treats you, or what comes around goes around.
WINNER PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD
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ELLEN DAHL
In September 2019 I travelled to the Norwegian Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard, wanting to explore the dark aesthetics/poetics of this exposed barren landscape just south of the North Pole. There was a heightened awareness of time, working to capture these images right at the cusp of winter, knowing that the landscape would soon be blanketed in snow. While this site is renowned for its pristine nature and projection of deep time, the stain of human activity is concurrently intuited across the receding glacial topography. One can sense the human/non-human edge here.
Upon my return, I invited writer/ poet Hannah Jenkins to write poetic responses to my work from Svalbard. One of these responses, VALLEY was presented across a series of seven photographic works, matching the numbers of stanzas in Jenkins’ poem. Field Notes from the Edge #18 is one of these works.
Field Notes from the Edge #18 2019–2021 Eco solvent pigment print on cotton rag, edition 2/5 + 2 AP 67 x 74 x 4 cm
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MAHANI DEL BORELLO
Play Area is the preliminary work from a tentatively titled series I hear my mother calling. It was initially conceived to embody contrasting generational childhood experiences. However, the process of montaging images—taken in various cities I have called home—inadvertently evoked latent feelings regarding past choices and the traditional genderrole of mother.
Play Area 2021 archival pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, edition 2/6 + 1 AP 59.4 x 84 cm (paper size)
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LIZ DONLEY
The Australian fig tree roots delve deep into the soil and spread wide, interconnecting, overlapping, and melding together. The buttressed trunks are folded into dark textured shadows, the dense canopy full of succulent fruit. Trees - providers of the breath of life itself, generously share. Ecologists have proven beyond doubt that trees communicate with each other. In forests, mature trees “mother” or “parent” the forest in a mutual, caring and reciprocate mode for the ecosystem to flourish. The big photosynthetic crowns of the elder trees transmit energy into the ground that feeds the network.
Below ground are the caregivers of the forest; the funghi, mycelium fibres many kms long, cycling carbon and nitrogen, filtering water, building and improving soil structure. The seedlings, the younger generation, regenerate within the network of the old trees, their root systems link into the older network where the young trees draw subsidies and benefit. The human social system is a similar network. Care by a parent or older giver, nurtured, network, and communicate to flourish. Break down the network, break up a system, withdraw the support, it makes it difficult to flourish.
Connection 2021 Sakura pen and ink on Arches watercolour paper 60 x 80 cm
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JACQUI DRIVER
“Suffering from a chronic illness, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, the repetition of pain eats away at your psyche and becomes an internalised wound, something that is permanently present maybe even traumatic. I contemplate this wound through the entanglement of my non-normative mothering experiences, which have stemmed from my anxiety and disability. Allowing the thicket to express the complexity of mothering responsibility. Yet within the presence of this thicket there are little stars, they create hope and encourage contemplation, leading to the emergence of Intangible.”
Intangible 2021 lithograph, edition 2/3 114 x 168 cm
Jacqui Driver uses her personal experiences of Rheumatoid Arthritis, anxiety, and mothering to weave a narrative throughout her work. Intangible is a monumental lithograph printed in nine sections from drawings made directly on lithographic stone. Driver’s work uses its powerful presence to question the cultural silence and impact of living with unseen disabilities.
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CHRISTINE DRUITT-PRESTON
Questioning and exploring the notion of feminine imagery this work focusses on the contents and patterns of the evolving tableaux in which I live. Here my shadow is passing through, as though floating on a lace curtain. My work acknowledges the lineage of women artists whose domestic space was also their studio.
Merging the boundaries between the mediums of drawing, printmaking and needlework by exploring the interplay of opposites; interior and exterior, light and dark, positive and negative, I hope to provide a new lens through which to experience the familiar.
Drawing lies at the heart of my practice. Making marks with a fine tip pen, manipulating a lino cutting blade, sewing a line by hand or machine, in my mind I am always drawing.
Home alone 2021 lino block print on Wenzhou paper, AP 57 x 182 x 4 cm Artist is represented by Artsite Contemporary, Sydney
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DAVID EASTWOOD
Prop is a charcoal drawing based on a 3-D scan of the artist’s right arm, transforming the human form into an uncanny prosthesis. The work references the fragmented bodily artefacts traditionally found in artists’ studios, such as anatomical casts moulded from classical sculptures.
Prop 2021 charcoal on paper 56 × 76 cm Artist is represented by Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
HIGHLY COMMENDED
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TATJANA ESTE
The Tension Of The Soul was developed during Melbourne’s prolonged lockdowns of 20202021. The work further extends my interest in exploring hidden complexities of human nature and psychological states, affected by external, societal influences.
crisis. The work also considers notions of human perseverance and acknowledgement of suffering, in order to find meaning, strength and overcome adversity.
“The tension of the soul in unhappiness, which cultivates its strength; its horror at the Collective trauma and fear, sight of the great destruction; induced by the state of the its inventiveness and bravery in pandemic still continue to envelop bearing, enduring, interpreting, our lives, further contributing to exploiting unhappiness, and feelings of grief and despair. whatever in the way of depth, mystery, mask, spirit, cleverness, Embodying these intense greatness the heart has been emotions, The Tension Of The granted - has it not been granted Soul’s contorted, anthropomorphic them through suffering, through forms serve as a metaphor for the discipline of great suffering?” collective distress and anguish, - Nietzsche reflecting on the current, global
The Tension Of The Soul 2020-2021 drawings: pencil on 640gsm paper installation: paper, stainless steel 105 x 75 cm each (works on paper) 220 x 440 x 15 cm (installation)
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RACHEL FARAG
This is a tongue in cheek response to my sense of displacement as an Afro/Egyptian immigrant growing up Christian in South Sydney. The motifs are dual personal and societal metaphors that culturally critique the Eurocentric ideologies that left me feeling disillusioned as I grew up “different”. The mimicry of Egyptian Fayum portraiture style brings to our attention how recognisable Mary and Jesus are to us despite these depictions being inaccurate representations of facial features and skin colour.
Trick of the Light [Skinned Jesus] 2021 pencil, gouache, gold oil pastel and gold pen on paper 130 x 80 cm
WINNER YOUNG & EARLY CAREER ARTIST AWARD
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ROBERT FIELDING
Our people, our spirit, our languages, are all expressions of Tjukurpa, the ever-present energy that animates all aspects of existence. It is in the sacredness of earth (manta), that we can nourish Tjukurpa: caring for country, caring for culture, caring for the deep roots that hold us.
the essence of our landscape. Reclaiming techniques used by “explorers” viewing country and my people through their lenses, I am letting the elements speak for themselves. I have worked with the sun to expose the image, I have worked with water to fix it, with air to guide the paint. This is more than a landscape photo. Tjukurpa and manta are with us This is the landscape speaking in every step we take: from the through me. This is our country, earth we come and to the earth our culture. We have a duty to we return. My work is a reminder look after it, for it holds our past, of that sacred interconnectedness. present and future. Nganampa Tjukurpa, Nganampa Manta. In this work, I have worked with the fundamental elements of photography to encapsulate
Nganampa Tjukurpa Nganampa Manta (Our stories, our land) 2021 digital print of UV exposure with alterations, unique state 80 x 120 cm Artist is represented by Mimili Maku Arts, Mimili and Blackartprojects, Melbourne
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TODD FULLER
These silhouettes mark a strange moment in history, a year of extremes. This piece forms part of a series of vignettes – from airing out the apartment to dancing in the kitchen after moving in with a loved one. The work was animated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as society stayed home in the interests of community safety. view the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=EjcyBZ3ylZA
Parkside Crescent 2020 digital video: charcoal animation on paper, edition 2/8 1:02 min Artist is represented by .M Contemporary, Sydney
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SILVI GLATTAUER
While most people baked sourdough during our Melbourne lockdowns we learned to grow mushrooms. Down in our dark cellar we would find new and bigger stunning formed mushrooms each new day. Delicious in every way and magnificent specimens to photograph. The photogravure print process highlights the sculptural qualities of these modelled specimens through the embossed ink-lines and velvet tonality.
Funghi Feast 2021 6 plate photogravure, edition 5/10 + 2 AP 57 x 76 cm
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KAREN GOLLAND
Things I never told you (1996 to 2006) is a pulsing reminder of the artist’s mortality. Created in response to sorting through her deceased partner’s estate, Golland draws on her unsorted personal archives to distil the angst she feels when imagining a loved one sorting through the things she will leave behind. The work cuts and re-orders 4000 rejected photographic prints from the artist’s early adulthood, forever altering this collection by chopping it up and re-ordering its chronology. Now entombed in Perspex, the accidental, intimate, non-descript and cringe-worthy photographs are only visible through their edges’ striation. A decade of moments that keep their secrets.
Golland shot each photo on a Ricoh Shotmaster fully automatic 35mm camera between 1996 and 2006. The almost 4000 photographic prints presented in this work detail her early adulthood through the images she chose to exclude from her photo albums. Meticulously trimmed to fit mass-produced memory boxes, the photos are stacked and sealed in their new album, allowing the viewer to see the edges of each paper print and the image on top of each stack. Installed so that the uppermost edge is at Golland’s eye level, the viewer may need to stand on tippy-toes to see the photographic print on top. It’s the complete boxed set of things she never told you (1996 to 2006).
Things I never told you (1996 to 2006) 2021 4000 photographic prints in Perspex boxes 22.5 x 15 x 14 cm each (3 parts)
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GILBERT GRACE
This drawing emerged from a recent exploration of personal and cultural identity focused on the topology and topography of Sydney. Historical reference material is combined with real-world, active transport tours and white cube exhibitions to create a gesamtkunstwerk. The aim of the project is to viscerally enhance, through multi-sensory input and kinaesthetic movement, the sense of space and place.
Charcoal is created through the pyrolitic action of fire on wood. Fabriano paper was originally produced with fresh hemp feedstock, and recycled hemp rag. The Fabriano workshops raised their own fields of hemp.
Retro-innovation is the action of recuperating lost arts and materials abandoned in the head-long, geopolitical rush to “progress”, “profit” and “growth”. Biochar/ The Great White Bird Trail stretches charcoal and industrial hemp have from Kurnell, site of First Contact, applications for soil regeneration to Sydney Cove, via the Botany and carbon sequestration Bay Trail, Inner West GreenWay, with multitudes of industrial and Sydney Green Ring. Historic applications. Active transport tours sites include Alpha Farm at Kurnell, provide opportunities for convivial Thomas Holt’s Sutherland Estate, social relations, and education and crypts and the Box/The Warren through immersive participation in on the shore of the Cooks River at history, engineering, art, research, Marrickville. Public artworks include technology and science. Michael Kitching’s The Great White Bird at Sydney Airport and Sculpture in Honour of Marconi at Sydney Town Hall. Cadastral Sutherland 2020 charcoal on Fabriano paper (from original archival photograph, photographer unknown) 119 x 179 cm
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YVETTE HAMILTON
Created during the first NSW Covid-19 lockdown and inspired by the first ever photograph of a black hole, the Dark Star series grapples with the unknown. Each image in the series attempts to simulate astronomical imaging in a lowtech domestic setting, using a roll of toilet paper (that most elusive commodity of lockdown life), placed on light sensitive paper in a cameraless process. The series probes at the ontological question of reality within photographic imagery in its aim to simulate an invisible phenomenon and uses the fundamental photographic elements of light and time both in process and in concept.
The Dark Star series ties into central focus of my practice – an attempt to explore the unseen and the unphotographable, at a time when everything is seen and photographed. Sitting at the edge of the photographic medium and exploring the way that it shapes human vision and its relationship to the real, my practice combines early analogue techniques with digital and algorithmic methodologies to explore the everenduring lure of seeking, seeing, and understanding through image, lens and screen.
Dark Star no.3 and no. 4 2021 cameraless photograph from paper negative on Canson Platine fibre rag, edition 1/3 + 1AP 75 x 60 cm each
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GEOFF HARVEY
During the Black Summer of 2019-20 I was horrified to see our country on fire. Like many other city dwelling folk there was nothing I could do to help. I have no knowledge of fire fighting or country and I felt completely helpless as these tragic events unfolded.
I felt absolute grief for country and guilt that I was so unskilled to help. It was a natural disaster of the highest order. My feeling of complete helplessness were channelled into the works. As well as a deep sadness for all the loss.
I can only hope that our society and our leaders have learned from From the news report images I was these tragic events. receiving daily I felt compelled to start painting these fires. Maybe because I had previously been painting a series of landscapes ravaged by fire it was not totally unusual that I should begin these works.
Black Summer 2019-2020 acrylic on paper 180 x 201 cm Artist is represented by Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
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KENDAL HEYES
Oceans can separate, are often seen as boundaries, limits and borders, but they also connect, islands to islands, continents to continents, peoples to peoples. This drawing is part of an ongoing series of works united by the theme of the ocean. It began in response to Australia’s treatment of refugees, with its particular policies concerning those who try to reach Australia by sea, and its use of islands as prisons.
The technique is pokerwork, the image burned into the paper. The pokerwork machine I use is made for burning wood, but using it on paper opens many new possibilities, particularly to work on a larger scale. The image begins as a photograph, made into a halftone image, then transcribed onto paper, so in a sense this work is a kind of slow photography.
Some of this series depicts people’s relations with the ocean, on refugee boats, swimming and drifting, and some, like this one, are studies of the ocean itself, as an endless, amorphous and constantly changing surface and mass.
Ocean 6 2020 pokerwork on Saunders Waterford paper 76 x 56 cm each (28 pieces), 304 x 392 cm total Artist is represented by Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
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NICK HEYNSBERGH
This body of work focusses on experiences that have contributed to my understanding and acceptance of my queer identity. Each work is a personal meditation on a particular experience, the associated memories and the site that it occurred. By examining these locations from my past, I contemplate how the psyche of my surroundings have infused significant memories, and equally how my experiences have left intangible traces at each site. The title of each work reflects on the memory with honesty and humour, encouraging viewers to engage with the lived experiences and perspectives of members of the LGBTIQA+ community. I hope
One I’d rather forget 2021 watercolour and charcoal on paper 41 x 27 cm
these works will also resonate with queer viewers who have had similar experiences, helping new community bonds to form and strengthening existing ones. Additionally, though each work is individually significant, collectively the suburban images allude to a dimly lit maze. Through this I refer to the real barriers facing minorities, as well as imaginary ones embedded in our psyche. By framing my personal history within an imagined labyrinth, I aim to subvert the social, structural and political mazes that are imposed on the queer community by those in power.
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NAOMI HOBSON
There’s a custom that we do every year on the ‘first of January’ that captures the essence of renewal and reiterates our bond and our relationship with a special kin.
The God Brother 2021 pigment print on 310gsm smooth cotton rag art paper 60 x 80 cm Artist is represented by Arthouse Gallery, Sydney, ReDot Fine Art Gallery, Singapore, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
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ANNA HOYLE
Skuntz Lycra is a gouache and acrylic painting that is inspired by my longstanding interest in words and things drawn from selfhelp, advertising, social trends, and consumer culture. I love reinventing these things!
skuntz lycra 2020 gouache and acrylic on paper 60 x 180 x 5 cm
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AMBER-ROSE HULME
Graffiti is ephemeral, an energetic cacophony of visual noise. If left alone it peels or fades, creating an unintended collaboration of many as hidden layers break through. My works freeze a moment of this constant metamorphosis, celebrating the intermingling layers and textures of different voices.
Cadence 2020 pastel 55 x 101 cm Artist is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne and .M Contemporary, Sydney
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PHIL JAMES
There is love in this rebellious act. Love in the consideration of the original composition and the execution. Theres a scene in Fight Club where Jack pulverises Angel Face. The crowd is horrified, when questioned as to why he went so far he replies, detached, “I wanted to destroy something beautiful.”
Landscape Composition 1 2020 oil on vintage offset lithograph 86 x 104 cm Artist is represented by Chalk Horse, Sydney and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne
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FREYA JOBBINS
This self-portrait collage (triptych) is sewn with stitches of golden thread, referencing traditional Japanese Kintsugi “golden joinery”. A philosophy treating breakage and repair as part of the history of the object, rather than something to disguise. A metaphor for me, where breakage and repair of the physical self is acknowledged but the underlying mental trauma is avoided.
Thread Series #1 2019 collage 120 x 220 cm
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ROSLYN KEAN
My work is woodblock printing created by using the traditional techniques of ancient Japanese printing traditions. Aristotle created a triangle of rhetoric, a way to discuss Pathos, Ethos and Logos. The work reflects on the dynamics of Aristotle’s triangle and how to deal with the current Covid crisis.
Defining the Edge 2021 multi block woodcut, unique state 48 x 144 x 3 cm (image size)
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NICOLE KELLY
Window is a reflection on the way in which our lives have been compressed into interior spaces. The work considers the experience of a deeper connection with that which we are surrounded by and simultaneously contemplates the fractured space between our interior and exterior worlds. The structure of the four panel monotype echoes the framing device of the depicted window and serves to subtly disturb the image. On one hand, the image intends to be unified whole, each monotype butted up against the other with no gaps. On the other hand the work is slight misaligned, there are holes and fissures between the pages and marks
that do not align. The four-panel format intends to set up the main thrust of the work to subtly disrupt a fixed position. Each of the four monotypes was created singularly but also allows the subject, colour and mark making to bleed across the prints. The image falls apart, is incomplete and open ended. This technique is used to represent rupture between the internal and external realities, that which is within us, and that which is without.
Window 2021 oil monotype 112 x 152 cm Artist is represented by Arthouse Gallery, Sydney and This is No Fantasy, Melbourne
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MARTIN KING
This large graphite drawing includes references to past representations of landscape, popular culture, ancient manuscripts and the graphic arts including, William Strutt’s Black Thursday, 1851; Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal; an Iranian illuminated 15C manuscript; and Goya’s Los Caprichos.
strangerlands II 2021 graphite, watercolour, gouache, gold foil on drafting film and paper 148 x 226 cm Artist is represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne and King Street Gallery on William, Sydney
WINNER HAZELHURST ART ON PAPER AWARD
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JENNIFER LEAHY
Having grown up in a house with a coveted collection of family relics from the homeland, the familiar notations on the backs of prints shared stories across the continents. Years ago, as a child, the reception of an envelope decorated with foreign stamps and inscribed with delectable handwriting was always a trigger of excitement. The family had sent word! These words were often double sided pages of whisper thin paper wrapped around photographs of our kin that we eagerly pored over for hours. Every photograph had its own message on the back.
boxes and frames. Like channelling details from those that have passed, these messages from the dead – notes on what to remember. Scrawled dates and names, places and instances. The scripts weave through time and memory – what is left and what is lost. These handwritten notations highlight processes fading before our eyes: the printed photographic memento and the art of penmanship. These treasured creations and links with our past are slowly and softly losing focus over time.
These tangible notes and treasured stories are discolouring through generations of albums,
Forgotten Promise 2021 archival print on German etching paper 30 x 50 cm
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JENNA LEE
This work seeks to reclaim the act of recording, translating and listing of words published in ‘Aboriginal Language’ dictionaries. Through the ritualised acts of understanding, deconstruction and reconstruction, the dictionary is translated into a new selfdetermined language of cultural importance.
Dis/bound and Re/bound 2021 pages of ‘Aboriginal words and place names’, bookbinding thread, varnish 53 x 90 x 15 cm Artist is represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne
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ROSEMARY LEE
21-4 (Ashfield Mall) is a study of form and light.
21-4 (Ashfield Mall) 2021 coloured pencil on paper 95 x 71 cm
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BELEM LETT
Sunflower explores colour and light as one and the same. This work uses the flower’s unfolding petals and growth as a visual metaphor for the unfolding colour spectrum made visible through the refraction of the sun’s white light.
Sunflower 2021 oil and gesso on Stonehenge paper 228 x 228 cm (12 panels) Artist is represented by Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane, Galerie pompom, Sydney, and James Makin Gallery, Melbourne
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MICHAEL LINDEMAN
Art Classifieds is a suite of recent drawings using archival pen on watercolour paper that contain a wry institutional critique. The classifieds are comical yet critical works, forming a series that announces the passing of various art movements, and other absurd considerations of the art world. I aim to invert structures of power with wit and satire. Shining a light on the mechanics of the contemporary art world is often my area of examination. I am compelled to make conceptual art that both entertains myself and calls for an engagement with the viewer.
The Art Classifieds drawings set out to activate repressed impulses, embody alienation and disrupt convention with a certain selfdeprecating humour. In direct contrast to the notion of artist as genius, the hand-crafted text drawings exemplify a wilful idiocy that goes out on a limb, fulfilling an urge to place myself in a vulnerable position.
Art Classifieds 2019 archival pen on watercolour paper 31 x 175 cm Artist is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney
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KEVIN MCKAY
This work is painted on a heavy piece of paper that my late studio partner had prepared and abandoned before completion. Troy Quinliven was straight out of high school when I met him at art school. He was a talented and passionate artist and, despite a physical disability that at times required him to strap a brush to his dysfunctional painting hand, was an Archibald finalist in 2014. We were sharing a studio in Sutherland when he passed away suddenly in 2017 at just 33 years of age. We spent happy
years as students at the National Art School, and I chose to paint the view from my parking spot while I was teaching there for a term before the 2021 lockdown. The texture and trace history of the repurposed paper seemed to correlate with the patina of time that permeates this historical site. A cast shadow crosses the wall like a sun dial reminding us all of the inevitable progress of time. In a way we are all perpetuating and altering what others have done before us.
Building 25 National Art School 2021 oil on paper 87 x 118 cm
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CARDWELL + MCLACHLAN (SIMON CARDWELL AND STUART MCLACHLAN)
In 1793, Captain Henry Waterhouse bought the first Merino sheep to the shores of Australia. These animals created a prosperous economy supplying 40% of the worlds’ wool. However, hoofed animals and other introduced fauna transformed huge swathes of our landscape forever. So where do we go from here?
The Driven Land 2021 photograph (sheep in photo handmade from paper) 150 x 115 x 6 cm
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JENNIFER MILLS
I heart you is a drawing, a watercolour, of a found photograph. A young couple, one perched on the lap of the other, sit awkwardly on hay bales in front of a painted comic backdrop. Their heads have been cut from the image leaving a heart-shaped void.
I heart you 2020 watercolour on paper 34 x 24 cm Artist is represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney
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STEPHANIE MONTEITH
I am interested in studying light. This series of night drawings are made in response to observing shadows cast from illuminated everyday household objects. Working from the shadow of an object accentuates the visual enigma of the drawn subject.
Night Drawing 2021 graphite on paper 81 x 111 cm Artist is represented by Australian Galleries, Sydney
WINNER FRIENDS OF HAZELHURST LOCAL ARTIST AWARD
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FIONA MOSBY
Kamu is known as a mangrove seedpod in my language (Kala Kawaw Ya). Kamu brings childhood memories of playing, laughter, sand between my toes and fingers when building sandcastles and listening to the sea and the wind gently flowing.
Kamu 2021 ink on paper 76 x 56 cm Artist is represented by Moa Arts, Queensland
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SARAH MUFFORD
My art practice focuses on dissolving geometry by incorporating labour intensive repetition with chance-based processes using the grid and semicircle as an organizing principle. Nasir ol Molk belongs to a series of four large scale works referencing the unique kaleidoscopic light effects reflected onto the tiled interior of the Qajar Pink Mosque in Shiraz, Iran. It continues my interest in representations of pattern, decoration and the illusory capabilities of the picture plane. Pattern and matrices are superimposed and embedded so that no one element dominates - a prime formal strategy of the Islamic Design tradition.
Nasir ol Molk 2020-2021 India ink, pigmented ink, watercolour, graphite and polymer gesso on Saunders cotton rag 138 x 153 cm
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XANTHE MUSTON
Narratives play a central role in our ability to make sense of the world. However, some lived experiences resist narrativity. Influenced by Raymond Carver’s short story ‘Why Don’t You Dance?’, my drawing seeks to describe, rather paradoxically, an ineffable experience of surreal human connection. Combining the literal and abstract, I use my mark making to express the tension found in articulating in-between moments of intangible meaning that one couldn’t (and most probably can’t) explain.
I Couldn’t (Can’t) Explain It 2021 gouache, ink and watercolour on paper 78 x 100 cm
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KATHIE NAJAR
Within this 12 fold Islamic geometric pattern (or clock face) sit arabesque forms representing the characters of various family members. Missing, broken or faulty relationships dictated the asymmetrical composition.
...and then there were three 2021 pencil, watercolour and metallic pen 64 x 48 cm
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EUNICE NAPAPANGKA JACK
In this painting Eunice Napanangka Jack depicts her father’s Tjukurrpa (Dreaming). It shows the country at Kuruyultu, near Tjukurrla in Western Australia.
at Kuruyultu, near the rockhole there. I can’t remember my grandfather or my grandmother. I was still a little baby. We left that place, Kuruyultu. My father, my mother, my big sister and Eunice says about the artwork: my father’s brother, we all left ‘This is my country. I can’t together and went to Haasts Bluff. remember how it all happened, I grew up in Haasts Bluff. I have because it happened before I was been back to Kuruyultu for visits born. I have a scar on my back but I never lived there again in from it. My grandfather speared my country. I think about it every a wallaby at Kuruyultu. That night day. Only my father knows all the he ate that wallaby. At the same stories for that country and he time my mother could feel me painted them too… all the men’s moving inside her. She was heavily stories. I know the story of the pregnant with me. That next wallaby mother and daughter morning, after my grandfather had which left me with a birthmark. speared the wallaby, killed it and That’s what I paint: the wallaby eaten it, I was born. I was born mother and daughter.’
Kuruyultu 2020 ink on paper 49 × 98 cm (image size) 78 x 106 cm (paper size) Artist is represented by Ikuntji Artists, Haasts Bluff NT
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MITJILI NAPURRULA
Mitjili paints her father’s Tjukurrpa, the ceremonial spear straightening in Uwalkari country (Gibson Desert region). The Watiya Tjuta (Acacia Trees) are the trees that are used to make these spears. Uwalkari country is abundant with Watiya Tjuta, as well as sand hills and other plants. Mitjili paints the motif of the Watiya Tjuta, carrying on the recurring motif as her mother used to draw in the sand. Her mother passed on this Dreaming to her.
to the straightening of kulata by Tjupurrula are among the landmark paintings of the Ikuntji Artists movement’s 30-year history. The paintings of Napurrula and her husband, Long Tom Tjapanangka, have come to be understood as archetypical of Ikuntji art since they began to work with the arts centre in 1993. Napurrula remembers, ‘… After I got married, my mother taught me my father’s Tjukurrpa in the sand, that’s what I’m painting on the canvas’. The white pigment Napurrula’s father, Tupa Tjakamarra eddies around abstract forms that gave her the right to paint works refer to the spearwood trees. The related to Ilyingaungau in the tightly structured patterning of Gibson Desert. This site, south of the key motifs and bold use of Walungurru (Kintore), some 520 colour demonstrates the artist’s kilometres west of Mparntwe confidence in her individual artistic (Alice Springs), is where the vision within a family of superlative artist’s Mutikatjirri ancestors artists – and the cultural heritage assembled their kulata (spears) that continues to inform the myriad for a conflict with the Tjukula expressions of Western Desert men. Allusive works that refer artists. Uwulkari - Watiya Tjuta 2020 ink on paper 38 x 80 cm (image size) 60 × 100 cm (paper size) Artist is represented by Ikuntji Artists, Haasts Bluff NT
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EVA NOLAN
Eva Nolan’s drawings have developed in response to the ecological devastation of the Australian 2019/2020 summer bushfires, where an estimated five billion animals were killed and eleven million hectares of habitat destroyed. Her drawings feature speculative ecosystems that entwine threated Australian native flora and fauna. Created with the aid of a magnifying lens, Nolan references empirical practices that have been used to classify, objectify and commodify the natural world. She repurposes extractive methodologies and attempts to realign biological drawing with an ethics of care and compassion towards our lively earth companions.
Mahogany Glider and Blue Banded Bee, White’s Seahorse and Kowari, Mountain Pygmy Possum and Golden Sun Moth 2020 graphite pencil on paper, acrylic frame 20 x 60 cm Artist is represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney
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CATHERINE O’DONNELL
My practice explores the architecture, culture and history of the suburbs, representing the commonly overlooked dwellings of suburbia - the home, in an abstracted form. I have a keen interest in minimalist structures of architecture, the pictorial power of illusion, scale and perspective and the pursuit of a shared narrative is at the heart of my artistic practice.
imagination of the viewer and invite them to look beyond the mundane and banal. To revisit these spaces imaginatively and find the aesthetic poetry embedded within in the suburban landscape, while at the same time to connect through personal experiences and memories to ‘home’.
Through my drawing practice I examine the urban aesthetics that shape and inform our lives every day and then distil and re-present commonplace structures such as a front door through my expanded drawing practice. I employ realism as a catalyst to ignite the
While you were out 2019 charcoal on paper and tape on wall 197 x 220 cm Artist is represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney
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YURIA OKAMURA
Yuria Okamura’s drawing practice brings together and reinterprets diverse metaphysical imaginings from across cultures and histories through the utopian language of geometry and diagrammatic aesthetics. Okamura maps and reconfigures geometric forms that reference patterns in nature, esoteric symbolism, alchemical diagrams, religious architecture and decoration, and spiritualist abstract painting. Highlighting similarities between patterns found in nature and in various religious arts within her interrelated compositions, she examines the symbolic potential of geometry and how it might be harnessed to explore spiritual interpretations of the natural world.
Offerings (for Prithvi) 2021 acrylic and pen on paper 131 x 107 cm
Often accompanied by wall drawings to create immersive installations, Okamura’s drawings visualise contemplative spaces by using architecture and gardens as visual metaphors. Positing the garden as a site of harmony between nature and culture, Okamura draws up garden-like spaces combining geometric and botanical imageries. Through this combination, she interweaves visual references to various religious traditions and animistic worldviews, and enshrines nature within imagined architecture. In this way, her work envisions an open-ended contemplative space where nature and culture, and the physical and metaphysical worlds come together, and invites holistic interpretations of the world around us.
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BECC ORSZÁG
In Forsaken Monument (addicted to sorrow) an unknown idol floats disfigured in a liminal archway; a nod to sacral architecture. This drawing is from an ongoing series of forsaken monuments, a homage to anonymous fallen idols. This work explores the practice of idolatry as well as relationships between manmade monuments and concepts of the holy, sacred and divine. My practice is primarily an investigation into sacred space and religious experience, grounded in the psychological phenomenon of paramnesia (déjà vu); the distortion of memory / the
confusion of fantasy with reality. I explore its intersection with the dichotomy of utopic and dystopic ideals and how they present in political, religious and social belief systems. Drawing upon the stories and generational trauma from my family’s past involvement with a cult and my own experience of navigating life with chronic illness, I lean into the universally experienced emotion ‘Sehnsucht’ (German noun.) which describes an individual’s unfulfilled longing for an idealistic, unattainable alternate experience, such as the longing for a heaven or utopic land.
Forsaken Monument (addicted to sorrow) 2020 graphite pencil and 24kt gold leaf on paper in bespoke frame 45 x 35 cm
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KENZEE PATTERSON I have recently been creating sculptures and works on paper united by their reworking of materials previously considered ‘spent’, and the notion of a physical, emotional, and material exhaustion is key to these artworks. This ternary conception of depletion provides a timely reflection on the limitations of resource extraction providing the raw materials for an art practice, as well as expressing the physical and emotional drain I have experienced. The Latin root of the word exhaustion, a verb which means “to draw up” contributes to the conceptual and physical framework of Floor You It. The idea of drawing up is pursued in this arrangement of paintings created using ultrasonic diffuser units I have built in an elaborate and generative mark-making process involving the transferral of ink suspended in water on to
the surface of paper. Continuing my use of surplus materials, I have hand-made the paper using pulped offcuts of conservation matt board reclaimed from the State Library of Queensland, the Museum of Brisbane and other Queensland collecting institutions. My choice of these materials, typically used to reinforce stasis; supposedly neutral and archivally safe, contests claims of neutrality and safety within collecting institutions that have been responsible for upholding dominant histories. The paintings rest on a reclaimed railway sleeper, the lightness of its load contrasting with the heaviness of its historical origin and purpose. Furthermore, the combination of this object and its referent, ‘sleeper’, combined with these paintings created through exhaustion, alludes to a narrative of tiredness.
Floor You It 2021 diffused ink on paper hand-made by the artist using pulp generated from scrap conservation matt board sourced from various collecting institutions in Queensland, reclaimed timber railway sleeper 13 x 24 x 23 cm Artist is represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney
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BETH PETERS
Through repetitive markmaking, Peters explores the tension between absence and presence, producing works that speak of connections and the space between. Peters’s imagery references traditional feminine crafts, reworking existing warp and weft textile patterns to form new patterns as a tool to navigate notions of duality. The scale and intricacy of her work undoubtedly expresses a methodical, immersive approach to her practice, a free flowing automated state that results in complex graphite drawings on paper.
Rest 2019 graphite on paper 230 x 114 cm
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STEVEN JOHN PETTENON
This work is about parenthood, the impressions that we leave on our children, and those impressed on us by our own parents. The surfacing of qualities or habits passed onto us that we weren’t formerly aware of are a chance for reflection, whether we use water or paper as our mirror. In my recent body of work, paper and water are recurring motifs. They are surfaces that hold impressions in very different ways: paper suspends marks more permanently whereas water holds them for no more than a moment. I think we carry impressions of our parents, some fleeting, others ever-present.
Donna, 17, John, 19 2021 gouache and ballpoint-pen on Fabriano Tiepolo paper 89.5 x 89.5 cm
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JASMINE POOLE
Two identical photographs featuring a Chinese meal sit side by side. In the second photo the food is hidden through the process of gilding. In a previous project entitled Middle Kingdoms I had explored the significance of the Chinese restaurant and food within Australian culture, speaking of my own family history and that of many others, looking at how it enabled a journey of belonging. The food chosen in the photographs are long established and recognisable examples of Australian Chinese cuisine and point to the history of Chinese food and immigration in Australia, meals often being adapted to suit a western palette. The tableware used is left over mementos from my family’s old restaurant.
When Covid-19 hit, individuals of Asian descent became the target of abuse, harassment and violence. Many people started to avoid Asian restaurants in Australia. The very thing that I had perceived as a sign of unity and a sharing of culture had suddenly become a symbol of ignorance. In erasing the food in the second image of the diptych I seek to question how quickly and easily the vast contributions of the Chinese community can be forgotten and how close to the surface racism actually exists. Relationships and ties between cultures that have taken years to establish could be erased overnight.
Take away 2021 pigment print on etching rag, gold leaf 40 x 60 cm Artist is represented by Curatorial + Co, Sydney
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BRIAN ROBINSON
What Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples see in the sky is much grander than the planets, stars, and other celestial bodies. They see and experience how the world operates and manoeuvres through the seasons. Like an ancient cartographic map, the sky holds valuable information about food sources, travel paths and livelihood, mixed with imagination.
According to many ancestral narratives, Aboriginal and Torres Strait people are placed in the sky becoming stars upon their passing. In this way, the spirit world did not exist on a separate plain and were not beyond human understanding and were part of everyday life.
Under the watchful eyes of the old men – those who have been given the knowledge to be able to interpret and read the information the cosmos holds – the stars slowly rotate across the night sky. Through story, song and dance, this survival knowledge is transferred between generations.
Constructing the Constellations 2021 vinyl cut printed in black ink on paper 150 x 75.5 cm Artist is represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth
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ANNIKA ROMEYN
Scaled in relation to my body and large enough to ‘step into’, my work aims to capture a sense of place and to convey the immersive experience of walking in nature. This work was made in response to an October 2019 residency at Corin Dam in Namadgi National Park on Ngunnawal Country. The soft purple under-layer is the faded residue of a nine-panel watercolour monotype print, which depicted the intricate spring undergrowth that I encountered on the steep trail up Mt Gingera via Stockyard Spur. I was at work on this previous print, Undergrowth (Stockyard Spur), when the devastating megafires of summer 2019-2020 took hold. I looked on in despair as the Orroral Valley fire burnt out of control, impacting 80% of Namadgi National Park. When the trail re-
opened in winter 2020 I revisited the site to see undergrowth gone and burnt trees buried in winter snow. In Double Vision (Stockyard Spur), extensive pencil drawing is layered over the ‘ghost print’ of my initial watercolour monotype. A ‘ghost print’ is the significantly faded impression taken from the residual watercolour left on the printing plate after a primary print has been made. ‘Ghost prints’ have the quality of an echo or memory, which seemed an appropriate starting point in summing up my experiences of Stockyard Spur. Here, I have used carbon and wax pencils to inscribe the forms of charred eucalypts in winter snow, and to mark the significant environmental changes witnessed over the course of a year.
Double Vision (Stockyard Spur) 2020 pencil and watercolour monotype on paper 168 x 228 cm Artist is represented by Finders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
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BRITT SALT
A murmuration is a phenomenon where starlings fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky. It is a collective behaviour where entities blur together as they move en masse. In this work, line, form and space intertwine to create a murmuration of geometry.
The Murmuration 2021 hand drawn ink on paper 40 x 53 x 5 cm
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NICK SANTORO
I am not a Hobbit is a drawing I made this year when I was obsessed with space travel and UFC. Other characters in this picture are from music and fashion. Some of the text is from John Perry Barlow’s A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
I am not a Hobbit 2021 pen and ink on paper 55.9 x 76.2 cm Artist is represented by Egg & Dart, Thirroul
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DOUGLAS SCHOFIELD
A Day in the Garden gives snippets of the broad and ongoing narrative of a gardening practice. This triptych reveals some of the tensions associated with these sites of curated Nature, alluding to the complicated relationships humans have with these spaces of intervention in landscape.
A Day in the Garden 2021 watercolour monotype on BFK Rives paper 76 x 191 cm
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KURT SCHRANZER
This drawing synthesises late Edo period ‘warrior-pictures’ with their nautical fighting scenes and associated supernatural events with adverse winds (nanpū), vanquished spirits (onryō), and strange phenomenon of the sea (ayakashi). It addresses themes of emasculation and self-identity.
The Terrible Storm: Upturned Boats with Yoshikazu’s Waves and Ayakashi Rising from the Sea 2020 pigment ink on cotton rag paper 114 x 72 cm
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PETER SHARP
This is a collection of drawings made on location at various places in New South Wales of the flora and flotsam and jetsam that makes up the tidal zone on east coast beaches.
Beach Debris 2020-2021 charcoal on 11 sheets of paper 200 x 150 cm Artist is represented by Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne
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LIZ SHREEVE
This work is part of a series inspired by the walls and roofs of the warehouses, and the amazingly blue sky seen through the windows of my studio. They can be breathtakingly beautiful.
Warehouse 1 2021 watercolour on cut and folded paper 55 x 75 cm
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WILLIAM SMEETS
These paintings are of the same tree that sits in the DjaDja Wurrung area. I travel to the scene, find the trees and then start composing using quick drawings and photography. They are then built up using watercolour and pencil with a focus on grounding the trees like they were pillars in earth.
Two Sides 2021 pencil and watercolour on paper dimensions
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PAUL SNELL
The primary intention of this non-objective work is to create a simple visual experience utilizing the basic elements of line, color, surface, and light. The reductive nature of the work examines and brings into question the image as a self-referential object.
Lumina # 202101 2021 Chromogenic print face mounted to 4.5mm matte cast acrylic 170 x 8.5 x 10 cm Artist is represented by Gallery 9, Sydney and Studio Gallery, Melbourne
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KURT SORENSEN
My work currently echoes a colonial history that invokes the precarious and uneasy relationship of colonial Europeans with the antipodean environment. This work refers to the mysterious disappearance of Mr A R Smith near what is known as Burying Ground Creek, NSW in 1875.
All things must have an end #1 2020 C-Type colour photograph 125 x 200 cm
WINNER FOUR WEEK ARTIST RESIDENCY AWARD
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LAURA STARK
Millstream in the Chichester National Park, WA, was still burning when I walked through it in 2019. When in 2020 the fires started in NSW, I produced a series of collagraphs, using Millstream as a reference, attempting to give the sense of colour and immediacy needed to express the events happening around me. The series extended in 2021 to include 3 dimensional panels, or upended “Pages” to give a feeling of movement through the labyrinth nature of the forest.
Pages II, Millstream Burning Series 2021 collagraph on paper, unique state 26 x 90 x 45 cm
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ANNE STARLING
My art practice explores human interaction with the urban environment. Nuclear Family is a limited edition diptych consisting of two panels that join together in a corner. The panels are carved in lino and integrate a range of print mediums layered with a collaged background consisting of a blended woodblock print and a relief intaglio plate. The use of collage facilitates a combination of the unnatural with the natural urban landscape. The family unit stands proudly in the front of their home. The image of the ‘Great Australian Dream’ exudes safety and familiarity but all is not perfect.
Nuclear Family explores the notion of the print as a social document and is a visual narrative of society living under the threat of industrial over load, the dual meaning of ‘nuclear’ allows a disquieting image to masquerade as family intimacy. My prints similarly create narratives of specific socio/environmental events due to industrial activity from our recent past and follow a long history where the print was used to disseminate information and provide strong political messages.
Nuclear Family 2021 linocut, woodblock, intaglio relief collage, edition 3/7 62 x 157 cm
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KAREN STEPHENS
Over the Jump Up is a painting of a memory of traversing a local landscape. Rendered as a type of irregular collage, the image rejects the compositional rules of landscapes from the Western Canon. I often catch myself reading the outback landscape at great speed with little pockets of information as my gaze darts here and there. The outback landscape is not manicured, it is haphazard and read in parts as a type of concentrated looking that activates all the senses.
unseen processes of being a remote artist running at an undiscovered, invisible parallel structure to my metropolitan counterparts.
Working in isolation, the handmade paint surfaces are manufactured from ephemera or objects of waste from high-speed consumption like newspaper, lotto tickets, horse racing stubs and receipts. These intimate surfaces which are part object and part image contain layers of sliced random text. The end result of these ritualistic performances is a Paper as a medium is critical to my mash up of absurd phrases and practice – there are no art material language ranging from nonsensical, supply stores out here and with the humorous, affirming to a prophetic onset of the digital there is a real social commentary channelling the threat of its extinction. I have been anti-capitalist, anti-art movement refining my surfaces since 2015 and that progressed the European art plan to expose the undersides for movement Dadaism in the early the first time in 2022 to reveal the 20th century.
Over the Jump Up 2020 acrylic paint on reconstructed paper 25 x 21 cm Artist is represented by GALA Gallery, Rockhampton
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DESMOND TAYLOR
Niminjarra is the two brothers transforming into a snake so they can come back home to Ngayartakujarra (Lake Dora). They were in training for ceremony, those two brothers, but they were kept too long and nobody was there to release them. They waited then they decided to transform into snakes to travel back to where they came from, because their mother was waiting for them. This is Jukurrpa (Dreaming story).
Niminjarra 2020 acrylic on paper 66 x 51 cm Artist is represented by Martumili Artists, Newman WA
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SHERNA TEPERSON
During the period of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, I built 295 individual truncated octahedrons from flat sheets of watercolour paper. Each of these geometric forms has 14 faces —8 hexagons and 6 squares — and 36 edges. The process involves meticulous precision, as the shapes need to interlock perfectly when later joined together. Whilst working on this project, I realized that I was creating individual ‘timecapsules’, and that during the process of making each one, I had captured my breath, my solitude and the passage of time within its geometry. Air (breathing spell)
became an embodiment of this extraordinary period, when the world paused, and allowed me to contemplate whether there was an underlying simplicity between all things— beginning again with atom, molecule, clouds, universe….
Air (breathing spell) 2020/21 air, 300gsm watercolour paper, PVA, Spakfilla, screen board, acrylic, varnish, pine 147 x 63 x 89 cm
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KERRY TOOMEY
baawaa (sisters) have been made using the same mould to show a shared experience despite outward differences. These differences have been inspired by exploring my local environment – its colours, scents and textures – to demonstrate the way I continue to connect to Country as a Gamilaraay woman.
baawaa (sisters) 2021 mixed media, including tissues and the cardboard box, watercolour, feathers, echidna quills, lace, hessian 28 x 15 x 15cm each (12 pieces)
(detail)
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TEO TRELOAR
I have focused on developing my intensive drawing practice for the past fifteen years. In my work, I aim to examine the possibilities of minute gestures and traces, imbuing each mark with intentionality and meaning. In this context, my drawings are primarily about the act of markmaking itself. A body of work is often iterative and will have a broad range of influences, from the master engravings of Albrecht Dürer, the post-punk music of Joy Division, to the literature of Albert Camus. The
Mind Tenement 2020-2021 graphite pencil on paper 110 x 133 cm
role of speculation and narrative is also important, and I will often expand a single idea or image through various permutations. This expansion often relates to a psychological progression and how thoughts and ideas can be turned over in the mind.
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ZEV TROPP
In my work I explore aspects of identity, environment and how it engages with contemporary art making . I am interested in how our internal/external world both physical and immaterial intersect with contemporary painting practice and performance art, the way diverse elements such as my Indian heritage and yoga practice engage with my lived experience as a second-generation Australian immigrant.
To articulate this visually, I use diverse means, interjecting found imagery with instinctual gestures, and concurrently writing poetry and theoretical text - often as a diary or poetic verse that follows different trains of thought. The work does not privilege one way of making over another and I like to work fluidly; as my practice of mindfulness, physical yoga, painting and drawing can all shape-shift and manifest within each other. This comes from a As a painter my research practice belief that one practice does not incorporates a study of Eastern have a hierarchy over another, philosophy and Tantric painting where the spiritual and ephemeral tradition combined with a practical have a sense of primacy but also a methodology of working intuitively physical realization. and spontaneously often using symbols or spiritual analogies to create a dialogue within my works.
I have read MARX, LEMON, and know all the words to Beyonce’s LEMONADE 2021 chalk pastel on archival paper 152.5 x 181 cm
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KATE VASSALLO
The 32 coloured pencil drawings that make up Field of arrows pointing at nothing each started with a random scatter of three or four points. Over the course of one year, following a strict set of instructions, these points were filled in with thousands of fine, straight, ruled lines.
Field of arrows pointing at nothing 2021 coloured pencil on paper 174 x 251.6 cm
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PAUL WHITE
This drawing depicts a discarded United Airlines passenger plane that is in the process of being stripped for parts. I captured this image in photographic form 10 years ago whilst exploring the Californian desert and amongst other things the numerous plane graveyards that exist due to the dry conditions and hard desert floor that are ideal for storing these machines. For some time I have been interested in wrecking yards in relation to and as signifiers of the passing of time, the abandoned and obsolete. I am interested in the idea of the frozen moment and how these objects have seemingly been paused in time after a life of movement across the globe.
This image of a dormant and broken plane became even more pertinent in the current moment with Covid and in the idea that we are literally grounded. It was interesting to revisit and explore this image through my laborious drawing practice in relation to this. We are restricted in our movements and unable to travel at times more than 10km from home (as in Melbourne lockdown 2020 and currently Sydney lockdown 2021) let alone internationally. This concept is one previously encountered in the countless end of the world/apocalyptic/ pandemic Hollywood movies, yet a reality we now find ourselves in.
Grounded 2021 pencil on paper in custom painted frame 100 x 140 cm Artist is represented by Scott Livesy Galleries, Melbourne
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CLEO WILKINSON
Nursing an image out of its black womb into light has a primordial spiritual magic. I try to emphasize the singularity silence and loneliness of a form .What is missing in the shadows and is suggested provides the greatest potential .The Mezzotint Print technique remains unchanged.
Then IV 2020 mezzotint print 30 x 25 cm
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BELINDA YEE
My work focuses on the relationship between drawing and time. I think of drawing as a way of marking time, where every line marks out a moment. It is only in interactions consists of graphite lines over a dense matte field of charcoal, each line is a simple response to the one preceding it. I am interested in charcoal and graphite because they are forms (allotropes) of carbon with distinctly different temporalities. In nature, charcoal is produced within hours, while graphite takes millennia to metamorphose.
It is only in interactions 2021 graphite and charcoal on card 50 x 70 cm
To make this work, I used my breath as a metronome, to tie my body’s movement, the act of drawing, and the moment together. As part of my research for this series of drawings, I have been thinking and reading about the physics of time. From this research, I am drawn to physicist Carlo Rovelli’s description of the world as “a continuous coming to light and disappearance of ephemeral entities … of vibrations.”
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CHRISTOPHER ZANKO
This work uses an embossing technique known as Karazuri, or empty printing. The subtly of this technique creates a ghost like appearance of the house.
Nowra awning 2021 Karazuri print on Hahnemühle 104.5 x 52 cm Artist is represented by Egg & Dart, Thirroul and Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane
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ZUZA ZOCHOWSKI
In reference to my Polish heritage, the assemblage is reminiscent of Wyczinanki, a traditional Polish folk method in creating colourful cut-outs to decorate house interiors using the surrounding environment as a subject.
Suburban Memoirs 2020 watercolour on cotton rag installation, dimensions variable
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TIANLI ZU
This installation consists a skull surrounded by fairy-like gigantic and colourful fruits. At present, the environmental crisis is threatening our everyday lives. Food has been challenged by politics, economy, technology and moral believes. The work is a survival call to action for our children.
Vanitas 2021 hand-cut Chinese mulberry paper painted with watercolour and gouache 300 x 300 cm
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Hazelhurst Arts Centre acknowledges the Dharawal people as the Traditional Custodians of the land within the Sutherland Shire. We value and celebrate Dharawal culture & language, and acknowledge Dharawal people’s continuing connection to the land, the sea and community. We pay respect to the Elders and their families, past, present and emerging, and through them, to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
PROJECT TEAM Curator: Carrie Kibbler Assistant Curator: Naomi Stewart Judges: Glenn Barkley, Artist and Curator; Maryanne Coutts, Head of Drawing, National Art School Finalist selection panel: Carrie Kibbler, Paul Williams, Sarah Rose, Naomi Stewart Exhibition installation crew: Gilbert Grace, Jenny Tubby, Brendan Van Hek, Paul Williams HAZELHURST STAFF Director: Belinda Hanrahan Curator: Carrie Kibbler Assistant Curator: Naomi Stewart Public Programs & Education Coordinator: Natalie O’Connor Public Programs & Education Officer: Samantha Relihan Marketing Coordinators: Viola Soliman, Stephanie Hopper Arts Centre Coordinator: Fiona McFadyen Team Leader Visitor Services & Administration: Caryn Schwartz Venue Duty Officer: Vilma Hodgson Administration Coordinator: Cameron Ward Visitor Services Assistants: Hannah McClaren, Marilyn Brown, Joseph Wey
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2021 22 January - 27 March 2022 © 2022 Hazelhurst Arts Centre 782 Kingsway Gymea NSW 2227 Australia T: 61 2 8536 5700 E:hazelhurst@ssc.nsw.gov.au www.hazelhurst.com.au ISBN: 978-1-921437-83-0 Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia Image credits: All images courtesy of the artists page 4-5: Sarah Mufford Nasir ol Molk 2020- 2021 (detail) page 28-29: Renato Colangelo Hyphae 1 2021 (detail) page 47: Photo by Darren Pietersen page 50-51: Christine Druitt-Preston Home alone 2021 (detail) page 72-73: Anna Hoyle skuntz lycra 2020 (detail) page 95-95: Jenna Lee Dis/bound and Re/bound 2021 (detail) page 116-117: Kathie Najar ...and then there were three 2021 (detail) page 138-139: Yuria Okamura Offerings (for Prithvi) 2021 (detail) page 160-161: Annika Romeyn Double Vision (Stockyard Spur) 2020 (detail) page 182-183: Nick Santoro I am not a Hobbit 2021 (detail) page 204-205: Kate Vassallo Field of arrows pointing at nothing 2021 (detail) page 212: Brian Robinson Constructing the Constellations 2021 (detail)
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