Objects of Ideation -

Blurring the lines of creative authority 

Kari Lee McInneny-McRae
Tessy King
Samantha O’Farrell
Niamh Minogue
Caelan Blake

25th August - 6th September 2016

Junior Space, 65 Smith Street Collingwood, Melbourne 

Objects of Ideation features five artists working with the ceramics process who blur the domain of creative authority and individuality. McInneny-McRae, King, O’Farrell, Minogue, Blake are all either RMIT recent graduates or current students. They also share a distinct aesthetic palette. 

The gallery boundary has become a space in which to construct formal, sculptural vignettes about colour, texture, line and plane. Moving around the gallery, it is clear there is no single author, confirmed by the lack of an exhibition list. Whether this was oversight or intentional, the effect is a sense of singular outcome from the hand of many makers.

Rights of Spring 1883 - featuring contemporary artists using clay

Spring 1883

The Hotel Windsor, Melbourne

17-21 August 2016

Delighted at the return to The Hotel Windsor during Melbourne’ Art Week 2016 in spite of the cancellation of the Melbourne Art Fair.

This is one of my favourite site specific events this year. Artists and gallerists made witty and ingenious use of the Hotel Windsor suites with installations in bathroom, bars, cupboard and on beds, on windows and chairs.

See following an indulgent,  ceramic-focussed record of what was presented across all four floors and a few sneaky inclusions of my favourite installations. Apologies for the low light; it was a rainy Melbourne day after all. Also, I could not get an image of Ruth Hutchinson's drinks cabinet installation, there were too many people crowded around.

Janet Beckhouse for Neo Parc MELB always suits the formal Victorian styling of the Hotel Windsor

Nell for Station MELB

Fantastic first viewing of Virginia Leonard for PaulNache, NZ

Brendan Huntly for Tolarano MELB.

A real treat to see a Margaret Dodd with this 2016 Holden. So much bigger that I imagined and only one of these sculptures are made per year.

High Tea with the girl friends at half time.

Juz Kitson for Gag Projects ADELAIDE

ALASKA Projects - Sydney
Daine Singer - Melbourne
Darren Knight Gallery - Sydney
Fort Delta - Melbourne
GAGPROJECTS - Adelaide
Gallery9 - Sydney
General Store - Sydney
Grey Noise - Dubai
Hamish McKay Gallery - Wellington
Hugo Michell Gallery - Adelaide
Jan Murphy Gallery - Brisbane
Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art - Melbourne
KANSAS - New York
Karen Woodbury Gallery - Melbourne
Michael Lett - Auckland
Minerva - Sydney
Murray White Room - Melbourne
Neon Parc - Melbourne
PAULNACHE - Gisborne
Robert Heald Gallery - Wellington
Sarah Cottier Gallery - Sydney
Sarah Scout Presents - Melbourne
Southard Reid - London
STATION - Melbourne
{Suite} - Wellington
Sutton Gallery - Melbourne
Tolarno Galleries - Melbourne

602 

602 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne

17-21 August 2016

 

The void left by the recent collapse of Melbourne Art Fair has prompted action from an alliance of leading art galleries resulting in a new art event in Melbourne in August, titled 602.

Through the great support of the City of Melbourne, the alliance of galleries from both Melbourne and Sydney will be joining forces and exhibiting in a former electricity substation.

Participating galleries include Charles Nodrum Gallery, Gallerysmith, Jacob Hoerner Galleries, Martin Browne Contemporary, .M Contemporary, Michael Reid, Olsen Irwin, Scott Livesey Galleries and Watters Gallery.

Lynda Draper for GallerySmith MELB

Vipoo Srivilasa for Scott Livesey Galleries MELB

Peter Cooley for Martin Browne Contemporary MELB

My Cobalt Blue's - new work by Jia Jia Chen

The Beaded Surface

 

My Cobalt Blue's

Jia Jia Chen

c3 contemporary art space
The Abbotsford Convent
St Heliers St. Abbotsford
17 August 2016

Jia Jia Chen plays with the process of ceramics. Her glaze is dominantly present in blobs, splashes, dollops and beads of nepheline syenite and cobalt oxide melted onto the non-vitrified bed of alumina. The unpredictable and multitudinous result of Chen's process is hundreds of unique glass-like beads. These have been applied to surface of hand pinched vessels and display tables using a loose mosaic technique. The effect is one of intricacy and glossy tactile patterning.

I am reminded of  PixCell-Deer by Kohei Nawa who covered a taxidermied deer with artificial crystal glass. Nawa enveloped surface is so seductively beautiful yet up the glass bead magnify the gentle patter of fur of this beast. The result is a feeling of suffocating and reduction of nature to a synthetic artifice.

Chen's surfaces also have an alluring presence as 'china-blue' engulf surfaces. Is this a benign act of nature or a miscreant colonisation of once recognisable table ware.