APRIL 7th – 24th
FEATURED ARTISTS
PENELOPE OATES, KRISTINE BALLARD, CAROL GILL and ceramicist NICOLA COADY
A transitory, fleeting, temporary, brief, momentary exhibition
OPENING EVENT – Saturday 9th from 2pm
PENELOPE OATES
Nature is in a constant state of flux, natural forms shift, evolve, disperse, decay and renew over variable expanses of time.
The processes in nature are often mirrored in a landscape artists’ process and mine is no different to others with the layering of media onto a material surface. Where my work differs is perhaps with the introduction of a mark-making tool into the process of an otherwise painted surface.
For me the use of a soldering iron to gently burn into an already layered surface of coloured inks, and acrylic paint allows me to reveal the colours that have been applied earlier on. These coloured marks or lines have become my way of revelling in the process of drawing which has always been my first love. For me, whole process of creating an artwork that references the landscape in some form is by its very nature ‘ephemeral’.. marks or lines are often rubbed back with turpentine to create new ones with remnants of old ones still visible, areas of etched lines, however long they may have taken me to etch, are also sprayed over with acrylic aerosol to be re-etched building up layers of tone and depth. This whole artmaking process for me nicely mirrors the artist’s dichotomy of capturing a fleeting moment or feeling in nature and then committing it to permanency onto the painted surface to be viewed and enjoyed for time immemorial.
Hawkesbury NSW.
KRISTINE BALLARD
The inspiration for this collection of artworks was inspired by the unique light and colour I experience throughout my travels in the Australian landscape. This transient radiance is what I want to capture to canvas in paint.
I have been chasing colour and light around the world on a quest to better inform my art practice for many years. It has allowed me to complete art residencies in Venice, the city of light, in New York at the renowned Art Students League, and in Melbourne at Monsalvat – Australia’s oldest art colony.
My passion for colour sparked the development of the painting style I call ‘Fragmatism’. Here images float, fragment and dissolve across the canvas. Beauty is often camouflaged, and there is a motion in the stillness. It is the place where deconstructed shape and reconstructed colour glow from within.
With this new collection, I celebrate the luminance of the New South Wales countryside.
Paying homage to those fellow light chasers, the Australian impressionists. I’d like to echo their sentiments and honour their ambitions to paint the ‘light’.
Here are my colour stories. As a contemporary painter, they are the abstractions and expressions of my artistic adventures in the Australian bushland.
CAROL GILL
Ephemeral= transitory, fleeting, temporary, brief, momentary.
Like most landscape artists my work is inspired by the environment in which I live and traverse. I have a particular passion for the contrast between the Hawkesbury River region and Central Australian landscapes.
I have bush walked most of my life amongst vast changing landscapes. The transitory experience of which, however fleeting, creates lasting memories from which I draw my creative process. The seasonal changing scape of the riverine landscape in which I live, the spontaneous mass blooming of flora, the arrival of migratory birds to the wetlands, the sudden ravage of wildfire, the emergence of regrowth and the shifting and eroding sands of the Central Australia in which I traverse all converge in my studio to begin a more permanent journey in paper and paint.
Vistas become ideas, cameras capture moments that become sketches and transition into finished artworks that are all generated from brief glimpses of and momentary experiences in the landscape.
NICOLA COADY
Ephemeral for me represents transition in the process of achieving my desired form whilst working with clay. Clay is manipulative in its pure state which enables me to create a form which then has to dry – be fired – then glazed and refired.
My creative desire to begin with though, also quite often includes plants that are ephemeral and then capture that moment whilst they are still alive by pressing them into clay, to then be able to manipulate the clay to form platters, jugs, or even teapots that then hold the ephemeral moment!
Also, some of my forms capture the essence of vegetables e.g. fennel and leek which also can have a fleeting moment of existence before possibly being consumed but my interpretation will actually capture the essence of their peek ephemeral form.
Using a porcelain or stoneware body of clay, I either fire my work in an electric, gas or wood fired kiln, again going through a moment of transition to finish off my desired aesthetic.