JULY 3 – 27   EXTENDED TO AUGUST 3rd

FEATURED ARTIST – HENRYK TOPOLNICKI with PETER BEEH. JANE CANFIELD. NATASHA DANILOFF. WENDY HAWKES. BILL HOPE. BOYD McMILLAN. ANJUM OLMO and LITHGOW HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

A multimedia exhibition where sculpture, paintings and soundscape create an immersive re-imagining of past, present and future

Soundscape Artist – Barbara Lepani, Sean O’Keeffe and Brad Diedrich

Special events and guest speakers each Saturday between 2pm and 4pm  – 11th  – 18th  – 25th

4th – Opening Event @ 2pm

Please note that due to the current COVID-19 crisis, NSW Government restrictions will apply

ARTISTS

HENRYK TOPOLNICKI – Sculptor

I am a practising artist who develops works completely independently and in response to private, public, gallery and competition commissions.
After completing a sculpture course at East Sydney Technical College I started a designer-maker’s business.
From 2000 this business became a primarily art focused enterprise. Dozens of successful public art commissions followed. At the same time I was pursuing other avenues such as interior design, landscape art and commercial space fit-outs.
My latest venture is the opening of Gallery H at Dargan.
I have the comfort of fully equipped studio workshops, both for metal and wood working. This gives me total control of the whole artistic process and ensures that the original intention does not “get lost in translation”.

PETER BEEH – Aerial Cinematographer – Aerial Film Australasia

Peter’s contribution to Timescapes features six contemporary images that reflect the recent state of our environment. Four of the images centre on lands around the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area – the majesty of the region as well as the impacts of humanity. Two images com from Tasmania’s remote and less touched Tarkine wilderness.

JANE CANFIELD – Painter

Living at Lidsdale, we saw the fire season kick off locally in September 2019. And everyone in Australia felt what happened after that. As Artists, we work with what is around us and at the time that I was working on these paintings, there was stifling smoke and burning off, followed by disastrous out of control fires. The light was different. What was happening and will continue to happen with Climate Change inaction can be seen as depressing and sad. The loss of animal and human life, peoples homes and livelihoods, but as with life, in every disaster, some good may come out of it, if we mark this point in time and make new choices. There was a strange beauty in the menacing smoke the voluminous clouds, the remains of burnt trees, laying almost in formation as they fell and continued to smolder. The fringe of skeleton trees on the ridge lines and the revelation of cathedral rocks and cliff faces. Artists through the ages have made their marks through tragedy, from J.M.W. Turner and volcanic eruptions to Fred Williams and his You Yang paintings and Burnt Landscapes.

An Artists role is to mark these time and events, all in our own personal way.

NATASHA DANILOFF – Painter

This exhibition is an attempt to capture and express the summer of 2019/2020; our lost summer and the summer of so much loss.

Art can be cathartic and can speak to many in an immediate, visceral way. These works are a personal expression of events, surroundings and emotional choices about the things we feel are precious. They are also an expression of hope, of green life pushing through scarred ground. Precious things celebrated in my art. I began these works on site at Hat Hill Road days after the fire. Walking carefully through the ashen landscape I picked up charred bits and made marks on papers that had the gessoed and sanded remains of old drawings. I began to see a relationship between my process and the images that confronted me.
The work was resolved in my studio as I reflected on the emotional impact of this summer.

WENDY ANNE HAWKES – Digital Prints

To me, art is about telling stories. I like to make connections with people, asking them to empathize with my subjects and find compassion for and enjoyment in them. I use drawing, painting and mixed media to create free, scribbly images full of movement and character. Animals and urban art are my main subjects. Both bear the impact of our love and carelessness, and reflect it back upon us.

My Weather Map Animals appeared during those long, terrifying nights last summer when we all stayed awake watching the fire and weather maps and waiting for that evacuation order. I began to see animals in the weather maps. I took screenshots and used my basic edit function to draw the animals into the map. Soon they began to tell their own story as the devastating impact of the fires on our native animals began to become apparent. It is estimated a billion native animals died in our nation as a result of the summer fires.

BILL HOPE – Illustrator

Bill Hope is an Illustrator and Artist Living in the Blue Mountains. Having established himself in the illustration industry in Sydney Bill recently moved to the mountains where he has expanded his practice into the fine arts. His commercial work is represented by the Jacky Winter Group of Melbourne and he shows with the Lost Bear Gallery in Katoomba. His work is often intricate and precise with a focus on character and storytelling.

BOYD McMILLAN – Painter

Boyd works in a variety of media with a foundation of walking and drawing in natural areas such as the western Blue Mountains. His practise is based upon site drawing and the direct experience of landscape. The work starts from the immediacy of drawing and develops in the application of media and techniques available in the studio to convey the experience of change in landscape and explore resonance through metaphor.
Boyd received formal training majoring in painting in the mid 1970’s, and has continued a dual practice as an artist and landscape architect exhibiting in Galleries and Art Fairs in Australia and Japan. He has been a finalist in the Gosford Art Prize and the Bermagui Sculpture Prize and his work is held in private collections across Australia, in the United States and the UK.

ANJUM OLMO – Painter

Dreamtime is Anjum’s modern interpretation of the landscape in the Blue Mountains, it acknowledges the past and bringing together Anjum Olmo’s artistic journey began when she lived in a remote Aboriginal community in Far North Queensland working on the Indigenous Enterprise Partnership program in Cape York. It was on this outback adventure that she became drawn to the indigenous art and culture and this has fueled her curiosity ever since.

Upon returning from the outback, Anjum decided to pursue her interest and love of art and design. Anjum re-trained as an interior designer and more recently graduated from Nepean Art and Design Centre  completing the Visual Arts diploma.

Anjum has an expressive and playful approach to her art practice combining mark making, patterning and gestural application of colour.  Each artwork evolves as a visceral and therapeutic practice often driven by intuition and music, she lives in the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains and draws her creative inspiration from her environment.

The future. Each canvas portrays a story, one of self discovery, community and empowerment, it captures the sacred land of the Blue Mountains utilizing colour vibration combinations, her intention is to lift the spirit and to celebrate life.

GABRIELLE KNIGHT – Lithgow High School

“In October 2013 a string of catastrophic bushfires ravaged the Blue Mountains. I created this artwork in 2016 during my final year of high school. Quite recently in December 2019, the Blue Mountains were again subjected to devastating bushfires highlighting the continuing relevance of these sculptures. Such events are an uncomfortable fact of life for those of us who live in bushfire-vulnerable communities, the risk we think we accept for a lifestyle choice. But when it actually happens it is nonetheless raw, confronting and usually devastating. And in a warming world, disturbingly more frequent.”

ALICE KINGSTON – Lithgow High School

CHLOE LOGUE – Lithgow High School

LITHGOW HIGH SCHOOL

ALICE KINGSTON – more info

CHLOE LOGUE – more info

GABRIELLE KNIIGHT – more info