Ruark Lewis (Sydney based artist and SNO director) exhibited and performed IN MY EMPTY HOUSE at Auckland University of Technology – St Paul Street Gallery, in late November 2011.
see article by curator Melissa Laing in SMT (Studies in Material Thinking)
Sarah Keighery and Billy Gruner
What is Post-Formalism?
August – September 2011
Articulate project space, Sydney
Opening 6-8pm Friday 26 August till Sunday 4 September
497 Parramatta Rd Leichhardt NSW 2040.
Articulate project space is proud to be hosting the Sydney presentation of What is Post-Formalism? a collaborative social project that Sydney-based artists Sarah Keighery and Billy Gruner began in Paris in 2008.
What is Post-Formalism? is an ongoing project of painting performance in which audiences are invited to participate in the construction of paintings in the project spaces around the world in which the paintings are made.
Recent works in this project are Billy Gruner’s Collective Monochrome No.24 and Sarah Keighery’s Line Drawing project 2011, images of which are shown below. These works investigate alternative vernaculars for contemporary painting practice. Collective Monochrome No.24 (including a side event called The Punk Painting sound installation) explores sociallyoriented contemporary painting practice by inviting audience participation in the gradual collective construction of the work, and by enabling them to experience the work as both participant and audience.
Gruner and Keighery’s ‘projectwork’ has long mapped out a conversation which extends beyond a purely art historical conversation of reductive art practices and regional non-objective concerns. This work does this by developing new methodologies that rethink these practices at a specific local and related international level of discourse that has made them well known abroad. For example, similar projects have been conducted in 24 different cities around the world since 2004 with the newer freeform and radical ‘red series’ beginning in a museum project in Northern France earlier in 2011, later in an architect’s firm in Nashville Tennessee, and as shown more recently at Enjoy Projects Wellington NZ.
Articulate project space is looking forward to hosting the local presentation of this ongoing, international project. Contact: 0431434904; http://articulate497.blogspot.com
FEATURED ARTIST
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SNO CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECTS
SUPERKALEIDOSCOPE PRESENTS SNO CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECTS, LYNNE EASTAWAY WITH EMERGING AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS ALEXANDER JACKSON WYATT AND SOPHIE WOLFSON KEELING
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Lynne Eastaway
2 piece yellow and grey, 2011, acrylic gouache and Absolute Matt on stretched linen, each unit 81 x 66 cm, floor chocks 6 x 2 x 6.5 cm.
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SNO operates as a centre for critical discourse and consideration of contemporary Australian art. The project offers opportunities for an international exchange and provides a platform for a critical conversation regarding abstract, concrete art making within a contemporary practice.
The group concentrates on the key objective of promoting and sustaining the innovation and exploration of new ideas. They offer a well-balanced diverse program presenting exhibitions, an artist studio facility and sound project. Each of these programs aid in deepening an investigation into non-objective, concrete, and abstract art in a contemporary context.
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LYNNE EASTAWAY
Born in Australia 1949
Lynne is a member of the SNO Group.
Eastaway’s work focuses on the relationship between things; their weight, presence and value and how the juxtaposition of two things can bring about another.
Whether the relationship be between two colours, two pieces of paper or a chair placed in a room, Eastaway’s methodical studio practice is an exploration into these ideas.
Lynne Eastaway is an established contemporary Australian artist whose notable practice spans over three decades. Eastaway currently lectures in drawing at the National Art School, Sydney and next month will attend the Cité Internationale Des Arts in Paris for three months.
Upcoming exhibitions include a solo show at ParisCONCRET.
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SNO STUDIO PROGRAM ARTISTS
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Born in Australia 1989 and 1988
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Having recently graduated with honours from the National Art School Sydney, Alexander Jackson Wyatt and Sophie Wolfson Keeling are the current recipients of the SNO Contemporary Art Projects Studio Program.
Alexander’s work presents an interest in the forms created by empty spaces or vessels noting the memory of space. The sculptures in his studio are reminiscent of over-sized puzzle pieces appearing almost as if they are able to be moved around and reassembled to create new forms in an attempt to re-build or repair a solid object.
Sophie’s delicate play of form and line using paper and malleable materials offers a sensitive and considered approach to image making. Her paper forms use light to create prisms and illusions of minimal shapes and objects. Her paper works come off the wall to create a three dimensionality that turns these paper drawings into sculptural forms, interacting with light and playing with your perception.
Alexander and Sophie’s studios will be open for public viewing during the opening of SNO 73, August 2011.
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Article by Sarah Mosca SK co-director.
© All Images are courtesy of the artists.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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‘Poste Concret’ is an exhibition of postcard sized works sent via ‘la Poste’ by invited artists. This is a fundraising event for ParisCONCRET (a non profit organisation).
Over 100 artists have donated work and each piece will be for sale at an exceptional price of 50€. The work is also posted online (see below).
(contact@parisconcret.org).
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| View ‘postcards’ |
Opening Sat 6th August 7.00-10.00pm
until Sat 20th August
5 rue des Immeubles Industriels 75011 PARIS
w w w . p a r i s c o n c r e t . o r g
There is a punk painting by Billy Gruner and a couple of kiss paintings. One kiss is painted directly on to the wall, and is designed by this speaker, with the title taken from the onomatopoeia sound of mice nibbling, in Japanese “chu chu”. Another piece, formally a readymade–a black square table napkin–is later manipulated with color and pencil. Large would be a table cover, small the napkin–this work byCandida Alvarez.
The title of the show is Deep Black. There is a lot of black, though white predominates, that being the color of the wall.
The show is spare: one napkin; one wall piece; and one original punk painting dated 2011, none of which are all black, and all to which
seem to have their roots in the everyday. Everything is abstract, or is it? Or can someone explain it out a little further… the individual work, the practice, the attempt at a unifying theme, or the disarray of it?
Candida Alvarez: …my sister is always putting the past behind her-Well I use the past to make my pics and I want all of it and even you and me in candlelight on the train and every “lover” I’ve ever had–every friend–nothing closed out–and dogs alive and dead and people and landscapes and feeling even if it is desperate–anguished-tragic–it’s all part of me and I want to confront it and sleep with it–the dreams–and paint it
–Joan Mitchell*
Here, deep black represents anticipation. It is like walking into a movie, once the picture has started. Memories, too, are like the everyday. They are abstract, swirling around in invisible space, until needed. My painting, “A Kiss” begins with a photo snapshot meeting a ready-made black ground. Drawing pulls it close, like a microscopic lens. In this painting, the picture transforms into an architecture of color-forms. The foundation is the photo, which gets shredded through drawing to serve as the memory pulp for painting. Disarray, is the common denominator
Deep black is sexy, no? In my painting, a sliver of black barely visible at first glance, fights for dear life to get noticed on a formal level. It is the deep black and like the kiss, reverberates throughout the painted body. In this conversation, I am nothing but that small glimpse of “black magic women.” Go towards the dark. There is always something there, waiting to be noticed.
Billy Gruner: I like the title Deep Black because it refers in many ways to a kind of mystic reading I like more and more, deep space implied for instance. But also a kind magic nature is summoned, its fun in many ways. The so-called punk works come from a long way back and issue from a certain aesthetic response, and many of these are done in black. The stripes just sit there vibrating without any pretense to design or meaning. These ongoing works are made simply, from ordinary inexpensive materials and have long been linked to a DIY 
understanding–that was punk’s greatest achievement. I have always admired the democracy of means and sense of lowbrow aspiration associated, and for these reasons I have always been a Post Punk style of artist. These works attempt to restate my interest in what my overall body of social oriented works may represent. Regardless these impromptu works done on site with a poverty of means have broader meanings than that, and have an almost Asian aesthetic response also: simple, repetitive, reflective, and utterly unique from each other despite the system of reproduction. The works emerge out of a longer background i.e., the tape works that I still do, and, the stereo works which have a music connection. I don’t believe I have to reinvent the wheel at present, I just like to make work that produces its own dialogue and I like how that resonates with other artists’ works, so difference for me is cardinal. In this case the relationship to colour and to its apogee, blackness is placed under discussion – this collective dialogue albeit in visual terms when paintings are used is referred to in the black paint, the gesturing of the stripes. Importantly, the act of making the punk works is symbolic, they are made just prior to exhibition or even during, so they are immediate, it is performative by nature.
* Lady Painter, A Life, by Patricia Albers.
