Stark Show Of Potential
Newcastle Herald
Saturday November 29, 2008
It's been a busy week with six new exhibitions.
At the University Gallery, black-and- white work by many distinguished recent graduates was on view until yesterday. The wide variety of mediums and focus was a strong advocate for the institution's potential status as an art centre.Vera Zulumovski's linocuts were an obvious choice. They share a base in autobiography with Izabela Pluta's photographic invocation of childhood. The other photomedia works were Martin Trew's decorative panels of electrical transformers.Daryl Bowes was represented by shiny spiralling paint spatters. Una Rey, Lucas Grogan and Luke Thurgate explored drawing. Ahn Wells transposed fibre techniques. Stephen Garrett and Niomi Sands used humble details of daily life for their sculpture.Much of this work has been seen before but it was good seeing it again, particularly in such congenial company. Gillean Shaw is a thoughtful curator. The group show at Podspace until December 6 has also been put together by Gillean Shaw, in conjunction with fellow director Johanna Trainor. It presents fibre pieces by many artists who work with felt, embroidery and fabrics. There are new names, including Anthony Line whose glistening black caterpillar spectacularly incorporates poodle hair.Kate Parker has some unfriendly little rag dolls. Ahn Wells explores new territory in precise green cubes. Gail Burrows knits for giants. Faye Neilson's baby pillows make a welcome reappearance. Valuable inclusions are photographs that carry the "soft" of the exhibition's title into a further dimension. At Watt Space until December 7 is yet another rewarding group exhibition, this one from the graduating visual arts students at the university. Interestingly, a number of them use soft sculpture.Exciting works include Ruth Feeney's droll collages, Taryn Raffan's elegant geometry, Andrea Bruno's impressionist landscapes, David Hampson's obsessive little graphics and Largo von Bismark's ogre of the art market.In a separate exhibition, Julie Pavlou Kirri has some extraordinary photographs, playing surreal tricks with anatomical models, contrasting apparent flesh with monstrous invasive body parts in a dazzling study in ambiguity. She also has some gothic embroidered miniatures at Podspace. At the Paynter Gallery, also until December 7, are elaborate paintings by Graham Marchant combining skilfully portrayed flowers and gardens with pages of the Book of Kells, intricately patterned textiles and a willow-pattern plate. They are a real tour de force.Series of smaller works reveal an eye for changing light in views from a New York window.In the heavily textured cell next door, Niomi Sands creates a chaotic tableau. Stools carved from opalescent soap, with inlaid patterns on their seats, are piled and tumbled. The strange translucent material and the dramatic lighting contribute to an unnerving experience.Sands also has giant soap cotton reels at the university and soap candles at Podspace, suggesting an ongoing program reminiscent of the gentle dislocations of Alice in Wonderland. It is sometimes hard to remember that many of Newcastle's most dedicated and focused painters are in fact still students at the university, albeit postgraduate.John R. Barnes, at Newcastle Art Space until December 7, is yet another established painter, working consistently through a body of work to create a fine exhibition with dramatic forward momentum.Unified by a restricted range of earth-based colours and increasingly earthy textures, the paintings move from direct observation of the world into an increasingly abstract perception of light and landscape.The first shock comes from a sudden two-dimensional pyramid sited amid the tree-lined watercourses and rocky hills of an inland Australia very familiar to the artist. The countryside progressively slides into sedimentary layers of stripes, the horizon increasingly dominated by the thickened air of industrial emissions in ominous targets, reinventing abstraction.In the smaller room, Michael Langenegger plays on a sardonic theme and variation with a row of confronting skulls. At the Front Room Gallery at TAFE it was the turn of the one-year ceramics course to show the achievements of a strong band of motivated students, including many men.The variety of work was evident, with innovative and traditional glazes particularly notable on a range of hand-built and thrown forms. A panel of photographs emphasised the physical skills of the potter.Many of this good crop of students wish to take the discipline further. A single year's classes are not the equivalent of many years of apprenticeship, however good the teaching. Minimalist painter Sally MacDonald will hold open days at her studio at 98 Mitchell Street, Merewether, between 10am and 2pm today and tomorrow.CHOICE VIEWINGNewcastle Region Art GalleryOcean to Outback: Australian Landscape Painting 1850-1950, the National Gallery of Australia's 25th anniversary travelling exhibition, until February 1.Lake Macquarie City Art GalleryThe 2008 Archibald Prize, until December 7. Brough House, MaitlandHunter artists paint local identities.Saturday and Sunday 10am-3pm, until December 14.JMGPatricia Harvey and Sandra Burgess, until tomorrow.PodspaceSoft, until December 6.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald