9th September 2012 - Kristian Mumford

Kristian Mumford - The Advertiser Business SA Contemporary Art Prize finalist



Kristian Mumford is a 3^rd generation Australian artist. Born in 1980 he has already become an international success with over 14 awards to his good name. Aside from being an award winning artist, he is also a renowned Landscape Designer celebrated with 6 esteemed designs to his credit. Mumford has founded his own business, along with being the caretaker to a prestigious estate property. Furthermore, he has received an award from the Government for his outstanding service to the Natural Heritage trust and released a “Save the River Murray with the children” DVD. Additionally Mumford was instrumental in the launch for  Planet Ark, along with  National Tree Day for the Yorke peninsula and has become  an Ambassador for the Trees for Life cause, National parks and wildlife, and last but not least, the Victorian Cancer Council. To add to his long list of achievements, Mumford has also written two books, released a music CD and is a humanitarian donating valuable time and resources to a variety of charities and is in service of the community arts. Hence, Mumford was invited to become a Creative Adult Learning Facilitator and consequently trained for the position. Mumford was also in attendance at the Australian Spirituality and Sustainability Forum with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Although somewhat traditional in his technical approach, Mumford is clearly a contemporary artist who is known to create distinctive and strikingly beautiful portraits in oils, which are primarily of women.  Generally the poses of his subjects are dramatic and dynamic in their presentation, but are composed with care, dressed and placed within a particular realm and are outstanding in their truths and finish.  The figures are the embodiment of grace and the women clearly exemplify the idea of the romantic, the venus, the lover.   Mumford endeavors to connect with an element of something profound within his works. He is extremely driven and much of the impact of his artworks comes from his own autobiographical explorations to find the meaning within the paintings. The techniques he uses are innovative and fresh, choosing to work on linen rather than the usual canvas, consequently the surface is much finer which takes on the pigment.  The results produced have a more translucent quality, a washed effect that creates additional layers that shimmer from within the painting. Mumford merges the delicate subtlety of watercolor, with inks and the vibrancy and malleability of oils, all delivered with a lightness of touch, which enables him to express variations of light and tone that provides the works with a delightfully ethereal quality. Mumford has sold in major galleries across Australia.

The Beautiful British Lady, Kristian Mumford





"Awakening II", Kristian Mumford



Christiana Reclining in Arizona, Kristian Mumford



7th September 2012 - Amy Hermann

Amy Herrmann is an upcoming artist who completed her Visual Arts Degree (specializing in Photography) at the South Australian School of Art at Uni SA in 2011. Herrmann was awarded the Deborah Paauwe Photography Award for Excellence at the Uni SA Visual Arts Graduate Exhibition. Herrmann was also accepted to attend a 6 week residency with the Parsons Paris School of Art and Design in Paris, France during her final year of Undergraduate studies and is currently undertaking her Honours with the University of South Australia. Herrmann is particularly interested in issues surrounding identity and explores these sometimes confronting topics through the lens of her camera with the combined assistance of performance and photography.  The way in which Herrmann has shot many of these images are at times warped or blurred to magnify the confusion that often surrounds the boundaries of gender.  Herrmann has created the sense of a performance still that has been captured during motion where she has seized a moment in time. The imagery offers an abstracted physical form, recognizable enough to raise questions  in relation to the feminine and masculine roles played in society.

Hidden Fears 1, Giclee' Print on German Etching Paper 80cm X 100cm




Hidden Fears 2, Giclee' Print on German Etching Paper 80cmX100cm 

A Cross-dressed Performance



Lipstick and Beards, 2011, Giclée print on fine art gloss paper, 50 x 50cm

2nd September 2012 - Robin Eley

Robin Eley is an extraordinary Adelaide based painter. He was born in London in 1978 to his Chinese mother and Australian father. The family returned to live in Australia in 1981 where Eley lived until he completed his secondary education, at which time he travelled to the US  in 1997 to attend the Westmont  College to achieve his BA in Fine Arts. Eley then returned to Australia and now lives in Adelaide with his wife, Rachel. Eley's recent debut solo exhibition Singularity was held at the Hill Smith Gallery in South Australia.

Equipped with the simple tool of a paintbrush Eley is  capable of creating photo-quality artworks that attract immediate attention. The amazingly hyper-realistic paintings give the illusion of looking at an actual photograph and the impact is undeniable. The subjects depicted in many of Eley’s large-scale oil paintings are naked, wrapped in plastic wrap with every minute detail of each body and the countless reflections of their translucent covers skillfully portray by the artist.

Eley is clearly a master craftsman in the practice of painting. Not only are his oil paintings incredibly detailed and superbly realistic, but have been exhibited both nationally and internationally with some of his works currently being displayed in galleries in California and New York. Eley moving and sensitive artworks have been recognised by the Eutick Memorial Prize, the Nora Heysen Centenary Art Prize,  Doug Moran Nation Portrait Prize (highly commended runner-up in 2010 and highly commended 3rd place in 2011) and the Archibald Prize.  Aside from his amazing artistic achievements, Eley is a celebrated public speaker, his engaging lectures have been hailed both in Austalia and Overseas with an audience ranging from a modest number to a grand crowd of 3000.



Robin Eley at work


“Inspired by history, I extract from the present. Artifacts and textures that reflect the beauty and nobility of decline and question the modern obsession with perfection. While my subjects and technique are intentionally very real, the context in which they are painted is less defined"     Robin Eley

 

"In both concept and craft, Singularity is my response to the growing isolation within modern culture. Not isolation in a traditional sense, physical and beyond our control, but emotional and of our own design."           Robin Eley, 2012

30th September 2012 - Lisa Tomasetti

Lisa Tomasetti - Photgrapher / Visual Artist

In addition to her visual arts practice, over the past eleven years Tomasetti has been a Film and Television Stills photographer. Her achievements include Star Wars Episode Two, Bad Boy Bubby, Dirty Deeds, Dead Heart, Shine, Kath & Kim  and Charlotte’s Web.

Tomasetti’s work  employs a series of textures and compositional elements that are familiar with Old Master  and Victorian paintings except she presents the subjects in a contemporary manner. Tomasetti explores how women were represented in history and then challenges the tradition by substituting the more privileged, white middle-class sitter with women and children from different cultures in order to create a different sense of history and story. The new subject now takes centre stage in intensely lit and coloured portraits to generate questions concerning race, the sensitive topic of colonization, class and memory.



Unwritten Skin, (Burnt Memory Exhibition), Lisa Tomasetti

C-41 photograph printed on hahnmule acid free paper, 100 cm x 100 cm

 

The Monday Room  ( Burnt Memory), Lisa Tomasetti

C-41 photograph printed on hahnmule acid free paper, 100 cm x 100 cm

Longing (Burnt Memory), Lisa Tomasetti

C-41 photograph printed on hahnmule acid free paper, 100 cm x 100 cm



29th August 2012 - Mark Kimber

The Pale Mirror is the most recent series of works from the illustrious photographic artist Mark Kimber. This latest body of work exudes all the elements and atmosphere of filmic drama that speaks of epic sagas from the 40’s and 50’s, although it seems the stories are somewhat elusive and blur the lines between truth and fiction, fantasy and reality. The ethereal photographic images are of small, but impressive dioramas produced by Kimber to replicate real life scenes of illuminated remote landscapes reminiscent of search and rescue disaster movies, along with eerie city buildings and suburban houses which burn brightly with white light suggestive of UFO abduction scenes. Some of the dioramas contain scenes that conjure recollections of early model sea and air craft which would dare to defy and endure unchartered terrain that could be considered unforgiving, whilst others appear as though the heavens have opened in heavenly praise. However the cinematic effects and eerie lighting deceptively serves to illuminate nothing, as era’s gone by and various landscapes are strangely obscured by indefinable yet vaguely familiar territory. The photographic images are amplified by rich opalescent colours and posses an inviting quality that inevitably draws the viewer in with their delicious quality.

The Pale Mirror series is in itself a metaphor for photography. It is generally accepted a photograph as being a reproduction of reality, but what and whose reality, which is a premise often explored by Kimber. The works in this series magnify ‘photography’s’ capacity to manipulate the truth and it’s connection to memory. Kimber created these dioramic-sets using Styrofoam, wood and plastic, then enhanced the effects with Mag-lights, LED lights and a fog machine. The miniature sets where created on the basis of historical imagery and films such as the Hindenberg disaster, the ‘Bates’ mansion from Psycho and even the house of Marge and Homer Simpson. Kimber photographed these images in colour film, with the use of a cheap Diana camera and without the use of digital manipulation.  

Kimber has been exhibiting for the last 26 years since 1986 and is the Studio Head of Photography and New Media for the South Australian School of Art at UniSA. Kimber is the 2012 recipient of the this years prestigious South Australians Living Artists SALA Monograph and his series The Pale Mirror is the subject of this year’s SALA  publication, which will see Wakefield Press publish a book celebrating his photographic career. The publication, simply titled Mark Kimber holds about 110 images, including a selection of portraiture, studio work and landscapes. The book has been collated and written by  Jim Moss, who was the head of Visual Art Theory at UniSA Art School.

Kimber has had numerous solo exhibitions here in Australia, in addition to exhibiting internationally. Some of his most recent exhibitions include; The Cloud Chamber (2011), All That Glisters (2010), Edgeland (2008) and Sun Pictures (2007). Kimber’s work is collected in various public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Parliament House Collection, Monash Gallery of Art, Albury Regional Gallery and the London Institute.



MARK KIMBER - Into seas without a shore, 2012, Giclee print, 40 x 40cm, edition of 6

MARK KIMBER - Into seas without a shore, 2012, Giclee print, 40 x 40cm, edition of 6



26th August 2012 - Agnes Cecile

Silvia Pelissero, otherwise known as Agnes-Cecile, is a young Italian artist currently based in Rome and studied at Giorgio De Chirico. Pelissero works with a variety of mediums, which includes watercolour used in congunction with other techniques such as oil, acrylic, varnish, and digital paintings. Pelissero's abstact portraits posses an undeniable freshness, an amazing sense of freedom in the execution of her magnificent manipulation of  watercolour that are inspiring to say the least. There is a mesmerizing melencholy, a definite hint of sadness that hides behind the beautiful expressions that seems to invade the senses with a visionary way of expressing the idea of beauty. The portraits explode with an aray of vivd colours and the results are simply stunning.

To experience the magic of seeing this inspirational artist in action, there are multiple time-lapse video's on YouTube or to see more of her works, visit Pelissero’s portfolio on Deviant Art.




My Eyes Refuse To Accept Passive Tears






Garden In The Ceiling