9th October 2012 - Marc Bowden

Mark Bowden - Snapped SALA

(ur)banality



4th October 2012 - Meg Cowell

Meg Cowell’s artworks centre on the process of collecting and archiving discarded fabrics which she has found, usually in the form of bras and undergarments and then produces images representing feminine identity. Cowell has discovered that Adelaide, the city where she resides has proven to be a fertile hunting ground for such items.

“You would be amazed at what is discarded in the city on the weekend after a big party night. I find all sorts of things in trees, gutters and bins,” she says. 

Upon locating these items, Cowell breaths fresh life into these discarded objects and gives them a new-found identity to create remarkable images. Cowell’s description for her approach to the For Sacrum series was to arrange translucent fabrics onto a light box to generate the images out of a synthesis of digital applications and photography. Her single-minded focus for that series was to achieve balance, connection and symmetry. However, with her more recent body of work, To the Surface Part I and Part II, Cowell has dyed the items and then immersed them in water, individually photographing them. Cowell exhibited images from To the Surface Part I and Part II at AP Bond earlier this year and claims it is her greatest achievement thus far.  

“Getting a commercial gallery to exhibit my work is so exciting. Being able to count myself among really top Adelaide artists and be able to work and make a living as an artist is amazing.”

Approximately half of the images exhibited were smaller works that made use of found undergarments which explore the premise of feminine identity with the bras and underwear. The remaining were larger works  that featured theatre costumes, couture and wedding dresses which Cowell described as a ‘literal up-scaling’ where she explains a garment such as a wedding dress  symbolizes transition – stepping across the threshold.” Cowell’s inspiration and intention for her work is to delve into the concept of feminine identity and take a fresh approach where the foundations are rehashed and reworked. She finds inspiration from such artists as Deborah Paauwe with whom Cowell was fortunate enough to be paired through the mentorship program during her post-graduate work at the University of South Australia.

Cowell claims that growing up in Tasmania has also influenced her work as much of her images are influenced by elements of Tasmanian Gothic  which is a sub-genre born out of  its convict history. Artists such as Anne Macdonald photographs of funeral flowers against black backgrounds and their homage to the Vanities of the 17th century are a definite inspiration. A further motivation for Cowell is the prospect of travelling overseas to the ‘centre of couture’ if she can secure the Australia Council residency in Paris. For Cowell this would be a dream as she can barely begin to imagine the fabrics she might find on the streets of Paris.



29th September 2012 - (DARE) For Your Eyes Only

DARE -Digital Art Research Experiment

This exhibitions is an experiment in terms of how each of the artists involved will approach digital madia and explore each individuals unique perspective.

As an experimental body of work, there is a perpetual impression of recreating what was once produced and observed through other frameworks discretely located within varying specialist disciplines. DARE exhibition reveals a convergence of various disciplines by remarking on the how the boundaries of the digital pervades and in turn generates a new artform by combining two different genres, in this instance, digital with drawing, painting, photography and printmaking.

25th September 2012 - Rebecca Hastings

In 2011, Rebecca Hastings an Adelalaide hills-based painter graduated from the Adelaide Central School of Art with  a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) and then won the Helpmann Academy’s SALA Award in 2012 at the Graduates Exhibition, along with being the annual winner of the Pleysier Perkins Emerging Art Prize in conjunction with FLG’s Exploration 12 exhibition. To further add to her recent successes of 2012, her Offering series (which featured the Rabbit Boy painting on the cover of The Adelaide Review) was exhibited in Melbourne at the Flinders Lane Gallery and sold out. Hastings second part of the Offering series will be exhibited as part of SALA Festival at the Hotel Metropolitan. Hastings claims the theme for both series, was something she wrestled with and resisted during art school.

“I worried about making sentimental pictures of my kids and found myself overcompensating, making works that were quite harsh, focusing on all the negative things about motherhood but not the positives,” Hastings explains. “Fortunately I did manage to get those works out of my system and I found myself dipping into the complex and often contradictory experiences and emotions that come with having kids. Anger, frustration, tenderness, humour and fear; all of these things feed into the work somehow, and I enjoy the multiple layers that are possible in taking this approach….” This series is “psychologically” charged and explores the weighty topic of maternal ambivalence, defying the usual sentimental or romantic ideal one generally associates with motherhood and thus challenges the traditional image the viewer expects to see of mother and child. As an artist, Hastings registers the various complexities and contradictions of being a mother, where emotions can run riot and oscillate between ambivalence, affection and aggression.

Bird Boy, Rebecca Hastings 2012, oil on board, 40cm X 40cm



Wolf Boy, Rebecca Hastings 2012, oil on board, 40cm X 40cm

Rabbit Boy, Rebecca Hastings 2012, oil on board, 40cm X  40cm

The continuing theme of maternal ambivalence will feature her 3 year old daughter, whereas the first series featured her 6 year old Boy in the paintings, highlight in various animal costumes. Hastings will not exhibit Rabbit Boy at the Hotel Metropolitan, but rather her new work which will be based on her relationship that she has with her three-year-old daughter. “There are some new ideas in these works because the relationship I have with her is different to my relationship with my son. In this exhibition there are paintings of her empty clothing. These are baby’s clothes that she has grown out of but which are presented as still life objects. But whilst the clothes are empty, they still speak of the presence of her body. For me, these are memento mori, reminders of her as a baby, but a baby that no longer exists. They are about this odd sense of grief or loss that I feel each time the kids grow into their next phase of development.”



Regardless of whether we are examining the Offering series 1 or 2 there is a strong narrative element and clear aspects of the child at play, which may come in the form of hiding, of dressing up or pretending to be something else. The images beckon us into an disturbing and perhaps not-so make-believe world, where the child is portrayed as a strange concoction of being somewhat bizarre, other-worldly, confrontational and playful all at the same time. Hastings uses classical painting techniques to create these extremely realistic and highly realised glimpses into a private world, lingering somewhere between reality and imagination, where she toys with the seen and unseen, the moments or spaces in-between.  There is a common thread across all of the works with the consistent use of colour palette, along with the intense lighting that is used to create drama by highlighting the meticulous details and suggesting the unknown with dark shadows. These mesmerizing images prove to conceal and reveal at the same time creating feelings of unease that undoubtedly capture the viewers attention.

Hastings is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery and will return to the Melbourne gallery for a solo exhibition next year and will exhibit locally at Hill Smith Gallery at the end of 2013.

20th September 2012 - Emma Hack

Emma Hack - Skin illustrator, Photographer, Sculptor, Diverse Multi-media Artist

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/campaign-targeting-low-level-speeders-stuns-with-mangled-masterpiece/story-e6frea83-1226489450861

15th September 2012 - Sally Mann

American artist Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia in 1951, where she continues to lives and work.  Mann’s photographs have been honored over the years  with various grants and awards, along with being the focus of a number of solo and group exhibitions  worldwide. These include “Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry,” the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1996); “Picturing the South,” The High Museum of Art, Atlanta (1996); “The Whitney Biennial,” the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1991); and “Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1991). For many years it was an 8 × 10 view camera that Mann chose to capture the fine detail in the images of her children as she urged them to act outvarious social and familial roles on the lush property of their rural Virginia home. The Immediate Family series, captured Mann’s children in either posed positions or where they were simply detained in their activity, frequently appearing nude, which communicates both the primal and playful aspects of human behavior. The images from the At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988) series, encapsulate the perplexing emotions and emerging identities of young adolescent girls. A notable example is Candy Cigarette where Mann’s skillfully unique combination serendipitous moments with meticulous planning. In this captivating photograph, Mann’s daughter Jessie postpones her playful activities and is recorded gracefully poised with a candy cigarette in her hand, the young innocent miniature blonde, representing a lanky twenty-something beauty. The expressive printing style Mann is fond of further lends to the theatrical, ominous mood to all of her  images.

Candy Cigarette 1989



 

One Big Snake 1991



11th September 2012 - Julie Camilleri

Following the completion of a degree in Professional Writing and Communication, Australian artist Julie Camilleri decided to relocate to the United States in order to fulfil her passion for photography. Camilleri pusuit of a career in this field, led her to upstate New York where she took a position with a local newspaper as a reporter and photographer, in addition to contributing to a monthly edition of a travel and photography column for Women in Motion. Consequently, Camilleri’s career has  flourished and as a result in 1999, she established Captured in Time in Photography after realising she had a genuine aptitude for portrait and wedding photography. Her obvious passion for the art of photography, in addition to travelling have greatly complemented each other and as a result she also produces inspirational landscape images. Camilleri has become a great success as she produces inspirational fine art images that capture the beauty of the world through the lens of her camera and as a result she has exhibited her fine art photography in numerous venues.  Camilleri views photography as a way of as life, a way of thinking and seeing and proudly boasts that it is her greatest passion. She enjoys working with people to capture natural and beautiful portraits as much as she does travelling and exploring the world with her camera in search of that next inspirational image to include in her next photographic exhibition. Camilleri also has a intense interest in the areas of copywriting, social media, creative design, along with marketing and communications. During the 2012 SALA Festival, Camilleri exhibited her Natures Impressions showcase at Caos Café (featured below), which is an inspirational collection of images revealing the simple beauty of the natural world. The impressive and vibrant photographs were printed on to canvas prints and captured significant open spaces, appealing textures, stimulating colour, interesting shapes, forms and patterns to delight the eye. “In all its forms and with all its elements, the beauty in nature is always there, often seen, seldom noticed.”    Julie Camilleri



Field Of Clouds, Wallaroo Plain SA

  

Incoming, West Bay, Kangaroo Island

Blossom Avenue, Appleton NY