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Sam Leach

Cosmists

18 Jun - 24 Jul 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 18 Jun
Inspired by the Russian Cosmists and the idea behind development of the Soviet space program, Leach creates work to celebrate the Cosmists’s optimism. His work proposes an extension of the realm of the non-human. With a nod to Bruno Latour's proposal to create a parliament of things and a spokesperson for the non-human. The possibility of extending life beyond a planetary timeframe will be of benefit to all animals and things.

Image:
• Title: Motherbirds 3p
• Meduim: Oil and resin on copper, 30cm x 20cm, 2008
• Courtesy of the artist

Locust Jones

Lozenge Of Dawn

18 Jun - 24 Jul 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 18 Jun
Rending images with bamboo sticks, horse tranquilliser syringes and eye droppers, Jones creates images as a result of vibrant collisions with movement. With comment on current global events of warfare and environment, Jones penetrates thoughts, personal politics and drawing styles.

Image:
• Title: Walking The Cow
• Meduim: Ink on paper, 250 x 137 cm, 2009
• courtesy of Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne.

Joel Birnie

Raw (traces)

18 Jun - 24 Jul 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 18 Jun
Raw (traces) encapsulates notions of personal identification within place, daily ritual and heritage. Born in South Australia and raised predominantly around a maternal Tasmanian Indigenous family, Birnie explores the meaning of her life within continuous conflicts of mixed race, cultural isolation and self identification.

Image:
• Title: Raw (traces) (Video Still)
• Medium: DVD, 2009

Suzette Wearne

Friends With Me

18 Jun - 24 Jul 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 18 Jun
Wearne presents hand-stitched dolls made from detritus found in the Aboriginal community of Gunbalanya. Documenting the dolls in strange locations, Wearne explores the ideas of companionship, migration trauma, cultural collision and identity. Wearne intends to ‘self cure’ the imposing solitude and cultural shock that she experienced in Gunbalanya, while simultaneously associating the alienation her mother experienced when she migrated from the Philippines to Australia.

Image:
• Title: Runner Up
• Medium: found objects including half a doll, jacket tag, fur camp dog toy, 2009

Kirsten Norvilas

Syncope

18 Jun - 24 Jul 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 18 Jun
Believing the world of the moving image is boundless. Simulacra, in which figures can be abstracted, contorted, twisted, cut-up and re-appropriated, and in which space and time reoriented. Self-refraction through the eye of the bricoleur-puppeteer, reveals memories, images and thoughts. Norvilas questions the job of being a film-maker, reconstructing new narratives and dreaming realities into existence.

Image:
• Title: Syncope (Video Still)
• Medium: DVD, 2009

Djambawa and Marrirra Marawili, Marrnyula Mununggurr, Mulkun and Liyawaday Wirrpanda, Fiona Hall, John Wolseley, Jorg Schmeisser and Judy Watson

Djalkiri: we are standing on their names. Blue Mud Bay

31Jul - 4 Sep 2010: Opening at 6pm Thur 12 Aug
Presented by Nomad Art Productions, “Djalkiri” exhibits works by indigenous and non-indigenous artists in a cross-cultural collaborative printmaking workshop at Yilparap on Blue Mud Bay in October 2009. Including Yolngu artists Djambawa, Marrirra Marawili, Marr nyula Mununggurr, Mulkun and Liyawaday Wirrpanda and visiting artists Fiona Hall, John Wolseley, Jorg Schmeisser and Judy Watson, “Djalkiri” attempts to reveal the mind-enriched workshop experiences. Djalkiri literally means footprint, but when applied to Yolngu law it takes on a more profound meaning, forming the ‘spiritual foundation of the world’.

Image:
• Artist: Judy Watson
• Title: Judgement 1
• Medium: Etching, 2010

Mella Jarsma, Fiona Gavino, Rosalie Gascoigne, curated by Steve Eland

Material Girls

10 Sep - 16 Oct 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 10 Sep
The title for this exhibition had nothing to do with Madonna’s 1985 hit Material Girl which shot to number two in the top US 100 hits, nor did it have anything to do with director Martha Coolidge’s 2006 satirical teen comedy Material Girls, based on a pair of rich, spoiled socialites who only care about ‘material things’. This exhibition brings together a group of dissident female artists who evince unforseen material qualities, revealing the mutability of materials whilst connoting new meanings. They work in a manner far from the heterodoxy of materialism philosophy, where nothing exists except matter, a denial of the existence of the spirit, that all phenomena can only be measured physically. These material girls, however, interpret nonhuman things in terms of human characteristics, or anthropomorphism. It is said that most scholars since the time of the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) agreed that the tendency to anthropomorphize hinders the understanding of the world, not in this case, the methodology and conceptual interpretation employed in these works reveal enlightened understandings of physical and spiritual worlds.

Image:
• Artist: Fiona Gavino
• Title: Field of Gaze
• Medium: Recycled porn magazines, recycled jarrah

Katherine McAvoy

Puerperium

10 Sep - 16 Oct 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 10 Sep
Puerperium presents a photographic exhibition of the maternal healing process following childbirth. Through presenting the six-week long documentation of post –partum physical recuperation after the birth of her second child, McAvoy exposes and emphasize the slow and painful process that the female body undergoes to bear children and regain pre-pregnancy conditions.

Image:
• Title: Untitled 1
• Medium: Photography, 2010

Xiangqian Hu, Ming Li, curated by Biljana Ciric

Body as a Museum & Sweet and Sweat

10 Sep - 16 Oct 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 10 Sep
Co-exhibiting two video works, Body as a Museum and Sweet and Sweat, by Chinese artists Li Ming and Hu Xiangqian, Shanghai based curator Ciric attempts to reveal recent tendencies of video and performance work among an emerging generation of artists. Li and Hu both use video as a medium of expression but with very strong performative aspects in their art. They both draw inspiration from their surroundings and their community of friends and their actions are usually a point of departure in their works. Their lives become the centre of attention devoid of the heavy background of political and social critique that may be attributed directly in the works.

Image:
• Artist: Ming Li
• Title: XX (Video Still)
• Medium: Video, 5mins 17secs, 2009

Amina McConvell

The Thinking Path

10 Sep - 16 Oct 2010 : Opening at 6pm Fri 10 Sep
In the installation work, The Thinking Path, McConvell explores a symbolic parallel between the processesinvolved in biological evolution (in particular the theory of natural selection, and how natural selection effects the physical characteristics of biological forms), spiritual evolution and growth. Using a human figure soft sculpture, McConvell temps to illustrate how a human form might change as it evolves spiritually. The idea of spiritual evolution is symbolised by adjusting and changing the physical characteristics of the human figures that inhabit the path.

Image:
• Title: The Thinking Path(detail)
• Medium: Clay, plaster, gesso, Gauche