Julian Day- Firstdraft
Julian Day, Ceremony, 2010, 6 electronic keyboards, bolts, nuts, photograph courtesy of Emily Sandrussi.
Julian Day, Ceremony, 2010, 6 electronic keyboards, bolts, nuts
Like interrupting a church procession on entering the gallery, Julian Day’s sound installation, Ceremony, envelops you in a hallowed soundscape of eerie drones. The ethereal tones emitted from the instruments, created through placement of heavy nuts and bolts weighed on the keys, offers a post-Fluxus interpretation, reminiscent of the minimalist compositions of La Monte Young; forging an intersection between art and music.
The evocative ‘sound field’ is representative of an inherent dualism: the tenuous relationship between the honesty of the pre-loved organs, and the ambiguity of the incandescent soundwaves reverberating from the banal objects. The fully sensorial experience, transparent in its realisation, offers no real sense of the artist; rather, the experience of the listener takes primacy.
Rachel Ingham
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Patricia Casey – NG Gallery
Scented Gardens for the Blind
Patricia Casey, 'The Smell of the Sun', 2010 photograph printed on cotton fabric with stitch detail, image courtesy of NG Gallery
In her exhibition Scented Gardens for the Blind, Patricia Casey presents the viewer with a series of surreal landscapes. Desaturated black and white photographs are embellished with metallic thread to create whimsical images that examine the space between dreams and reality. Casey draws both title and inspiration from Janet Frame’s 1963 novel, arousing the senses and hinting at synaesthesia. The meticulous stitching gives tactility to the images with patterns of raised dots, at times, resembling Braille. Eerie, yet beautiful, the works have a lingering effect.
Melanie Brycki
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William-Guillaume Saussay- Monstrosity Gallery
À Ciel Ouvert
William-Guillaume Saussay, The King, 2010
The vibrant colours of these paintings dance on the retina, drawing the viewer into the private world of New Caledonian-born, William-Guillaume Saussay. This is a lively, Basquiat-inspired realm; where words meld with unfamiliar symbols, abstraction melts into representation and fluxuation occurs between reality and surreality. We enter these ‘maps’ expecting a peek into Saussay’s world, only to find ourselves being ‘opened up’ (‘à ouvert’) to our world.
Katrina Dunn-Jones
www.monstrositygallery.wordpress.com
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Waratah Lahy- Brenda May Gallery
Look
Waratah Lahy, In Looking at (T.I), 2010. Acrylic on perspex – 2 parts 20 x 30cm
Image courtesy of Waratah Lahy and Brenda May Gallery.
Contemporary Australian artist Waratah Lahy explores the act of ‘looking’ and notions of scopophilia within her work. Lahy paints her subjects on clear perspex, emphasizing the mundane gestures, mediated gazes and awkward poses that are captured by the camera. The relationship between the observed and observer becomes not only blurred, but also inextricably linked as the voyeur’s presence is unexpectedly subject to exposure. Engaging, simplistic and undeniably beautiful, the series absorbs the viewer and evokes a consciousness of ones presence. Through her fresh style and unique compositions, Lahy proves herself to be an artist worth following.
Aimee Sharpe
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Eden Diebel- Galleryeight
Against Nature
Diebel’s photographic works vividly capture the varying surfaces and textures of lifeless aquatic creatures. Removed from their natural environment, the disembodied fragments of these once animate animals appear other-worldly, inscrutable and enigmatic. The artist plays with themes of illusion and the deceptiveness of appearance, situating body parts within fanciful scenes and environments, and staging them to look like other articles, such as an accordion or a flotilla. Reflecting on the conversion of animals into food, Diebel’s work compels viewers to reconsider the process of disassociation which denies these creatures their sentience and reconfigures them as objects for consumption.
Violet Stokoe-Miller
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Sugarmill Surf Concept Gallery
Surfers, this is not Run of the Mill
Sugarmill, a beacon on the bowsprit that can positively claim the title of ‘Surf Emporium’. Providing a comprehensive insight into surfing in the 21st century, it offers considerably more than waxed fibreglass and wetsuits. Artwork, apparel, photographs and strong post-grunge aesthetic abound as Sugarmill offers us surf culture’s coming of age tale. Books on art and design sit in white washed crates supporting artwork by skate and surf culture luminaries such as Ben Brown and Ozzie Wright, whilst up and coming illustrators and photographers are encouraged to bring in and sell their work to a market of their teens to twenty-somethings peers. A promising new venture that encourages cultural hybrids.
Elliot Shields