Acknowledgement
The Geraldton Regional Art Gallery is proud to present the 2017 Mid West Art Prize.
The 2017 Mid West Art Prize has been proudly supported by Red FM, Rio Tinto, Bendigo Bank Geraldton and Ian Blaney MLA Member for Geraldton
Funding partners include the City of Greater Geraldton and the West Australian Department of Culture and the Arts.
Gallery Staff
Eve York Coordinator Gallery and Cultural Development
Ellen Norrish Gallery Officer
Marnie Douglas Arts and Cultural Development Officer
Gallery Volunteers
Cris Taylor
Agnes Pas
Judy Rose
Anthea Baker
Graphic Design
Helen Sumpton Keely Grieve
Geraldton Regional Art Gallery
24 Chapman Road, Geraldton WA 6530
P (08) 9956 6750
geraldtonregionalartgallery@cgg.wa.gov.au
FOREWORD
His Worship the Mayor, City of Greater Geraldton
Shane Van Styn
The City is proud to support this important event, which continues to grow each year, both in quality and quantity.
The Geraldton Regional Art Gallery is an important part of our community and after dramatic State funding cuts in late 2016, the Gallery now operates under the City. This demonstrates the commitment the City has in supporting the development of the strong arts and cultural aspects of the region.
Research is increasingly demonstrating that the arts not only spur economic development but also shape our consciousness, create a collective attitude, inspire, remake behavior, and reduce stress.
The Mid West Art Prize is the perfect example of this. The Prize showcases the high quality of artistic talent that exists not only locally but state-wide. It bring people into our City, adding vibrancy and culturally enriching. I am proud to represent a City Council that values the arts and culture and is able to host the prestigious Mid West Art Prize.
INTRODUCTION
Coordinator Gallery and Cultural Development
Eve York
This year marks the fourth time the prestigious Mid West Art Prize has been delivered in Geraldton.
The Mid West Art Prize showcases the diversity, quality and innovation of art currently being created in Western Australia. The prize is open to artists residing throughout WA and all artworks in the show are new creations that have never previously been exhibited; ensuring an exhibition of freshness and intrigue.
Despite substantial funding cuts at a State level in 2016, the continuation of the Mid West Art Prize by the Geraldton Regional Art Gallery highlights not only the City of Greater Geraldton’s commitment to the arts, but also the local community’s commitment. Such an event would not be possible without the enthusiasm and continued sponsorship from local businesses.
This year generous sponsorship from the City of Greater Geraldton, Bendigo Bank, Red FM, Rio Tinto and Ian Blaney has allowed for an overall prize pool of $31 500.
I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the many artists from around the state who submitted works. Like previous years, there was again an overwhelming number of entries received, making the process of selection a difficult one. James Davies, Acting Director for Exhibitions and Collections from the Art Gallery of WA and Julian Bowron, Manager Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, worked alongside me in this selection process. Their expertise, willingness and enthusiasm is greatly valued. I am pleased to announce James, who was instrumental in the establishment of the Mid West Art Prize and served as the Director of the Geraldton Regional Art Gallery from 2008 to 2016, will be travelling to Geraldton to officially open the Exhibition alongside the City’s Mayor Shane Van Styn.
This year the judges of the Mid West Art Prize include Dr Ric Spencer, Curator Fremantle Arts Centre, David Doyle, Executive Director, DADDA and Lee Kinsella, Project Coordinator, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. I would like to thank each of the judges for generously taking time out of their busy schedules to travel to Geraldton and judge the event.
I would like to thank the small but devoted Geraldton Regional Art Gallery Team. Ellen Norrish and Marnie Douglas who have worked tirelessly in the lead up to the Opening Night and without their ongoing support, the Opening Night tonight and indeed the logistics of the Mid West Art Prize itself would not have been possible.
I would also like to thank the staff at the City of Greater Geraldton, in particular the Communications Team, Community and Cultural Development Team and the Building and Maintenance Team. The event would not have been possible without these teams’ generous support and willingness to assist (especially when called upon at the last minute).
On behalf of the Gallery staff, I also wish to thank the Gallery Volunteers who have once again been tireless in their support throughout.
Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the commitment and ongoing support of the Council in promoting the arts in our community and prioritising the ongoing operation of a regional gallery. This ongoing Council commitment enables people in Greater Geraldton area the opportunity to have access to such a culturally valuable facility as the gallery.
The Mid West Art Prize has become a renowned Prize in WA with an excellent reputation. With the overwhelming support of the City and the local community, coupled with the high calibre of entries that the prize continues to experience, I am confident the Mid West Art Prize will continue to grow in prestige and esteem in years to come.
JUDGES
Lee Kinsella
Project Coordinator
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, The University of Western Australia.
Lee has curated and managed exhibitions at Australian and national public institutions, including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, The Australian War Memorial and The National Film and Sound Archive (formerly ScreenSound Australia). She has written catalogue essays, articles and contributed to several books on Australia art, co-editing Into the Light: The Cruthers Collections of Women’s Art in 2012 and HERE&NOW13 in 2013.
Dr Ric Spencer Curator
Fremantle Arts Centre
David Doyle Executive Director, DADAA Ltd
Ric has been involved in numerous art activities as a curator, writer and artist, has exhibited in Australia, Asia and the UK and had his work published in Australian, UK and American arts journals. Ric wrote art criticism for The West Australian newspaper from 2004 until 2011 and during the later years also lectured at Curtin University where he holds a Doctor of Creative Arts and is currently Adjunct Professor.
David has been the instigator behind transformational change and sustained reinvention for DADAA over the past 22 years. He has led the organisation’s growth and embedded disabilityled practice, through partnerships with national and international arts practitioners, CACD organisations and government departments. David has forged groundbreaking partnerships with the philanthropic, corporate and private sector, setting a national standard for diverse, strong private and public sector giving for art led social change.
Behzad Alipour
My Melancholy Child [2017]
Graphite. 54 x 72cm
I discovered my own reflection in this work and shortly after, I traded my stable day to day job with amusing chaos. I am a rational adult. I fear to acknowledge the schism within myself. As the time passes, the distance between me and my inner child grows. Under melancholy, I surrender to once again awaken my faded imagination, to become constantly conscious of being. We are irrational. We are happy. We both will look after what we have in the box.
Dianna Ascoli
Tea for two [2017]
Tea bag strings. 130cm
Tea for two presents a 1.3m scarf knotted and knitted using tea bag strings. The works shows the time shared in friendship incomplete waiting for the next cup of tea.
Marina Baker
Portent (detail) [2017]
Oil on canvas. 50.5 x 76cm
What is approaching is unknown. When the components arrive at the Port of Geraldton, we can only guess at the eventual form and reason. Eventually a massive mechanism assembles dockside, as a railway carraige tipper for disgorged iron ore to waiting ships. But in its’ nebulous state, perhaps we’re more likely to ask questions of this scene - what does the export of raw materials really mean, for climate, for the country and its’ people, for the future? What is the real portent of our present decisions?
Luke Bassett-Scarfe Endemic Warming [2017]
Hand burnt drawing on Tamarix aphylla. 110 x 65 cm
Tamarix aphylla, or Tamarisk Tree has been declared a weed of National significance in Australia. You can see it as a mature tree at Saint Georges Foreshore and just about any coastal or rural place in WA. It drinks more water, but resists fire. I have hand burnt various WA Hardwood Slabs, but this slab had a more honest meaning to Earthcare. The honey coloured timber slab is “fish fillet-like” and dressed. The iconic Dhufish is endemic to Western Australia. It’s body is a pattern of hexagons, bringing added symbolism to the “Trophy Fish”. Inspired by the emerging contemporary Spiritual art movement.
Sam Bloor
Ladder Piece 1 (after Charles Ray) [2017]
Digital photograph. 109 x 76cm
Adaptation and Regeneration reflects on human intervention in the local natural landscape. The work attempts to culminate several natural processes I’ve witnessed in the local ecosystem such as how a hawk eats a rabbit, a rabbit ringbarks a tree, and how a honeyeater and a parrot need the tree to nest. The mixture of these elements into the form of a decorative hat suggests how things can be easily overlooked but may seem completely riduculous.
Noah Birch
This, that or maybe both (detail) [2017]
Steel and automotive paint. 140 x 140 x 110 cm
This, that, or maybe both is an abstract work about the use of perception to create knowledge. A singular view, or viewpoint, is not sufficient for a complete understanding or assessment.
Callum Battilana
Adaptation and regeneration [2017]
Rabbit skins, feathers, gum tree flowers and leaves. Variable
Adaptation and Regeneration reflects on human intervention in the local natural landscape. The work attempts to culminate several natural processes I’ve witnessed in the local ecosystem such as how a hawk eats a rabbit, a rabbit ringbarks a tree, and how a honeyeater and a parrot need the tree to nest. The mixture of these elements into the form of a decorative hat suggests how things can be easily overlooked but may seem completely riduculous.
Penny Bovell
Waterfall III (detail) [2016]
Acrylic on canvas. 136 x 136cm
Waterfall III is part of a series of works made in response to a residency undertaken in Northern Iceland in Feburary and March 2016. Since 1989 I focused on the sky’s amazing potential as immaterial, abstract and invisible. I playfully explore aerial phenomena’s many meanings by weaving a carefully constructed and enduring commentary about the subject, the nature of art and the act of viewing. My work explores phenomena such as clouds, air, the weather and climate change and more recently has explored the notion of deep space and cosmology; in other words attempting to find expression for how human’s understand the universe and being in the world.
Christophe Canato
Untitled [2017]
Archival inkjet print on pearl paper. 100 x 70cm
Social codes and categories are the departure point for Canato’s research. His narrative images examine social groups in our contemporary western countries such as males role and identity including gender orientation, politic or religion aspect.
Susanna Castleden
Navigation Lines (air, ocean, road) [2017]
Screenprint, paint pen and frottage on gesso. 154.5 x 101cm
Arising from a curiosity about the ways in which we locate ourselves in the world, this work brings together several different maps of the coast of WA. The navigational marks on nautical and aeronautical charts are invisible and immaterial beyond the chart, whereas a road line, which in this work is created by rubbing the raised line directly from the bitumen, has a distinct material presence. I was interested to see the relationship between the conceptual and physical lines of navigation that are used to demark a familiar geographical region.
Jacky Cheng
Lotus Blooming [2017]
Archival paper. 63.5 x 60cm
I have a special fondness for the paradoxical nature, mathematical precision and infinite recursions present in nature. Perhaps my architectonic background has widened my perspective in the relationships between art, nature and its complexities. Hence my art practice direction dictated that I should cut, sculpt and construct each and every layer of my chosen medium by hand to understand nature’s growing process. The ‘Lotus’ represents a deep connection between one’s self-awareness and presence. Lotus is a symbol of fortune from the Buddhism meaning in ‘rising and blooming above the muddy water to achieve enlightenment’. The layers and layers of paper cutting encapsulate the concept of different stages of enlightenment to finally emerge a lotus flower to which it represents ‘rebirth’ both in a figurative and literal sense. The beauty in paper cutting process motivated me to look deeper into the realms of nature and be inspired to look beyond the finished piece and appreciate the journey.
Olga Cironis
Playing War with Daddy [2017]
Toy gun and human hair. Varied
In my art practice I use my experience as a migrant woman living in Australia to explore human migration, identity and our connection to place.
In this work I have used toy guns and human hair to raise questions regarding human connection and what it means to belong. The guns have been sourced in Greece during the refugee crisis, referencing time, memory, human vulnerability and aggression. Like in a duel the guns face each other, meeting each other’s gaze. Human hair is seeped in corporeal and spiritual symbology. In this work the hair has been gifted from relatives, friends and strangers, it is bound and stitched, held together by a knot referencing power dynamics.
Olga Cironis
Crazy for You [2017]
Toy guns, thread and human hair. Varied
In my art practice I use my experience as a migrant woman living in Australia to explore human migration, identity and our connection to place. In this work I have used toy guns and human hair to raise questions regarding human connection and what it means to belong. The guns have been sourced in Greece during the refugee crisis, referencing time, memory, human vulnerability and aggression. Like in a duel the guns face each other, meeting each other’s gaze. Human hair is seeped in corporeal and spiritual symbology. In this work the hair has been gifted from relatives, friends and strangers, it is bound and stitched, held together by a knot referencing power dynamics.
Jennifer Cochrane
Monument with graffiti and impossible shadow [2017]
Tin and steel. 240 x 90 x 30cm
Monument with graffiti and impossible shadow is an interpretation of a common barricade form. The graffiti and shadow document interaction over time.
Helen Clarke
Burringurrah, Gascoyne (detail) [2017]
Reduction linocut print. 50 x 36cm
Mt Augustus is known as Burringurrah by the local Wadjarri people. WA inland country is amazing and abounds with unique wildlife, plants and outstanding geographic features. This is my depiction of a part of Burringurrah using the printmaking technique of reduction lino.
Margaret Danischewsky Going Bush [2017]
Woven grass and emu feathers.
Hat 36 x 17cm, Shoes – 30 x 9.5cm
This piece is called ‘Going Bush’, because when ever I need to go bush walking I always grab my hat and shoes. I have worked this piece of art with grasses and emu feathers because emus have always been very special to me since I was a little girl living in the bush.
Mel Dare
Endings are beginnings (detail) [2017]
Acrylic and ink. 122 x 153cm
Underlying my 17 years of art practice has been an interest in how meaning is constructed within individual subjectivity. How we are defined and confined by the physiology, psychology, culture, geography and time we are born into and live. Contexts which inform us and give us meaning. Meaning which is built, sustained and discarded moment by moment. Meaning we don’t always abide by, contexts we don’t always agree with or even comprehend.
A series of now.
Liam Dee
Sinking (detail) [2017]
Acrylic on canvas. 76 x 88cm
An island sinks in an endless ocean, the darkness consumes life and captures what ever remains, fossilised for all time beneath tranquil water. Atop the island we find the free thinkers, gorging themselves on what spills from the faceless pillar above them, a fountain of destruction that intends to digest whatever life it happens to encounter. Escaping this doom is a small vessel, containing the means to new life in lands not yet discovered.
Roger Dickinson
Coming Out of My Shell (detail) [2017]
Digital painting. 79.5 x 79.5cm
Coming Out of My Shell is a digital painting of a Nautilus (a pelagic marine cephalopod) and a cross-section of its chambered shell. As a denizen of the open ocean, Nautiluses are extraordinary survivors capable of adapting to many challenges, and I have portrayed the animal here as an allegory for both emotional and physical responsive change in human environments. The work is intended to be semi-representational: it is as much an emotional interpretation of how it may feel to be a Nautilus as it is an attempt to capture the visual beauty of an iconic species.
Robert Ewing
They took all they could take (detail) [2017]
Coloured pencil on cotton paper. 112 x 76cm
The local bushland of Pinjarra and the Darling Range remain the primary source of content referenced within my work. Intimate places within these environs are observed and studied to formulate multi-faceted imaginative landscape compositions. The artwork is an expression of a landscape in transition. It presents a scene that is resilient and scarred by natural and imposed activities of the past. A place of contrasting and discordant elements. This is a place where the splendid promise of tomorrow remains present as the primary narrative for continuation and hope.
Caspar Fairhall
Folded cube (detail) [2017]
Oil on linen. 137 x 137cm
In this work, the folded forms are considered as pure space, articulated with transparent colour, but with ambiguous spatial relationships both within themselves and in terms of the surrounding blank surface. The background can be considered a light void that is either infinitely deep, as in an astronomer’s photographic negative, or as a completely flat surface. I’m fascinated by the fact that images play a central (and possibly increasing) role in our understanding of the world, but have a double life as physical structures that we both look at and look into. This is especially true of paintings.
Fuse Art Collective Garla (detail) [2017]
Fine art print on cotton rag mounted on Aludibond laminated with plexiglass. 120 x 80cm
This transcultural work by the Fuse art collective continues their quest to push the boundaries of contemporary Australia Art by recognising a shared multicultural interpretation of Country through a collaboration between an Aboriginal and German and Italian contemporary visual and writing artists. This artwork seeks to show the parallel between the ‘fire within us’ and the fire also at the core of our Earth; it acknowledges the shared link between the primal energy at the core of the Earth and of each person. This artwork expresses the profound spirit connection of Country to people
Lynda Fynn Dickinson Night Moves, Shark Bay [2017]
TBC. 121 x 91cm
In this artwork, the artist has chosen symbolism and language to convey the essence of Shark Bay as felt by the artist. The layered blues and abstraction give the artist freedom to express as well as the viewer freedom to interpret that language. Shark Bay has layered meanings, and the cartouches have been used as a prism to reflect the artist’s emotional response to the environment and sense of place in a mysterious, yet planned way.
Robert Gear Outpost [2017]
Oil on canvas. 124.5 x 94cm
Outpost is a painting that embraces my ongoing preoccupation with the self and the world in which we exist. In a literal sense an outpost can be a settlement or fortress in a remote or sparsely populated location situated on the periphery of civilization. In a spiritual sense an outpost offers a refuge - a place to contemplate the journey that we tread. Ultimately to leave our everyday lives to connect with our psyche on a deeper level. Somewhere that oscillates between memory, knowledge and faith.
Fiona Gavino
Hommage to Nalda Searles & My Father (detail)
(via Louise Bourgeois & Robert Mapplethorpe)
Digital photograph. 101 x 151cm
My father and I are somewhat black sheep of the family and we two where very close. My father like Robert Mapplethorpe were taken by the first wave of HIV that swept through the gay community in the 1980’s, this is how I feel comfortable and familiar to be able to reference the work of Mapplethorpe. In my self portrait I have also referenced the great living treasure and fibre artist Nalda Searles who is the grandmother of the Central Australian fibre art movement. The La Fillette I am posing with is cobbled stitched using a technique Nalda is re-known for.
Nyapuru ‘William’ Gardiner
My Jamu (Grandfather) mine (detail) [2017]
Graphite. 60 x 70cm
He’s an old man this one, old Jimmy Gardiner. He used to stay like that now. My grandmother was a cripple lady. Her leg was born with disability, and she was married to my grandfather Jimmy Gardiner. Other Gardiner was a man who showed the way through the Canning Stock Route to Halls Creek [to the] first drovers. He showed them every waterholes. Before that they never made it, they perished. They went to Lake Disappointment. When they old man, they wear a naka, sort of like nappy in English, yeah. When they old they set up like that. When they old man they just sit in the shade like that. Around their head they would weave something like wool. They wear it for culture, law. You got a red one and a white one- it shows people the different tribe, different areas. He was a warrior. He talked Manyjiljarra. He was a Warmula tribe, Western Desert side.
Graeme Gibbons
The Creator’s Palette (detail) [2017]
Photographic print on canvas. 152 x 99cm
A beautiful array of colours in the Mid West of Western Australia’s salt lakes can without too much imagination remind one of a painter’s palette. The scene can’t be seen from surrounding roads but looks stunning from 2,500 ft
Leon Holmes Blood, Sweat and Shearers (detail) [2017]
Oil on board. 30 x 60cm
This painting was painted and completed en plein air in one sitting. I painted it purely for the pleasure of painting. The old shearing shed on the outskirts of Pinjarra attracted me after meeting the property manager. He told me that the shed will soon be pulled down and with it will go another part of our history and culture. The dry warm heat, the dust, and the Australian afternoon sun beating down on an iconic setting.
Eric Hynynen
Gang (detail) [2017]
Acrylic on canvas. 160 x 160cm
Gang is a darkly, surreal image of a group of youths. When the promises offered by the mass media and society raise unrealistic expectations, a backlash is unavoidable.
Lexie Lazenby
G.165 [2017]
Cyanotype, mono-prints & collage on vintage fishing maps. 124 x 34 cm
The celebration of the melancholy of two antiquated mediums. Cray fishing. My father’s industry. He is old now. He doesn’t fish now. I go to my fathers shed. I touch his tools. I can smell the hessian and the ropes. Salt. Diesel. His maps, old and tattered. I make marks with my father’s tools, his wire brushes, his floats, his ropes. I print the marks on the fragile substrates. I deconstruct his maps and coat with cyanide. I print them. I reconstruct, new from old. On my father’s maps.
Mia Laing
Electric Blue (detail) [2017]
Oil on canvas. 101 x 76cm
A capturing of the intense colour and movement of a female figure underwater, a silken cloth dancing behind her. A piece set in the beautiful clear waters of Western Australia.
Camilla Loveridge
Delhi (detail) [2017]
Polymer, render, graphite, Indian bridal thread, steel. 22 x 28cm each
Currently, my practice examines the materiality of drawing and painting as a sensory experience and association. I often work upon fragile substrates, which include delicate polymer skins, layered to record the passage of time and yet striving towards a sense of presence. A trip to India as an International Artist in Residence in Delhi in 2016 provided me with much inspiration, as I have responded in recent works to the heart, the grit and the layers of that city in skins and graphite.
Gordon Graeme Macleod
All Alone [2017]
Oil on canvas. 42 x 38cm
Elisa Markes-Young
The Original Place - Wallhanging #07 [2017]
Photograph, paper-cuts, doilies, hand-made lace, cotton thread, beads, sequins. 120 x 120cm
Over the years I’ve come to realise that the place that gives you a sense of home isn’t necessarily a physical space defined in geographical terms although it can be. Maybe it’s something you make up in your mind like a story to tell, something you dream about. James Baldwin once wrote that home is an irrevocable condition and Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic seems to think that memory might be a place, absent the notion of home, where we might live. I can relate to that. My memories are the closest I have to a home.
Camilla Loveridge
Plato’s Cave (detail) [2017]
Silverpoint, graphite, gouache and wax on marine ply board. 60 x 45cm
Currently I am investigating the materiality of drawing and painting as a sensory experience and association, excavating and reworking surfaces to create atmospheric pictorial spaces that also expose my own emotional space. In this work, a distorted shadow (which bears little resemblance to its referent) is drawn in silverpoint and graphite. Reflecting light at oblique angles, Plato’s Cave works to suggest a myriad of imaginative figures, challenging viewers to contemplate what is, actually, “real”.
Karin Luciano
I am who I Am. I will be who I will Be [2017]
Egg tempera, acrylic, photoluminscent paint, Australian red clay pigment, antique 23.5 ct gold and 925 silver leaf, Almadine Garnet, Green Peridot, blue Topaz.
108 x 108 x 9cm
Iconography and contemporary merge while implementing sacred geometry in every dimensional element of the #3 (trinity). Combining the symbols of Infinity, the Alpha and the Omega, this 3-levelled painting has 9 directional layers of sanded gesso, 6 frames, 9 semi-precious stones, egg tempera, photoluminescent paint, acrylic and Mary Magdalene anointing oil under museum glass. Process driven, symbolic and ritualising I drew on the 3 elements of gold, silver and Australian earth that consumed the last of my 100 year old 23.5 ct goldleaf and 925 silverleaf.
Elisa Markes-Young
The Original Place - Wallhanging #06 (detail) [2017]
Photograph, paper-cuts, doilies, hand-made lace, cotton thread, beads, sequins. 120 x 120cm
Over the years I’ve come to realise that the place that gives you a sense of home isn’t necessarily a physical space defined in geographical terms although it can be. Maybe it’s something you make up in your mind like a story to tell, something you dream about. James Baldwin once wrote that home is an irrevocable condition and Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic seems to think that memory might be a place, absent the notion of home, where we might live. I can relate to that. My memories are the closest I have to a home.
Matthew McAlpine
The colonial frame (deflating the James Stirling portrait frame) [2016]
Acrylic paint and earth pigment. Variable
The colonial frame (deflating the James Stirling portrait frame) is a replica of the gilded frame that houses a portrait of Western Australia’s first Governor, James Stirling. The work aims to interrogate the privilege given to the portrait in its display in Government House, Perth. Drawing upon the materiality and display as a deflated and flaccid object, the work attempts to subvert the original frame’s function as a symbol of power, authority and colonial celebration.
Roy Merritt
Daisy Work (detail) [2017]
Wool and cotton. 40 x 35 x 20cm each
The bags depict the wildflowers around my home land Yamatji Country. Mullewa. I learnt to do this kind of weaving when I was about 11yrs old at Mullewa school, year 1947. Growing up and leaving school I never thought about keeping this alive until about eight years ago was when I started weaving again.
Sarah Mills
The Fantasy and the Flesh [2017]
Digital photograph. 101 x 152cm
The Fantasy and the Flesh brings together a bewildered belle and a prehistoric beast. Here in Australia lives a creature, the crocodile, whose wisdom and knowledge by means of over thousands of years of observation and connection to the land outweighs any European existence. The crocodile is one totem within Indigenous Australia. Unfortunately, even with time and education, there is still a very evident segregation between Indigenous and European Australia. This image questions the fear of the unknown, throws caution to the wind and unifies two beings generally kept apart by this fear. When I photographed this 80 year old crocodile, I looked into its eyes and saw misunderstanding. It brings forth the question, what could we achieve and learn as a society if we set fear aside and replaced this with love and trust?
Sarah Mills
The Circle of Love and Loss [2017]
Digital photograph. 101 x 101cm
The road is no place for possums, where their gracious little curls are picked at by hungry crows, and soft, innocent souls are ignored by the human eye. The Circle of Love and Loss immortalises an endangered species currently found in abundance on roadsides all around Western Australia. Using the forms of our flora and fauna, it paints an aesthetic image of life and death. By beautifying the taboo, and animating the dead - giving it life and love once again - it entices the viewer to question the human’s place in all of this. This is an image of our time, environment and unseen ecosystem, and the silent sacrifices innocent little beings undergo for the human to thrive.
Ron Nyisztor
Oasis [2017]
Oil on canvas. 124 x 155cm 120 x 106cm
The pink container and its foam block have been in my collection since 2013. They were a gift and they held a bunch of cut flowers. The red container I found later; it had been blown by the wind and lay against the fence at Fremantle cemetery. They are the physical remains of heartfelt sentiments, somehow becoming more meaningful as bare and discarded objects. I often follow the passage of objects beyond their purpose and imbue them with new significance. Within my process ideas become overlayed and magnified, my personal baggage, joy, grief, doubt, belief and questioning are also drawn into it. In the end I hope to communicate many complicated associations in a simple and surprising manner.
Tiges Morton
Still Life Lures Me In [2017]
Acrylic on canvas. 170 x 129cm
The manufacturing of lures has moved a long way forward from the original glitter particle styles and is now majorly influenced by modern printing, painting and coating technologies. Techniques such as holographic foils, 3D printing, chromatic shift, luminescence, laser cutting and etching are now employed when creating fishing lures to make them appear irresistible. Exactly how this technology is applied is hard to source because information is kept well-guarded as trade secrets under Prior Art Patents. Our local fishing contingent has unwittingly immersed themselves in a form of popular visual culture that is internationally cutting edge.
Barbara O’Donovan
The Arrangement (detail) [2017]
Photography printed on cotton rag. 150 x 200cm
This work reflects the fleeting natural phenomena in the process of living and dying - changing from day to day. I strive for simplicity in my work. I pay close attention to the light, contrast and textures. By using selective focus, I am able to isolate subtle details not seen in passing perception, while at the same time convey the plants ephemeral presence. Printed cotton rag.
Marianne Penberthy
Dirt Work [2016]
Dirt, adhesive packaging tape and lace. 106 x 63cm
I am interested in the ground: standing on the ground, being grounded, gaining ground, and losing ground, ground use, ground work, observing ground and ground stories. This interest offers possibility, matter, history and introspection.
Michael Pilsworth
Geraldton Wildflowers [2017]
Photographic print on canvas. 40cm diameter
A welcome change in scenery on the dreary drive between Geraldton and Carnarvon.
Ross Potter Flame of the Old King Jarrah [2017]
Graphite on watercolour paper. 100 x 73cm
The Flame of the Old King Jarrah depicts the multiple facets of a tiny remnant from a sight of an illegally felled King Jarrah. Potter draws in close to both sides of this curious piece of bark, recreating the motions and swirls that have shaped it over its lifetime. These seemingly mobile patterns captured are impression left from centuries of existence that came to a swift end by misguided hands.
Ross Potter Power Station [2017]
Graphite on watercolour paper. 244 x 90cm
Using drone photography, Potter explored aspects of the Old Coogee Power Station, utilising these reference images to capture this stark monument. Avoiding the unnatural view from the drone, and maintaining intimacy, he combined different images of the site, manipulating them to expose a perspective that is unobtainable from land. Potter’s aim in capturing the heritage site is to show how time has corrupted the structure, which has been abandoned for half a century after it’s short industrial life. Waiting for new purpose, here it lies, shaped by the elements and reclaimed by the community.
Shaun Prior Divine Orangutan/Praying Mantis (DEATH)
changing a light bulb (detail) [2017]
Digital photograph. 101 x 152cm
How many Believers does it take to change a light bulb? Only one - their hands are already in the air. Self-portrait. A private moment of enlightenment in a bare, domestic void. The naked light-bulbchanger is a bridge between the sacred and the profane, the divine and the mundane, heaven and earth.
Anna Louise Richardson
Big Cat (detail) [2017]
Charcoal and ink on cement fibreboard.
300 x 90cm each
Operating in the area between fiction and reality Big Cat emerges from a sense of vulnerability that arises when alone in the bush. Exploring rural mythology and storytelling the work is a continuation of Richardson’s research into the existence of the Phantom Cat: a global mystery of a large feline cryptid stalking rural areas. Big Cat embraces conspiracy theories imposed on the natural environment and examines how our relation to place (and nature more broadly) is filtered and shaped through layers of history, storytelling and imagination.
Trevor Richards Moment [2017]
Acrylic polymer paint on canvas. 160 x 120cm
Involving layers of marks and colour this painting appears to capture the sensation of a momentary shimmer of light, seen for an instant then gone. The spatial illusions are ambiguous, are we close, distant, still or moving? The fleeting nature of this painting opens up a wide range of interpretations.
Susan Roux Black Landscape [2017]
Photocopy paper, thread, black shoe polish. 84 x 118cm
I use my inherited history to work in the post colonial tradition. My work analyses and responds to the cultural legacies of colonialism. The work often takes specific historical events as her point of departure, conveying burdens and conflicts with precise and economical means. Through the time-consuming act of sewing and the near-instant destructive creation of tearing paper, I engage in a movement of constant tension between creation and destruction, between body and landscape, between anatomy and geologyaltering and creating the notion of time and how it is measured.
Nicky Shelton
Nelly the Red Tailed Black Cockatoo [2017]
Oil on canvas. 103 x 73cm
To me birds are one of Mother Nature’s gifts. Through my art I try to capture the personality, beauty and magnificence of each of my chosen subjects. The sideways glance, regal distinctive plumage and ability to so beautifully compliment her surroundings is what attracted me to paint this striking female Red Tailed Black Cockatoo. I have affectionately called her “Nelly”. As a member of Birdlife Australia I am fortunate enough to have the support of many talented photographers who graciously provide me with reference material for my paintings.
Bruce and Nicole Slatter
Contained (detail) [2017]
Oil on board. 120 x 80cm
Contained, is a collaborative painting that extends from a recent research project into the delineated territories and spaces in the landscape. This work focuses the similarities of palette and void of space available in both the habitat of bush, and the contained trampoline. The green trampoline with its black mat and the darkness in the water and bush provide considerations of known and unknown entities.
Nicole Slatter
Wilderness (detail) [2017]
Oil on board. 120 x 160cm
This painting extends an interest in the wild and transgressive space of the Western Australian landscape. The process of painting visually privileges a cognitive, spatial negotiation through the physicality of pushing and pulling. The act of dragging a brush, covering and revealing, aims to enable a negotiation and consideration of the potential beauty in chaos.
Trevor Vickers
Untitled Painting [2017]
Acrylic on linen. 91 x 178cm
Geometric Abstraction Is best approached in a contemplative quiet manner.
Sarah Thornton-Smith
Wildflower Symphony No.8 (detail) [2017]
Gouche on paper. 54 x 41cm
Following a successful trip to visit the wildflowers in the mid west region during their seasonal splendour, Thornton-Smith explores the conversations abound between the landscape, flora and rhythm of life in this three-dimensional piece in gouache. Using her ‘colourwaves’ in the gradation manipulation of gouache, allows her to undertake kinetic and optical visual play experiences, thus reflecting the symphonies of colour in nature.
Holy Emptiness
I dream’t I was drowning in the sea at night. This work is a set of stills of that jagged memory. I believe, what has ignited this dream was my own history of experiencing air hunger. I can relate this condition to being alone in the sea at night. These twelve oils reflect my mortality as well as my promised redemption. Shaun Wake-Mazey received a double lung transplant on March 25th 2012.
This piece comes from explorations of domestics and the mundane. The memory and life of surfaces bringing merging the barrier between art and the everyday.
Michelle Wells
Judgement (detail) [2017]
Solvent transfer on rice paper. 10 x 60cm
The images for Judgment were found while Wells was researching for another project. Drawn to the photographs contained within leather-bound Police registers held by the State Records Office, accompanied by questionable calligraphic observations of transgressions, Wells chose to re-shoot the photographs, to retain their scale and isolation, to embed them on the delicate paper reminiscent of that found placed between the pages in private albums. This processing of the vulnerable, offered/s a meditation on the murkiness, the slippage often occurring between transgressor and transgressed.
Michelle Wells Clean Slate [2017]
Relief ink on folded rag, graphite on refreshment towel, solvent transfer and ink on rag. 18x35cm
Meagre Entities is an ongoing project meditating on loss, representation of others and of how intergenerational modes of behavior and impact on people and place. Referencing both forensic and museological tropes of a different time and employing the ancient technique of prosopopoeia, objects are called upon to stand in for the identity, character, nuance and history of the absent. Through the act of exhuming, sorting, privileging and destroying the collected, Wells retains, shifts and releases internal ruminations, seeking to connect others to these themes.
Lynette Voevodin
Greetings from Guilderton (detail) [2017]
Oil on Belgian linen. 133 x 98cm
I moved to the Moore River a few months ago: leaving Perth for the small beach side holiday place of Guilderton where “”postcards from the beach”” became the framework for this painting.
Occasionally the Moore River breaks the sand bar and joins the Ocean or the Ocean breaks the sand bar and joins the River. Holiday Love, Feral expressions, Weather conditions meet the Land, Kids meet Waves, Fish meet Hooks, Hunter meets Feral, Feet meet Soft Sand, albeit briefly.
