9 February - 21 February 2012

Gallery One

envelopes:ink, line, video & sound

A solo exhibition by Richard Byers

An experiment in sustained balance, considered decay, thoughtful slowness, containing and releasing emotion, moments of transition, the moments just outside of your understanding, within the fringes or just beyond them, that momentary tension of approaching an edge, the sensation before falling.

These works are envelopes for storing, capturing, reflecting , studying or disposing of my emotional state, at their moment of creation. In every work is myself, as I was at that moment. They are emotional momentary envelopes, and like ADSR envelopes used in sound modulation, so a concept begins, fades, is constructed and then released as finished work.

The works are all hand-drawn or hand-held, without assistance, no tripod, no ruler, no guides. They are created as improvisations, with handcrafted character, explored and appreciated, the subtly of line thickness, the qualities of ink and light, of movement or stillness, the attention on a moment.
Many contain a distinct slowness, the slowness of time, sound or sight, the slowness of process and determination, and the slowness of the spirit. Many of the works also are of their moment, moments in time or lost to time, precious moments that pass quickly, but can be valued for a lifetime.

This body of work was developed between 2009 – 2011 while living in Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney & Brisbane. I hope you find something that intrigues or inspires you within these envelopes of momentary emotion

Gallery Two

PROLOGUES

A solo exhibition by Marie Peter-Toltz

The works exhibited in ‘PROLOGUES’ are concerned with portraying figures in both implied and nuanced autobiographical narratives and invented pictorial spaces where fact and fiction are mixed. By exploring intimate scenes of my past put into both allegorical and contemporary settings, I am playing with the idea of time, memory and the relationship between our actual past, our memories of our past, and the residue of feelings and emotions from our past that make us who we are today.

While the subject of childhood is a theme that informed my previous exhibitions, this time I wanted to focus mainly on variations of a single protagonist who interacts with the viewer’s gaze. In exploring her fragile and varied emotional and psychological states, a colorful and contrasted palette evolved for this smaller scale series of paintings. Fusing real-life models, photographs, and the memory of myself as a child, utilizing real spaces as well as imagined rooms and worlds, each painting is a hybrid image that both corresponds to reality and is opposed to it.

This process was new and fresh for me: using drawings and studies in meticulous preparation before employing a method of stream of consciousness while painting, bright colors, shapes and images emerged, the melancholic figures appeared, surprising atmospheres evolved, paintings were destroyed and reinvented, until what remained is the actual physical objects that are the paintings you see now in this exhibition.

Gallery Three

the almost

A solo exhibition by Kate Dambach

embracing ambiguity

Tiny overwhelmingly sensual moments gathered together, counteracting each other, mimicking and mocking one another until they collide in the way that is more. In one moment: more and less and everything inbetween.

We are not there yet.

almost

threshold

ambiguous color shapes spaces matters elements
interacting colliding combining creating

more to come

seconds to sublime

FAILSPACE

MIRACLE

A solo exhibition by Iris Siyi Shen

Google studies (mindless google-ing over the Internet for a long period of time) initially began as a way for the artist to combat work boredom and late night insomnia. In her latest Google venture, Iris explores the term ‘miracle’ over the Internet; determine to be an instant expert on this subject matter.

In the process, she discovers that:
i) The word miracle came from Latin word mirari which means to wonder.
ii) There are no streets in Australian named Miracle.
iii) There are six Miracle supermarkets in Sydney.
iv) You can kayak from Enmore to Miracle in Kentucky in 56 days and 4 hours according to Google map.
v) There is a mathematical formula designed to calculate the probabilities whether a miracle has happened or not.
vi) A proportion of Australian finds miracle skeptical.
vii) Australian believes in luck.

In interpreting these findings, the artist’s use of text and everyday objects in this space becomes an extended act of both presenting and continue surveying the subject of miracle.