SEVENTH GALLERY

155 Gertrude Street Fitzroy

Exhibition Opening
Wednesday 17th August 6-8pm

Exhibition Dates: August 17th – September 3rd 2011

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 12pm-6pm

Gallery Two

THE OK COLLECTIVE (Oliver cloke and Kathy Heyward)

Uniquely Yours – 155a Gertrude Street, Fitzroy 3065

‘Uniquely Yours’ screams aloud the sign of the times as neighbouring art-spaces are sold off and threatened with gentrification, and it’s mimicry – initially coincidental
– becomes both artwork and art statement.

Through spatial re-appropriation the viewer is left de-centred; the inhabitant develops their relationship to the space through action and alteration and the viewer becomes not unlike a domestic visitor or, alternately, dependent upon their own resonance within the space, a voyeur. A social game is developed as a form of artwork and allowance is made for direct observation of how people function within private space – the irony of course, being obvious.

the mind of itself and the world
A collaborative project facilitated by Brooke Shanti Fenner, Oliver Cloke and Tahlia Jolly, with artists Laura Carthew, Nickk Hertzog, David Mutch and Mattie Young

come and see the artworks, especially ‘Tent’ that the OK collective have put in.

Substance is a group that explores materiality in 21st century art. Material works produced since the 1970s carry deeper intentions that are inevitably read into the time it was produced, or

the context in which it the object is placed. One can no longer view a minimalist sculpture, and consider it purely for its formal qualities. The postmodern agenda almost demands that substantial meaning be applied to material objects. It is difficult to consider a formal artwork in post-modern art, and not engender conceptual or narrative concerns. The exhibiting artists are concerned with materiality and abstraction and apply a deeper substance to their work, either through their process or by implying a reading onto the work.

Each artwork carries within it its own formal aesthetic. In modernist thought it could be viewed as a purely formal work. However on further consideration, one could argue that the materiality of these works in Substance is linked through context. By placing them together we question the nature of their formality, and the bearing that each work has on the others in the space. Substance proposes that when we observe these substances together, the postmodern condition, born of an age of digital and artificial ambiguity, is programmed to read these artworks as more than merely formal. Substance is beyond mere materiality, it is an exploration of today’s insistence for concept and narrative. This show aims to provoke questions in the viewer – are these works purely material, or is there substance to them?

ARRAY

OLIVER CLOKE,  KATHY HEYWARD & KATE TUCKER

BUS PROJECTS

ARRAY is a Graduate Show for three Artists who share a fascination with the investigation of ideas through making and construction. Through their mixed media work they investigate the collation and re-ordering of ideas and materials. By exploring the limits of chosen materials they seek to enhance properties inherent within them, at the same time crafting a sensory experience for the viewer. As materials are manipulated to assign new meanings, the Artists explore the enhancement of value through the act of making.

The works included will represent a methodical approach to Art Making driven by a need to explore and illustrate the space between the experience of Art making and it’s wider context. A language of disruption and ambiguity will link the work, as well as a conscious play on physical and Image space. As Kate’s Worlds and Internal Worlds disrupt and reverse the picture plane, Kathy’s string installations will divide and rearrange the room into a series of images. Kathy and Oliver’s Installation will aim to highlight through mimicry, the differences between the crafting of artworks and the methodologies of exposition of art in the public realm. Through their manipulations of material and space, the Artists will seek to construct physical and emotional experiences for the viewer, inviting them to ponder what impact that has on their own thinking and awareness.

Oliver Cloke is a London born artist now living in Melbourne, after completing his Ba(Hons) at the Slade School of Fine Art London (2006) he became a teacher of Art, and is now studying the Post-Graduate Diploma at the VCA (2009). He has exhibited and curated shows in London, Malta and New York and his work has been privately collected.

Katherine Heyward is a city born, country bred artist who lives in a tram. She completed her BFA in Printmaking at the VCA in 2000 and then pursued various means, settling on teaching secondary students the meaning of art and life. She is currently studying the Post Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts at the VCA (2009). Kathy has exhibited in a range of group and solo shows since 1994.

Kate Tucker is a Melbourne based Artist working across a variety of media. Her Illustrations have appeared in many publications, and her Melbourne-made Bag label, Katarzynkha, gained a cult following before being would up to allow Kate to focus on her Art. Kate has featured in two books and in 2005 was the Winner or the Flinders Quarter Award, in the Emerging Designer Category. Kate is currently completing a Graduate Diploma in Visual Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. In ARRAY Kate will exhibit animation, mixed media paintings, drawings and sculpture.

It’s going to be hard to critique my own curation, so any comments would be appreciated. The show is a mixture of artists from the Slade School of Fine Art. The artworks range from large kinetic copper sculpture (Candida Powell-Williams) through to four colour silkscreen printing (Sonke Faltien), with touches of brilliance dotted around the gallery. I formulated the show as way to enhance my own practice as an artist and also to engage with the local community.

We started the wee off with a bang on Sunday when more than 90 people came into the gallery to take part in the ‘Big Draw’, which was tremendous fun. Children and adults were literally sprawled out everywhere, even on the pavement outside. Within the cacophony there was some amazing drawings going on. It was brilliant to see children remonstrating their parents for not drawing properly as if they had switched roles and were not holding their knife and fork with proper etiquette. The whole event has to commended and a special mention has to go to the lead role, Diana Schiler.

The week rolled by so fast and so much happened but the highlights have to be the Punch and Judy (Andrea Greenwood) which was performed in the marketplace on Thursday lunchtime and at the private view on Friday evening. Both were a riot, the mishaps seamlessly sewn into the plot line as these ancient rivals battle it out but not in a traditional beachside manner. The other sculptors in the show were Susan Stainman with her abstract sculptures that play with your perceptions of objects, and Luke McCreadie who produced smaller but just as cryptic artworks. You visually rummage through his secret number 1, but to no avail. One guy spent 20 minutes pouring over the piece, shouted ‘got it!’ and then left. He never told me if he had got the answer or not.

On the painting side there was a great diversity. Sam hackings miniature landscapes attracted a lot of attention, as they were dotted around the gallery. As did Tom Yeomans’ 9 panel painting that bedazzled and bemused all who walked in, as it seemed to bring everybody who passed in the street. Another major artwork was Eemyun Kangs the skull that also seemed to hold peoples attention as they deciphered the fungal shapes and realised the skull shape. Last but no means least were Chloe Le Tissier who had some beautifully elegant portraits in the show and Jack Killick who exhibited his fantastic abstract drawings.

ConsumeCreate was started by Oliver Cloke. He has found collaborative artwork the perfect medium for the kind of research that he wishes to investigate. It has enabled him to explore the notion of the finished artwork. As an art teacher he has studied the idea of achievement and the criteria for success in
creative fields. When creating his own sculptures and paintings he found that the major factors for success was finding an appropriate space to exhibit, finding the best artwork to surround it with and the discussion the ensues.

His experimentation with collaborative practice started while at the Slade School of Fine Art organising groups of students in the production of a limited edition hand printed fanzine, which lead onto curating shows in London, New York and in Malta. His practice has evolved into enhancing other’s art, involving planning many hours of discussion and co-operation. This show ConsumeCreate is a culmination of conversations with different artists.

The Participating Artists:

Tom Yeomans
Tom Yeomans tells narratives through pictures, whilst not denying the inherent fraud that is in the activity of making pictures.

Susan Stainman
Susan’s love of everyday objects is the driving force behind her work. Reinterpreting their function and context, her sculptures attempt to add mystery and playfulness to life.

Chloe Le Tissier
London based artist Chloe Le Tissier combines a confident and delicate approach to painting, using specifically obscure subject matter to construct a dialogue between and within her works. Le Tissier’s paintings feel theatrical and suggest a film still quality. They transcend the barriers separating abstract from realist, surreal from ordinary. The paintings operate on different levels, questioning the process of painting as well as traditional narrative.

Sam Hacking
Brought up in Cambridgeshire Sam has a wonderful relationship with the landscape. This is evident in the qualities that she brings out in her artwork. The depth passion and detail is evident in every brushstroke.

Eemyun Kang
Paints dreamy isolated worlds, spheres of unique appearance and attribute, populated by the rarest of flora and the strangest of beings. Kang evokes a pure land of myth, an untouched zone, located far in the antipodes of the human imagination.

Nick Spears
Nick Spears’ work is an amalgam of his passions, Music and Art. He produces bold powerful paintings that describe his personal journey through the music that he listens to. He deals with the duality of hedonism/ responsibilty and the line between inner and outer lives. He is currently studying at The Slade.

Sonke Faltien
A photographer but also a philosopher his artworks consider the relationship between the idea of the sublime and the utopian dream of the atomic age. Born in Hanover he has exhibited extensively in London, Liverpool, Bremen, Hildeshiem (Ger) and Brno (Czech Rep).

Candida Powell-Williams
Candida’s work explores the thematic relationship between the body and space, the internal and the external. The objects perform independently through the use of motors or natural elements such as the wind, but in some cases the body is called on to animate the kinetic elements. The particularity of the materials for each individual object is fundamental to the way that sculpture behaves. The objects exist somewhere between the functional and the dysfunctional and invite the viewer to experience the space between reality and imagination.

Andrea Greenwood
Andrea Greenwood’s work stems from a primary interest in the object and¬†its materiality. Often what the object is or what it represents may be directly challenged by the material it is made in and thus behaves contrary to the viewers’¬†expectations. More recently the process by which a work is made has become more important within her works, in particular the act of making as a¬†performance¬†or spectacle combined and how this might become implicit to a finished sculptural work.

The Programme of Events:

Sunday 12
Quentin Blake’s BIG DRAW, the gallery will be taken over by the young budding artist of Henley-on-Thames. All welcome refreshments provided.

Monday 13
The gallery will be open to the public

Tuesday 14
From 6pm until 8pm, there will be drawing lessons, it is free to come along and participate. (Bring a pencil)

Wednesday 15
The gallery will be open to the public

Thursday 16
There will be a live artists performance in the market place from 12am until 2pm.

Friday 17
Private view evening. From 6 -9pm come to see the work and meet the artists with refreshments, all welcome.

Saturday 18
The gallery will be open untill the early afternoon.