BERLIN

Andrew Sibley
BERLIN (1973-1975)

Official Opening 6-8pm Thursday February 15 2024
February 15 – March 30 2024

Melbourne Art Week
Special Opening 6-8pm Saturday February 24 2024

The selection of works on exhibition as a part of BERLIN (1973-1975) are Enamel & Oil on Paper on Board paintings created between 1973-1975 directly after the Sibley returned from a Residency in Berlin in 1972. Indicative of Sibley’s avant-garde approach to art making during this period they are all rare and iconic works.

Most significantly and most directly influenced by artists such as Beckman, Dubuffet, Klee, Bacon and the like, Sibley’s affinity with German and European Art was based on more than just his exhibiting there, the impact of his connection to Europe – and understanding of the ideas that were explored by the major artists of the 20th century he followed and those that he was a contemporary of – remained a key part of on his work throughout illustrious career.

Berlin runs February 15 – March 30 2024

Jacob Hoerner Galleries
I Sutton Place Carlton
Naarm Melbourne
Australia 3053

Jacob Hoerner Galleries + Pleysier Perkins

Jacob Hoerner Galleries + Pleysier Perkins

ANDREW GRITSCHER
ALEX HAMILTON
SEAN HOGAN

February 12 – Now Extended until May 4 2024

Pleysier Perkins Art Space
89 Wellington St St.Kilda
Naarm Melbourne
Australia 3182

Jacob Hoerner Galleries, in collaboration with Architect Firm Pleysier Perkins, is thrilled to be able to present the work of Andrew Gritscher, Alex Hamilton & Sean Hogan at the Pleysier Perkins Art Space at 89 Wellington St St.Kilda from February 12 – May 4 2024.

Each of the Artists included in this presentation have consistently shown in Australia & Internationally, they have all been a part of Major Art Fairs, Museum Exhibitions & Solo presentations throughout their careers & in recent years have all been represented by Jacob Hoerner Galleries finding linkages & contrasts with each others practice. Now to be shown at the PP Art Space their particular perspectives & output as Artists will be on show to Melbourne audiences that are keen to see Contemporary Art in various site-specific spaces & contexts.

For further information pls contact
Jacob Hoerner Galleries
info@jacobhoernergalleries.com

Data Fields

Sean Hogan
Data Fields

Official Opening 6-8pm Thursday October 5 2023
October 5 – 28 2023

“The ‘Data Fields’ series of works continue Hogan’s interest in systems theory and complexity science, the core concepts which underpin his artistic practice. The new ‘Data Fields’ express ideas of unpredictability, repetition, connectedness and ncertainty. By imposing a simple self-initiated system ordered by grid structures, a refined colour palette and bespoke stamping tools, a continuous patterned field is generated – an exercise of fusing process and concept to reflect the data driven landscape we now exist with.”

Sean Hogan
October 2023

Data Fields runs November 2 – 25 2023

Jacob Hoerner Galleries
1 Sutton Place Carlton
Melbourne Australia 3053

Open
12-5 Wed-Sat
(& by Appt)

Faint recollections we lived there

Alex Hamilton
Faint recollections we lived there

Official Opening 6-8pm Thursday October 5 2023
October 5 – 28 2023

“Faint recollections we lived there” is centred around a pianola roll I have written and illustrated, an opera about the new digital feudalism philosophy of “Longtermism” also known as “Effective Altruism”, enthusiastically embraced by billionaires such as Musk, Bezos, Mercer, Zuckerberg, etc. The show might or might not, lead some viewers to speculate on humanity’s drive for progress in directions which seem to be as much in favour of life as they are about destruction of ourselves as a species. “Faint recollections we lived there” transforms seemingly disastrous scenarios into landscapes of myriad entangled points and vectors through conflicting and parallel nuanced spaces, illusions, and surfaces. Paintings and text construct ways with and around meeting places such as Federation Square with its designed but never built Apple shop, and all screens on devices throughout the world, which I also see as meeting places. Paintings in this show are around, behind and in front of strips of recycled acrylic sheets, reminiscent of the surface of screens, which, however featureless, are membranes or textures with optical qualities, 3-dimensional material surfaces of imagination and creativity. Screens are also one of many portals availing lives we lead to the surveillance economy.

Alex Hamilton
October 2023

Faint Recollections we lived there runs October 5 – 28 2023

Jacob Hoerner Galleries
1 Sutton Place Carlton
Melbourne Australia 3053

Open
12-5 Wed-Sat
(& by Appt)

Spooky Action

Rebecca Agnew
Spooky Action

Official Opening 6-8pm Thursday August 3 2023
August 3 – 26 2023

So deep. Light dwindles and ‘Spooky Action’ rifles the mysterious beliefs we hold about the deep sea. This new series of paintings and works on paper by Rebecca Agnew at Jacob Hoerner Galleries goes into the trenches of the underworld, igniting the laws of wonderland in the deep sea. Colourful, abstract and maximalist, Agnew’s wonderland is at the elbow of the imaginary and the symbolic; perception and culture.

Rebecca Agnew
June 2023

Spooky Action runs August 3 – 26 2023

SPRING 1883 PREVIEW

Spring 1883 Preview

REBECCA AGNEW
ANDREW GRITSCHER
SEAN HOGAN
ALEX HAMILTON
PETRA KLEINHERNE
ANDREW SIBLEY

Afternoon Opening
4-6pm Saturday July 15 2023

July 13 – 29 2023

Jacob Hoerner Galleries
I Sutton Place Carlton
Naarm 3053

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Concurrent to Jacob Hoerner Galleries + Radar on 15/06/23 to be held at

Radar
Mid-Century Showroom
430 George St Fitzroy
Naarm 3065

Sponsored by the Melbourne Gin Company
www.melbournegincompany.com

JACOB HOERNER GALLERIES + RADAR

A collaborative presentation of Art & Design

JACOB HOERNER GALLERIES
+ RADAR

Paintings on Linen & Ink on Ceramic Tiles
ANDREW GRITSCHER

+

Furniture & Lighting Design Labels from Radar

FINN JUHL
HANS WEGNER
BORGE MOGENSEN
ILLUM WIKKELSO
ARNE VODDER
ICO PARISI
PAOLO BUFFA
MAX INGRAND

Special Opening Event
at 2 Premiere Inner City Locations

Afternoon Opening
4-6pm Saturday July 15 2023

Jacob Horner Galleries
I Sutton Place Carlton
Naarm 3053

+

Radar
Mid-Century Showroom
430 George St Fitzroy
Naarm 3065

Sponsored by the Melbourne Gin Company
www.melbournegincompany.com

 

UNBECOMING

UNBECOMING

Georgia Biggs
Dord Burrough
Beatrice Dahllof
Alex Hamilton
Moya McKenna
David Palliser
Julia Powles
Gareth Sansom
& Peter Westwood

Unbecoming is a group exhibition of work from nine artists at different stages of their careers whose painting practices embrace a process of change, duration and imagination. For a painting to form into something, to coalesce materially and conceptually, to shape itself to its final destination, it must necessarily go through a series of transformations. These transformations of state, where paint acts as the slippage from thought into action, from one type of material manifestation to another, characterise painting as fundamentally unpredictable. Un-making and making are equally valued – the painting through the nature of its process ‘unbecomes’ in order to become something new. It is in this period of to-ing and fro-ing, of one thing becoming another, then on to another, that new and different ideas emerge. And in bringing forth the new, paint has the capacity to parallel imagination, free to summon impossible realities, combine disparate imageries and hold close incompatible forces.

David Palliser & Julia Powles
Co-Curators + Participating Artists
May 2023

Georgia Biggs, Julia Powles & Peter Westwood are Represented by Block Projects | Alex Hamilton is Represented by Jacob Hoerner Galleries & Patrick Heide (London) | David Palliser is Represented by Jacob Hoerner Galleries | Moya McKenna is Represented by Neon Parc | Gareth Sansom is Represented by Station Gallery | Dord Burrough is Represented by Lon | Beatrice Dahllof is Represented by Huxley-Parlour (London).

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CATALOGUE ESSAY

UNBECOMING 

The title of this exhibition might be a good place to start. Used as a pejorative the term unbecoming outlines certain actions or objects as unsuitable; subjectively deemed inappropriate for the context in which they operate. Questions of taste come into play, we wonder if the gesture, action or artefact fits in? Is it ok? Can it be tolerated? The idea that contemporary art might be seen as unbecoming – indecorous, off-putting or ugly – is not new, it is a narrative that runs in tandem to art making from the mid nineteenth century onwards. By placing a naked woman at the centre of what would have otherwise been a quaint scene of friends enjoying a picnic lunch, Édouard Manet broke with the conventional rules of the times and challenged what could be depicted. Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe created a rupture in not only painterly technique and choice of imagery, but also in the thinking of audiences. The figures appear discordant, jarring in their relationship to each other – the clothed men chat nonchalantly to each other while the naked woman stares out of the canvas at us –– what were they doing, what had they been doing in this rural idyll?

The appropriateness of responding tastefully to a modern world capable of unimaginable atrocities was legitimately challenged by twentieth century artists to such an extent that this question now sits outside any meaningful conversation on contemporary art. Yet to be unbecoming, to be not quite right – to not really fit in – is a quality that still has the power to unnerve us. Art at its essence exists to pose questions. Sometimes this is done in a jarring, forthright or shocking manner, and other times it is more nuanced, the questions more probing of our inner selves and our unthinking certainties. By making us examine what we see before us, art asks us to reconsider our accepted understanding of the way things are – and it is here, in the space of finding a new way of thinking, that the second meaning of unbecoming comes to the forefront.

For a painting to form into something, to coalesce materially and conceptually, to shape itself to its final iteration, it must necessarily go through a series of changes. These changes of state, where paint becomes the slippage from thought into action, from one type of material manifestation to another, characterise painting as fundamentally mutable. At any point in the process of arriving at the finished work, a painting might have reached its completion; when we look at a painting, we can often see that embedded within it are its previous manifestations. Sometimes we can see the decision making of the artist, while at other times we know from the thickness of the paint, the wipes and smears, or via an awareness of the layering of colour upon colour, or the reveal that happens through the scraping of a surface, that earlier versions and differing possibilities are embedded within the painting. We are looking at not only the painting as it is before us, here in the moment, but also the duration of its making. Such an encounter with duration – time spent – brings into focus the sense of becoming intrinsic to painting, which is, as Australian philosopher Elizabeth Grosz more accurately articulates, an engagement with unbecoming (1).

The unbecoming of one thing to become another is an inherent part of making paintings. The painter makes a mark, she forms that into something on the canvas – a shape, a face, a chair, and then after consideration she alters that thing, changing it into something else. The paint and the brush and the mind integrate to form a sequence of becomings, of solidifications; manifestations of ideas that come into being through first unbecoming the thing they were.

Change requires a process of un-making as much as making. Painting through the nature of its process unbecomes to become something new. It is in this period of to-ing and fro-ing, of one thing becoming another, and on to be yet another that new and different awareness’s appear. And in bringing forth the new, paint has the ability to parallel imagination, free to summon impossible realities, combine disparate imageries and hold close incompatible forces.

It is painting’s inextricable engagement with duration that underscores this experience for the viewer. Duration – the space between actions – is the place, according to French philosopher Henri Bergson, that the new can be developed (2). Something happens, something unknown takes form and shape in the elliptical qualities of duration, where thought loops back on itself and undoes at the same time as it creates. In developing the concept of duration Bergson sought to understand the way that time can be perceived within us, as non-linear. Clock-time, to use Bergson’s term is mechanical, measurable, and unalterable, whereas for an individual, time is both fast and slow, time is partial, incomplete. We return to past thoughts, we pick up where we left off, we experience time concurrently and separately, our inner lives are not necessarily experienced sequentially. Painting is an encounter with both clock time and interior time. Not only does the physicality of its making reside within the final iteration of the painting (we see that this painting took time to create) but within the myriad of readings attributable we bump up against the inner world of the artist, whose themes, motifs and ideas run to a separate, internal timeframe. Memories, snippets of conversations, dreams, research, and future imaginings co-exist within an internal duration. We can summon up references from our past instantly, juxtaposing unrelated events, forming new and impossibly fanciful structures. In this manner we can find time, painting and thought analogous, where each could be conceived of as a shape, a space of action, or a heterotopia.

Thought, says American poet and art critic, Susan Stewart is like water (3). We dive into it and re-surface, it engulfs us, it carries us along, and we belong to it in a manner that is elemental; thought untethers us from the material world – in our thoughts we too are able to unbecome.

Julia Powles
Julia is an artist, curator, and writer, living and working in Naam/Melbourne. She respectfully pays tribute to the people of the Kulin Nations, and their Ancestors and Elders, past, present, and future on whose unceded lands she lives and works.

Notes:
1. Elizabeth Grosz (2005) Bergson, ‘Deleuze and the Becoming of Unbecoming’, Parallax, 11:2, 4-13. Routledge.
2. Henri Bergson, (2010) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, Dover Publications
3. Susan Stewart (2005) Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics University of Chicago Press

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Jacob Hoerner Galleries
1 Sutton Place
Carlton 3053
Naarm / Melbourne

Open
12-5pm Wed- Sat
(& by Appt)

For further information / inquires

info@jacobhoernergalleries.com
+ 61 (0) 412 243 818

From Open Clouds

Monique Morter
From Open Clouds

Official Opening 6-8pm Thursday May 18 2023
May 18 – June 10 2023

Jacob Hoerner Galleries
1 Sutton Place
Carlton 3053
Naarm / Melbourne

Open
12-5pm Wed- Sat
(& by Appt)

_____

For further information / inquires

info@jacobhoernergalleries.com
+ 61 (0) 412 243 818

Perspex – 1973-1979


Andrew Sibley

PERSPEX – 1973-1979

Official Opening 6-8pm Thursday April 20 2023
To be Officially Opened at 6.30pm by Dr Vivien Gaston
Honorary Fellow | University of Melbourne

April 20 – May 13 2023


ARTIST PROFILE

Andrew Sibley’s works in Perspex and bas-relief demonstrate his persistent concern to investigate the process of seeing. Sibley invents a visual world ambiguously poised between painting and sculpture, a kind of drawing in three dimensions in which layers of space resonate and interact with painterly ambiguity. He exploits the tensions between the veils and layers, fogging up the visual field at the same time as flourishing a slippery quality of paint that is dragged, wiped and split across surfaces with a surreal spontaneity.

Dr Vivien Gaston
2003

Excerpt from the Exhibition Catalogue for Andrew Sibley – The Beautiful Human Zoo at the Monash University Museum of Art (2003)

Perspex – 1973-1979 runs April 20 – May 13 2023

For further information / inquires

info@jacobhoernergalleries.com
+ 61 (0) 412 243 818

Jacob Hoerner Galleries
1 Sutton Place
Carlton 3053
Naarm / Melbourne

Open
12-5pm Wed- Sat
(& by Appt)