Exhibition Category: Past

The Andrew Sibley works to be presented in ‘Black & White’ are a series of paintings on Perspex that were created in the mid 1970s, a series of works on paper from the late 1970s / early 1980s, as well as a set of two additional works also on paper from the late 1990s. The Perspex works in particular are indicative of Sibley’s avant-garde approach to art making during this period and are significant specifically to Berlin in that they were created at a time just after the artist undertook a residency in West Berlin in 1972. Sibley’s connection to Germany continued throughout his life with his first exhibition taking place here in 1970, then through his showing again in a solo exhibition in 1972, then in two more shows in the mid-1970s and later in the mid-1980’s where he showed on numerous occasions in Cologne. This upcoming presentation ‘Black & White’ provides the first opportunity to see this important artist’s work in Europe since the late 1980s.

Most significantly and most directly influenced by artists such as Beckman, Klee, Munch, Bacon and the like, Sibley’s affinity with German and European Art was based on more than just his exhibiting here. 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 his life and long illustrious career.

Andrew Sibley’s exhibition ‘Black & White’ is his seventh solo presentation with Jacob Hoerner Galleries. Sibley is represented in all major institutional collections in Australia and Private Collections throughout the world, was senior lecturer at two of Australia’s most prestigious art schools and had three monographs written on him during his lifetime.

After months of dedicated time in his atelier in Melbourne, Australia, Gristcher has created an exceptional body of new work for exhibition at Tête in Berlin. For this ‘The Way Out of The Way Out’ series the artist’s main medium is fabric – fabric that is stitched, unstitched, cut, patched, rearranged, added to, subtracted from – completely transformed into essentially three dimensional works that drape from the wall like a ‘Contemporary Tapestry’ or ‘Soft Graffiti’. At times works in this series are literally buttoned together to make a larger whole work comprised of parts. While his selection of materials appears limitless his work is cohesive and every visual clue intentional even if at times the edges are frayed, the materials look indiscriminately marked, placed or are hanging by a thread.

Hidden in the stitches of his sets of soft panels the content of what Gritscher aims to express is equally impressive, avoiding prescriptive, didactic, language to posit ideas and more benignly provoke or initiate responses.

Andrew Gritscher’s ‘The Way Out of the Way Out’ is his third solo exhibition with Jacob Hoerner Galleries and first exhibition in Berlin. Gritscher is in the Australian Government’s Artbank Collection and in numerous private collections in Australia and Europe.

“The Ancients have been around for millennia. They watched we humans come, and they may well watch us go.

Sometimes they shift – ancient rock adjusts his shoulders, weary from being in the same position for so long. A creak, followed by a small rockslide. Rarely are we there to see it. The sea moves as one, and along this southern coast the fiercest winds are always from the ocean, nothing between some of these cliff faces and Antarctica except that immense sea and sky.

This collection of paintings is my tribute to The Ancients. Tinker as we do, with our digging and planting and pumping of gasses into the air, ultimately the rock and the sea are greater than us. They have the time to wait that we don’t. The great face of rock jutting out to the ocean must look upon us as foolish things, with our busyness and motion.

As with all my work, my hope is to give the viewer pause. That the painting will draw the viewer in, and over time perceptions will shift, as different aspects of the painting emerge, together with the wandering of the mind.”

Alison Binks | 2017

Emma Stuart’s most recent work is based on the landscape of Arrernte country that she has been immersed in for several years in Central Australia. Arrernte in Renaissance is a series intimate desert paintings that explore the notion of Arrernte country in rebirth. Focusing on the burning landscape, Stuart explores the use of burning to conserve and regenerate the land and how this allows the rebirth of the land and all that lives there.