Exhibition Category: Past

Gallery Open Saturday November 26 from 6-8pm
Day/Night – Tue Nov 15 – Sat Nov 26 – Window Viewing *
* Window Viewing – All works can be seen from the shop frontage (& by appointment)

‘Two themes that I keep coming back to whilst making these works are – Thinking which sits outside of logic, a different way to thinking, an intuition, simply an understanding of things and secondly our true nature.  Throughout making some of these pictures I have been thinking about Zen Koans. One of the pictures directly references a Koan, another (the largest work) is my own Koan. So below, for an artist’s statement, is an old Koan – it relates for me very well to a number of the pictures and how I think as well as the title of the show.

“The Ch’uan Teng Lu records an encounter between Tao-hsin and the sage Fa-yung, who lived in a lonely temple on Mount Niu-t’ou, and was so holy that birds used to bring him offerings as flowers. As the two men were talking, a wild animal roared close by, and Tao-hsin jumped. Fa-yung commented, “I see it is still with you!” -referring, of course, to the instinctive “passion” of fright. Shortly afterwards, while he was for a moment unobserved, Tao-hsin wrote the Chinese character for “Buddha” on the rock where Fa-yung was accustomed to sit. When Fa-yung returned to sit down again, he saw the sacred Name and hesitated to sit. “I see,” said Tao-hsin, “it is still with you!” At this remark Fa-yung was fully awakened… and the birds never brought any more flowers.”‘ – Andrew Gritscher | October 2016

In Fiat, Mike Portley explores themes relating to the control of currency and the impact of economies on the natural world. The ubiquitous concept of fiat currency or legal tender is in itself a a token symbol for a stored unit of value; and historically relates to items or resources of value taken from the natural world. The extrapolation of the financial system, through time, has distorted the intrinsic symbolism or currency so that the unit itself has more value than the real wealth around us. Portley asks questions about the flawed logic of the monetary system and its disconnection from natural systems.

Portley infuses Egyptian symbols and Judeo-Christian mysticism to highlight the evolution and manipulation of economies via the ruling elites to the common citizen. The use of specific symbology and financial jargon are used to juxtapose their financial context with the natural world. Surviving ancient currencies such as gold and silver are used to allude to the past and to times where currency was finite and relative in value to items of trade. The analogy of flight is used consistently in the works to communicate ideals of freedom and a flight from the counter-intuitive systems that underpin many of our current problems.

Sweet is a presentation of works on paper from the 1990’s and early 2000’s by Andrew Sibley in the second half of his career when his approach to making art shifted to a lighter emotive tone than in his early, more turbulent, years. This presentation of 8 works on paper show Sibley’s interest in exploring the inextricable highs and lows of the human condition in a more loving, compassionate, and vivacious way.

Sibley had an illustrious career as an artist for over six decades exhibiting at many of Australia’s most prestigious commercial galleries from 1961 until 2015. His work has been included in innumerable exhibitions including two significant surveys of his work at Monash University in 2003 and Melbourne University in 1976. Sibley was also a senior lecturer of painting at RMIT (1967-1987) and then Monash University (1990-1999).

Jacob Hoerner Galleries represents the Estate of Andrew Sibley and is committed to continuing to exhibit Sibley’s work and in turn research, and add original scholarship to, the existing records of his long and important career.

John Lennox was a central figure in a circle of artists, collectors and socialites that existed concurrently alongside the narrower, more canonised, academic art establishment of Melbourne during the 1970’s and 1980’s. As is evident in his more decorative work Lennox was a formally trained painter however when he deferred from painting idyllic garden or bush scenes a more existential side that reflected the nature of his eventual isolation came to the fore.

The three main paintings in Key works are representative of some of Lennox’ most iconic imagery. The repetition of his own self portrait or that of his enigmatic wife, amidst a litter of symbolic items, staged in a cemetery with his and her ultra cool disposition – or at times a non-emotive stare – combine to create a mysterious documentation of the artist and his perception of the world around him. These three key works are all interrelated and follow a narrative that looks at life and it’s inevitable intersection with death, there are references to close relationships and love, there is even a certain paranormal imbued in the scenes we are presented with.

Renewed interest in Lennox’ career comes at a time when many academics and critics across the world have once again focussed their attention on the place of outsiders in art history – those that are under-discovered – those artists that on occasion are some of the best contributers to grand narratives in art. Lennox was without doubt an enigmatic, alluring and charismatic painter that sought to show beauty as well as delve deep into the psyche of a world more akin to a surreal dream.

“The title of show is Digital Self. my thinking behind this title is that we all exist in this reality constantly looking to the future for all the answers to our self-made problems and dilemmas ….as we are becoming more and more reliant on tech our phones and internet always at our fingertips forevermore changing the way we engage with reality or our world, with huge computer systems constantly monitoring recording and analyzing our every thought and feel conveyed through social media, we are becoming assimilated becoming more the same by the way of subtle global influences manipulated for a skewed idealism by global capitalism. the technology will soon be a part of us perhaps our next leap in human evolution.

in my smaller works I am recreating myself using the same pieces but in a different way each time, cutting up my own catalogs from my last exhibition using the central image from this painting and collaging them back together to recreate this image of self same same but different. with an external shroud that hold the collaged image within indicating a more fuller self….also reflecting the symbolism of the key hole….opening the doorway to beyond. these images also bare a resemblance of religious iconography art. the outer background created by gluing finally crushed siltstone taken from drilling samples across Victoria, these natural pigments create a sensation of groundedness with there earthy textures….the works are all assimilated by their use of the same materials but all retain a semblance of individuality with in their identicallity, hopefully this subtle sense of individuality within us all will always create a variant in our computer predicted reality of the future…always someone thinking unpredictably….

the inner image I suppose can be related to the ideas around constructed spirituality as technology as our religion a dichotomy between printed reality and printed reality reconstructed re invented through creativity of the human mind….these works for me are imbued with an almost voodoo black magic mysticism cutting up images of former works recreating ideas discovered through making the original….making reflections of self…..then infusing the ground up rock that I drill into for daily work to create art…..my savior and destroyer…”

Rius Carson | August 2016

Emma Stuart’s paintings in After Arrernte are not the archetypal landscape vistas commonly associated with Central Australian landscape art. Intimately cropped, they instead explore the small clusters of trees off the beaten track, the silent beauty ‘hidden’ in Arrernte country’s tributaries and riverbed banks, in the Clay pans and Emily, Honeymoon and Simpsons Gaps.

These desert-scapes explore the transition between day and night, twilight and dawn, a time that reflects a shift in energy and consciousness. They aim to capture the liminal shift between light and shade, between focal points and distorted peripheries, between the revealed and the hidden.

In response to the announcement earlier this year that the Melbourne Art Fair will not take place in 2016 an alliance of leading Melbourne and Sydney galleries have initiated a new art event to be held during Melbourne Art Week this August titled 602.

With the support of the City of Melbourne, Art Month, Art Money & Work Club this alliance of galleries will be exhibiting in a former electricity substation at 602 Little Bourke Street from Thursday the 17th to Sunday the 21st of August.

The energy of 602 finds its roots in the rough and tumble Berlin style of creative collaboration, nine sophisticated art galleries exhibiting in the basement of a raw industrial space promises a fresh urban experience for collectors, curators and audiences interested in the visual arts in Australia.

Artists to be exhibited by Jacob Hoerner Galleries

Rius Carson
Joel Cornell
Mike Portley
Andrew Sibley
Jewels Stevens

Participating galleries include

Charles Nodrum Gallery  (Melbourne)
Gallerysmith  (Melbourne)
Jacob Hoerner Galleries  (Melbourne)
Martin Browne Contemporary  (Sydney)
M Contemporary  (Sydney)
Michael Reid  (Berlin + Sydney)
Olsen Irwin  (Sydney)
Scott Livesey Galleries  (Melbourne)
Watters Gallery  (Sydney)

Viewing Times

Preview

12-6pm Wednesday August 17
12-6pm Thursday August 18

Vernissage

6-9pm Thursday August 18

Fair Hours

12-8pm Friday August 19
10-6pm Saturday August 20
10-5pm Sunday August 21

www.602melbourne.com.au

Retrospect is an exhibition of a selected works by Jewels Stevens, a combination of new and older works shown in a way that recontextualises the way these paintings have previously been viewed. Through this retrospective approach to the way these works are seen new associations are created. Individually they oscillate between works that are vivid, vivacious reflections of Stevens’ persona, while in other works we see cooler parts of her palette and approach to painting come to the fore. These visual manifestations are windows to her inner world and illuminate Stevens’ ability to capture transcendental light through her luxurious use of colour, shape and form.

Gillian Warden puts her love of paint at the centre of her practice. Over the past few years she has been exploring a ‘formless’ approach to paining. Textures are layered and scraped, folded and poured, and colours emerge from the painting itself. The works that she creates may be years in the making. They become a story of surface, transformed and in flux, exuding an energy that continues to change them long after her own work with them is finished. Qualities and forces of the natural world abound in Warden’s work, but there is no literality here. These are works that invite you to immerse in feeling states. States that are shifting, emergent, hidden and hinted. States that wildly, wonderfully, offer you everything. The quality of engagement that the works inspire is visceral and transformative. These are worlds we can enter into and be changed by.