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
‘Gillian Warden’s latest paintings in Lacuna are a testament to her commitment to the process of painting. Daily, she embarks on a journey in her studio as if from scratch. No mark is sacred. Paint stripper, orbital sander and encroaching opaque paint are used to prune, truncate and shape her previous work. “These paintings are the result of struggle,” she says. But what is revealed by this “beautiful battle” are a series of organic, delicately filigreed shapes and patterns in luminescent colours. Branching forms float, unfurl and delicately wave. Marine gardens and igneous landscapes come to mind.
All shapes allude to the wonder of the natural world. The paintings arrive somewhere between heaven and earth. Interstellar nebulae juxtapose the microscopic. Iridescent wings flutter and settle. Their blood circulations remain anchored to their rocky supports, prevented from final rupture by a superimposed cocoon of downy, opaque over-painting.
Her dedication to the medium of paint, her excitement at revelations and new combinations, is underpinned by a series of exploratory devices. She begins by mixing colours on a large, flat palette from which she creates a monoprint directly on to the board or canvas. Sometimes paper is used to transfer these globular, textured shapes. Later prints are lighter and more delicate; the texture becomes a branching, lacy network.
Nothing is considered immiscible in this alchemist’s cauldron. Colours are combined and layered with translucent overprints of inks or paints, both water soluble and oil based, further brush marks are added or overlaid to reveal or conceal these illusions. The magic is in what we are enabled to see. The multiple experiments of this venerable pursuit are documented in a series of jewel-like small works on board, finely finished and displayed en masse.
These paintings began life during Gillian’s Master of Fine Art at RMIT, entitled Facing Defacing and completed in 2012. The works were part of her process of leaving figuration behind in order to explore a more formless approach to painting. This interim space has been productive and rewarding. Who knows what will happen as the emergent shapes and techniques branch away from their supports. The developments will continue to be worth watching.’
Dr Caroline Thew
MBBS FRACP PhD MVA MFA
‘The world is so mixed up when you consider all the competing desires and aspirations we all have, it is hard to make sense of it all to discover the right path… everything is becoming a commodity, a product, everything assimilated into our main stream middle class western culture as something that everyone needs and must have to attain a sense of happiness and achievement that is some how required for fulfilment.
Shadows of Self is a play on the idea that the artist is almost seen as a shamanistic being. In part it also refers to how buying art allows you to buy in to a being a more spiritually connected person….maybe it does….reality transformed into the spiritual, then transformed in to commodity, almost a piece of soul which conveys or connects us to a more meaningful way of being.
My art is a reflection of my own thought dreams dilemmas an expression of myself as I see the world, tapping into the collective consciousness that is constantly evolving. Through art I am hoping to connect people with, and reassure that in essence we are all the same just reflections of one another, I want to connect people to their feelings, to stimulate an emotive response, an understanding that we as humans are all interconnected, all part of the one earth.’
Rius Carson | August 2015
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 Disconnect, Mike Portley has created a series of paintings and artworks that reflect and muse on a shift in human relationships with the environment, technology, each other and history itself. Portley’s own fascination with the changes in contemporary perceptions of the outside world are centred on the media and how personalised stories are manifested through a transformed media machine. It’s the disconnect between this personalised downloaded reality, the analogue world and society’s trajectory that Portley contemplates with both whimsy and alarm.
In Disconnect, Portley has adopted a more figurative approach in addressing the themes in the works. There are a selection of subjects that have been appropriated and reconfigured from social media, video games, art, tourism and advertising. These citations are used to underscore how our lives have been decorated with media manifestations and that much of our social awareness is funnelled in a conglomerated yet distant manner. This idea of conglomeration is referred to in the metaphorical depiction of mindsets relating to the dynamic between the environment and economies. The depleting environment is the elephant in the room offset against associated economic influences and emerging technologies that both threaten and enhance traditional roles in society. Portley questions whether the more we connect digitally, the more we actually disengage from real communication with people and our synchronicity with Earth; or perhaps these symptoms are the growing pains of a new and exciting evolution of human triumph and super connectivity?
Portley’s approach combines lyrical starting points with interpretive expression that is overlaid with detailed subjects connected to each proposition. Portley has always had a propensity for quickly boiling down complex concepts into metaphorical prose and visual tableaux. Disconnect is therefore both an autobiographical comment on transition and a social comment on change and revolution.
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
In Disconnect, Mike Portley has created a series of paintings and artworks that reflect and muse on a shift in human relationships with the environment, technology, each other and history itself. Portley’s own fascination with the changes in contemporary perceptions of the outside world are centred on the media and how personalised stories are manifested through a transformed media machine. It’s the disconnect between this personalised downloaded reality, the analogue world and society’s trajectory that Portley contemplates with both whimsy and alarm.
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.
Renewed interest in Lennox’ career comes at a time when academia across the world has once again switched its attention to the place of outsiders in Art History. Lennox was undoubtedly an enigmatic, albeit charismatic, ‘Outsider’. With a combination of exceptional technical skill and a psychological depth in his work and persona, the new curated exhibition Enigma is set to prompt that Lennox and his contribution to Australian painting be looked at anew.
‘The subject of this work is broadly land – land with a long view. Where the eye reaches out as far as it can, to where land meets a sky that is stretching out too. Distance and pause – our minds follow our gaze. These paintings are inspired by a long road trip through the Great Victoria Desert – South Australia and Western Australia and down to the coast of the Bite. But beyond the places themselves the true subject is the expansiveness of nature. My intention is to bring the mental ‘space’ which nature provides, to those of us who spend more time in the cities. I am attempting to draw the viewer into a place where the mind is allowed to wander freely. Though my medium is static, time plays a crucial part. The experience for the viewer is a slowly emerging one. The mysterious quality that overlies some of the paintings is intended as an opening for the viewer to enter a meditative space, as well as forming a relationship with the work as different points of view emerge. In some of the pieces there is initially so little purchase for the eye to engage with, yet slowly the paintings yield depth and more. While creating a sense of quiet, a pause, the paintings are not necessarily peaceful. Most are derived from a desert landscape which is harsh and as liable to throw dust in your face as bring calm. Still a beauty is there, ‘beauty’, that quality which is so out of vogue in the serious discourse of contemporary art. But I suggest we have reached a moment in our human history when we need to acknowledge our absolute dependence upon the natural world, and perhaps the beauty of nature is one crook which can draw us back to this knowledge. The execution of the work involves many layers of paint and some wax applied with a palette knife. I’ve tried to suggest a certain freedom of application, almost a wildness in places, but balanced with a fine attention to detail in others. Through the layering a glow and a depth emerge.’
Alison Binks | 2015
