Open Studio, if you are in the neighbourhood drop by, the 15th and 16th of August

Posted on August 9, 2015 by katedorrough

A national event, Australian Ceramics Association’s, Opens Studios, to be held on the 15th & 16th of August 2015 , 10 am to 4pm, ceramic studios and artists open their working spaces to the public, see listings of studios, http://www.australianceramics.com/events/category/open-studios/.

“This August hundreds of potters and ceramic artists around the country will open their studios to the public for the third annual Australian Ceramics Open Studios. The event is hosted by The Australian Ceramics Association and shines a spotlight on the diverse practice of Australian artists working today in clay.

According to Shannon Garson, President of The Australian Ceramics Association, the event is an inspiring opportunity for members of the community to step inside the creative spaces of contemporary potters and ceramicists who continue to develop their unique voice within this ancient practice.

‘We have a strong ceramics community in Australia and presently we’re enjoying the growing appetite the community has for unique handmade objects. There has been a shift in thinking where people want to know how ceramic objects are made and who makes them.’
‘It’s an exciting time for clay workers to have such receptive audiences and the open studios event is a chance for the community to get to know their local potters and for potters to share their rich knowledge and skills,’ Shannon said.”

My studio will be open, Wharf Street, Marrickville, NSW, where I will display a range of work. http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-kate-dorrough-marrickville-nsw/

Redfern Biennale 2015

Posted on April 29, 2015 by katedorrough

Damien Minton, the curator of the annual event now part of Art Month, the ‘Redfern Biennale’, asked me to contribute this year. An exhibition with a difference, on the streets of the Sydney suburb, Redfern. Outside the commercial gallery context and on the streets of the NSW Housing Commission precinct; readymade objects, found materials, photography, all responded to the environment. I found it a liberating experience, placing art out of doors in an installation context. It made me realise it would be great to see more art in the streets without the accompaniment of commerce. The readymade exhibition was only held for one day, the 21st of March 2015.

“Be ready, again, to view for free readymades, sculpture, multi media, new media, painting, found object or even a cobweb on the street. This year, 2015, with the assistance of local community service centres, the Redfern Biennale will feature the display, on the street, of artwork by local NSW Housing Commission residents. The Redfern Biennale precinct is focussed around the fences and footpaths of Walker Street, bound by Cooper and Redfern Streets, Redfern.

The Redfern Biennale is an outdoor, eclectic, democratic free-for-all happening that will just happen on the day.

There is no Council approval, we are just placing the work on the streets for 7 hours.

Whether it is John Cage remarking ‘beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look’ the notion of this show stems from the art dealer Damien Minton photographing readymade objects and clusters around the streets of Redfern and posting them on social media.” (Art Month, Yellam Nre)

As the internationally renowned contemporary curator Yellan Nre commented in his/her essay for the Redfern Biennale 2014, ‘Clusterfuck Aesthetics, the Radicality of Garbage:

“The nihilism of the readymade – both sneering and naïve, complete yet broken – defines our experience of contemporary art today. Objects umoored from the womb of the white cube are without referent or narrative, and yet generate narrative in their very abandonment. Art made in public space is an assault on the narrative of community, and complicates the periphery of our social engagement. But when the anti-establishment gesture of the guerrilla artwork is subsumed within the cannibalising assault of gentrification, how can the art object reclaim its radicality?

“In its democratizing gesture of a free-for-all pile of stuff on stuff, Redfern Biennale is a shot across the bow of government sanctioned social sculpture for the greater good. It places public art back in the hands of the public, where they are free to ‘engage’ with it as they wish. The utopian desire, imagined or otherwise, of a multifarious yet united society is thus enacted via the analogy of trash. The value of what we discard, conceal and detain outlines the border of our collective culture. Thus the artist’s gesture of displaying a work of art in public space becomes one of defiance and generosity. In doing so, it confounds Duchamp’s exhortation to indifference to the aesthetics or origin of an object – it enforces direct interaction with the situation of appearance and context. Destructions should take place more rapidly.”

My work ‘Domesticity’ incorporated a collection of found materials that reflects my personal world at present. The stretcher frame without a painting except a small sketch of mother and child, signifying the amount of time you get to do your own work! The domestic world with its olive branch, acceptance, patience and love.

http://www.artmonthsydney.com.au/experiences/redfern-biennale-2015/

Muswellbrook Art Prize

Posted on February 22, 2015 by katedorrough

I have been selected for the 43rd Muswellbrook Art Prize, with the work ‘Marking the Terrain’. The judge was Anne Ryan, Curator of Australian prints, drawings and watercolours at the Art Gallery of NSW. The selected works are exhibited at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, 1st of March to the 19th of April 2015.

Puddle Series

Posted on July 7, 2014 by katedorrough

On my many walks at the witching hour with a new baby, when it was still daylight saving, I photographed a series of puddles at that ambivalent time between dusk and nightfall. We had quite a lot of Autumn rain, and I liked how the many remaining puddles reflected the sky, creating there own abstracted shapes.

It is these spontaneous ideas that I am mulling over to incorporate in my next painting series inspired by my surrounding environment, the Cooks River.

Yoko Ono at MCA, Sydney

Posted on February 18, 2014 by katedorrough

The retrospective exhibition of Yoko Ono, ‘War is Over!’ is on now at the MCA until the 23rd of Feb, which means there is now only this week to go! For anyone in Sydney if you havnt had a chance to get there, I would recommend getting down to see the show before Sunday the 23rd.

The video ‘Cut Piece’ in the background of this image, and ‘Play it by Trust’ in the foreground. ‘Cut Piece’ is considered one of Yoko Ono’s most significant artworks today, first performed in 1964, Tokyo, Japan. The audience members are invited to cut pieces of her clothing away with a pair of scissors, as she sits impassively upon the stage. In this exhibition the film documentaries of two of the performances are shown, one in 1965 at Carnegie Recital Hall and the second, in Paris, age of 70, in 2003. “The relationship between the younger and older woman, as well as questions of venerability, dignity and audience response are touched in these films”. ‘Play it by Trust’, first installed in 1966 at Indica Gallery, London, has been repeatedly made over several decades. Customised boards and chess pieces are all white, once the game commences the pieces intermingle and it becomes difficult to know who controls which piece, the idea of competition founders. Ono says, “this leads to a shared understanding of (our) mutual concerns and a new relationship based on empathy rather than opposition. Peace is then attained on a small scale”.

‘Windows’, 2009/2013, Another participatory work which is a great thing about her work, everyone can get involved. Here writing a letter to add to a beautiful original travel suitcases.

‘My Mommy is Beautiful‘ 2004/2013, Participatory artwork, writing a note to one’s mother. “Ono has long been interested in the complexity of gender and the feminine through her art…a participatory artwork which takes the form of a wall upon which audience members are invited to pin or tape private messages of love, hope, forgiveness and reconciliation to their mothers…elicits a spectrum of responses from love and thanks, to anger and sadness.”

A selection of mothers in front of the art work.

‘Imagine Map Piece’ 1966/2013, Participatory artwork, where the viewer is invited to stamp ‘peace’ in differing languages on maps of the world.

‘Mend Peace’ 1966/2013, Participatory artwork, an invitation to select broken ceramic pieces and put them back together again in a morphemic new form.

Displayed on shelves, the public’s mended pieces of ceramics ware, complete with string and glue.

‘Helmets – Pieces of Sky‘ 2001/2013 Participatory artwork, “Ono witnessed the physical and economic devastation of Japan as a young girl living through World War 11…. she has written about her war time experiences, describing the hours that she and her brother spent watching the sky and clouds drift past….Images of the wide blue sky with drifting clouds have become a recurring theme within Ono’s art works ever since”. In ‘Helmets’ World War military helmets hang upside down from the ceiling, filled with pieces of blue sky jigsaw puzzle. Gallery visitors are invited to take one piece of sky away with them “in the hope that, one day in the future, they will return with their pieces to build a beautiful new sky together”.

‘touch me 111’ 2008, Participatory artwork, “Ono has often addressed the quiet undercurrent of violence done to women and their bodies through her art”. This theme is expanded in this work, with individual parts of women’s bodies, in silicone, are placed in small wooden boxes upon a platform. A bowl of water is at one end, with the instructions for the viewer to wet their fingers and gently ‘touch’ the body. “The depressions and gouges left by the gallery visitors when this work was first shown in New York caused Ono’s gallery to recommend taking it away from view. Ono declined, leaving the damaged body on display as a reminder of the violent treatment that so many women endure in their daily lives'”

‘Doors and Sky Puddles’ 2011, this work was exhibited at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, with multiple upright doors that appear to float in the gallery space. The wooden doors are old and peeling, flecked with the passage of time. If you look closely at the doors surface, Ono has written tiny messages as well as writing haiku poetry directly on the gallery wall using Japanese calligraphic ink. Clouds and sky are inverted in the sky puddles that sit upon the floor. Ono wroye in 1968, “Doors are just a figment of our imagination’, suggesting that barriers exist in our mind, as much as reality, and that we need strength and courage to pass through them.”

‘We’re All Water’ 2006/2013,

‘Balance Piece’ 1998, “Much of Yoko Ono’s art is affirmative, reflecting the desire to wish for a better, more peaceful world. In some works, however, there is a equally an undercurrent of violence – for in keeping with Buddhist principles of universal balances, harmony cannot be expressed without its opposite state”. In ‘Balance Piece’ an ordinary kitchen is “literally suspended in a precarious balance, with a large magnet visible on the other side of the wall.” (all quotes are from the MCA gallery catalogue)

And the cafe after for sustenance, view from window! Not the harbour but an ocean liner!

‘One Night Stand’ at Damien Minton Gallery, night 9, Connie Anthes, night 11 featuring Rachel Burns and Ulan Murray

Posted on December 20, 2013 by katedorrough

Damien Minton Gallery has created a great new initiative , ‘One Night Stand’, over 14 nights, 14 consecutive shows are held within the gallery space, 583 Elizabeth Street, Redfern, Sydney, running from 9th December to the 22nd December. I have managed to make to two of them so far, night 9, Tuesday 17th, ‘Low Relief’ curated by artist Connie Anthes, and night 11, Thursday 19th December, the works of Rachel Burns and Ulan Murray. It is really great to see such a range of artworks, artists practices and creatives from all fields and spectrums all exhibiting in such a whirlwind affair. Contributers to ‘One night stand’ range from the South Sydney Multicultural Community Center, Art Teachers, performers, Paul McDermott and Paul Livingston, the cooperative and pottery studio ClayPool and muscian, Robert Moore. Such contributers, often lying outside the traditional commercial gallery scene, has created a dynamic and energizing series of eventful nights.

http://damienmintongallery.com.au

Tuesday 17 December 2013
Low Relief, curated by Connie Anthes

“Inspired by two sets of gun-metal grey plan drawers acquired by artist Connie Anthes when Sydney’s last map shop closed in 2011, Low Relief explores the possibilities of shallow space and its relation to mapping place, time and ideas of perception. Twenty artists have each responded to a drawer with its original label intact, with the work to be displayed in situ and experienced one-on-one by the audience.

20 drawers/20 artists, including: Matthew Allen, Sarah Breen Lovett, Catherine Cassidy, Criena Court, Michaela Gleave, Sarah Goffman, David Haines, Janet Haslett, Greg Hodge, Leahlani Johnson, Anna Kristensen, Abbas Makrab, Noel McKenna, Ian Millis, Eric Niebuhr, Peter Nelson, Madeleine Preston, Peter Sharp, Floria Tosca, and Paul Williams.”

Thursday 19 December 2013
Rachel Burns + Ulan Murray

Rachel Burns
“This series of paintings deals with the Australian culture of the road trip. Living in such a vast and largely vacant land we often find ourselves travelling long distances, in our cars, at speed. As we drive through the landscape some things attract our eyes and others just become a blur of colour and form.

‘My works never attempts to be a realistic interpretation of the landscape but rather a jumble of remembered and imagined forms’

Ulan Murray
The sculptures celebrate the beauty and intricacy of nature. By altering the scale and abstracting the forms the works reflect nature’s mathematical structures. They look at the fragility and complexity of life forms reflecting the care needed for our ecological systems.”

Rachel Burns paintings are all oil on canvas, and Ulan Murray’s sculptures (that also featured along with my ceramics at this years ‘Artisans in the Gardens’) are all recycled copper and steel.

Tanya Chaitow at Stella Downer Fine Art Gallery

Posted on December 20, 2013 by katedorrough

Last week I caught up with Tanya and her beautiful show, ‘Moon Days’, at Stella Downer Gallery, at Danks Street, 2 Danks Street, Waterloo, Sydney. I have always admired Tanya’s work, the combination of the whimsical, pictorial and the allegorical combined with a thoughtful and contemporary treatment of space and surface.

http://www.stelladownerfineart.com.au

“Ambiguity and whimsy are important elements in TANYA CHAITOW’S work and her fanciful paintings and drawings blur past and present, fact and fiction, internal and external reality. Adopting a naive style, CHAITOW is able to work intuitively to capture fleeting mental states and her poetic works are charged with a powerful psychological resonance. Working with a troupe of impossible characters, often part animal part human, CHAITOW offers up a vision of her personal mythologies. Like a playwright she enlists us in imaginary worlds where we are free to reflect and fantasise.”

‘Moonlight’, acrylic on board, 12.5 x 35 cm, ‘Last Friends 2’, ‘Last Friends 1’ , both acrylic & enamel on board, 25.5 x 18 cm

All acrylic on board and 25,5 x 18 cm, ‘It is truth I bring you’, ‘Full Moon’, ‘New Moon’, ‘Here night time is forgotten’, ‘Preparing for your arrival’

Both acrylic on board, 25,5 x 18 cm, ‘Time doesn’t exist’, ‘Full Moon’

‘Tracks of tomorrow’, acrylic on canvas. 33 x 33 cm

Sydney Ball, ‘The Stain Paintings’, Sullivan+Strumpf

Posted on November 20, 2013 by katedorrough

The exhibition of Sydney Ball’s ‘The Stain Paintings 1971 – 1980’, has just finished at Sullivan+Strumpf Gallery, 709 Elizabeth Street, Zetland, Sydeny, 26th October – 16 November 2013

An inspiring exhibition of some of Sydney Ball’s earlier works that has been resurrected from the artist’s studio and re exhibited at Sullivan+Strumpf. One of these works, ‘October Fields’, was also exhibited in the recent Sydney Contemporary Art Fair by the gallery. The work held up really well amongst more contemporary works, in fact I think it looked stronger and fresher than a lot of other works displayed. It is also inspiring to see an exhibition of an artists work who has been paintings a long time, gone through the ups and downs of taste and fashionability in the art world, and now at 80 years, the artist is again recognized and his works reinvigorated and acknowledged.

http://sullivanstrumpf.com

Translucent Stains 1976 – 80 (works downstairs), all enamel and acrylic on cotton duck, ‘Great Falls’ 273 x 585 cm, ‘October Fields’, 272 x 482 cm, ‘Oceania’, 303 x 372 cm, ‘Columbus’, 274.3 x 274.3 cm

Sydney Ball (b. 1933, Adelaide) was in the vanguard of Australian artists who elected to live and study in New York (1963-1965). He enrolled at New York’s Art Students League, where he encountered lecturer and mentor Theodoros Stamos, who introduced him to artists of the New York School including Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko. The Canto paintings (and subsequent Persian and Modular series) exhibited on his return to Australia introduced hard-edge abstraction, which prompted curator John Stringer to later write that; ‘Ball established himself as a prophet at home by generating large canvases… that seemed to have no precedent in Australian culture.’

Begun during Ball’s second stay in New York from 1969 to 1971, the inaugural Stain series was exhibited at Sydney’s Bonython Gallery in 1973. TheStain paintings were distinguished by their unprecedented scale, but most notably by a new painterliness.

Although colour remained the primary concern, painterly abstraction introduced fresh challenges and an unaccustomed freedom, as Ball began to work on the floor with access to all sides of a painting. Gone were the precisely defined edges, the flatness that had characterised his earlier series, displaced by canvases flooded with splashes and spatters of colour, permitting a fresh openness and luminosity. The Stain series of around 100 paintings preoccupied Ball for almost a decade from 1971 to 1980.

Reflecting on the series in 2013, Patrick McCaughey, who had visited Ball in New York, makes the observation; ‘Each painting is a fresh encounter as if Ball set out never to repeat himself… The Stain paintings are one of the triumphs of Australian art in the 1970s… How good it is to see them again and what miracles of vitality and enterprise they are.’

4 Sydney Ball ‘The Stain Paintings 1971-1980’ in conversation with Wendy Walker Uploaded 2 weeks ago An interesting interview with Sydney Ball.

Details of the paintings

Early Stains and Opaque Stains 1971 – 75, (works upstairs)

All enamel and acrylic on cotton duck, “Orient Journey’ 183 x 244 cm, and ‘Cembelin’, 183 x 244 cm

Current exhibitions at the Hughes Gallery

Posted on November 20, 2013 by katedorrough

Three great shows at The Hughes Gallery, 270 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, Sydney. 2nd November – 30th November 2013

http://www.rayhughesgallery.com

Tim Kyle, ‘Brothers in Arms’, all figurative sculptures using epoxy resin and mixed media

Tim Kyle’s boisterous figurative sculptures are well known and received. He won the 2003 Wynne Prize and his larger than life seated and standing men are recognisable from their outings at Sculpture by the Sea. Kyle is a keen observer of human behaviour. He has endowed his figures with unique expressions that create a real sense of character and personality. As the artist states, “I learnt of the Flaneur in art history and I suppose that’s what these pieces are the product of – observations and evaluations of human behaviour…The subject remains the same, forlorn introspection dosed with a wanton need for clarity from perplexity.”Kyle’s works are all very tactile, you can trace the hand of the artist through the forms created by his fingers in the clay, which is then cast in epoxy resin, forming the “rugged and unapologetic” pieces for which he is known. Drawing is also important to Kyle, who sketches his compositions before sculpting them. The works in ‘Brothers in Arms’ are “new essays on figuration that are directions once held in sketchbooks but never before realised in form.” Other works in this show are crafted out of acid free paper pulp, which the artist enjoys for its “expressive nobility and physical strength,” characteristics that can also be used to describe his body of work in general.

‘Gumption’, mixed media, 57 x 40 x 25 cm

“Nigel’, mixed media, 69 x 30 x 17 cm

‘Damo’, epoxy resin, 75 x 29 x 22 cm, and ‘Poirot’, mixed media, 45 x 24 x 14 cm

At the same time, Pru Morrison, ‘A nod is as good as a wink’, all ceramics, porcelain, terrasigillata, underglaze pencil and glaze

Brisbane based ceramisist Pru Morrison uses her finely crafted porcelain pieces to comment on everyday life in Australia. Drawing from a variety of sources, from politics to art history, the works are as topical as they are beautiful. For Morrison, “The most enjoyable part of my arts practice is creating an open story. I spend a lot of time in parks and on street benches watching and noting small mannerisms and everyday colloquialisms of people as they pass by. I record these sketches in a small notebook to use as a starting point when I return to the studio. Ideas often overlap with observations on current affairs, the arts and the poetry of politics…as I see it.” These drawings form only one part of Morrison’s practice, as they are scratched onto vessels which Morrison constructs using a variety of molds and hand building techniques. Once assembled, these forms resemble utilitarian objects like teapots or vases, but with a twist. The handle of the pot may be in the shape of a horse’s head or the vase resting on four sets legs, for example. To get their unique, finely coloured and textured effect, the surface is then layered with a fine slip called terrasigillata that is mixed with body stains to produce the colours. After this Morrison scratches through the different layers of colour to build the drawing, and adds black underglaze pencil that is fired onto the porcelain surface.

‘The Song of Waste’, 21 x 20 x 6 cm, and ‘Hose for hire’, 15 x 19 x 5 cm

‘Bowls, Porcelain’, 18 x 12 x 7 cm, and ‘Sheesh’, 21 x 11 x 8 cm

Also a mixed show, ‘Life’s a beach‘ in the main gallery. Works included Jason Phu, Nick Collerson, Michael Bell, Peter Powditch, Lucy Culliton, and Cameron Haas to name a few. As well as Joe Furlonger, whose work I have admired in the gallery for a long time. Bellow are details from one of his earlier Circus series paintings, which is in the entrance foyer.

Kate Dorrough

Blog site

Tag Archives: art