I.
Exhibition: Coney Island
Artists: John Aslanidis, Angela Brennan, Sadie Chandler, Renee Cosgrave, David Harley, Matthew Johnson, Wilma Tabacco
Venue: Counihan Gallery
Dates: Until October 29th
Coney Island presents artists working with the language of abstract painting. Curator Jane O’Neill has brought in artists from various stages in their careers, for example established abstract painter Angela Brennan showing alongside mid-career painter Renee Cosgrave. Jane sees each artist tackle the project of abstraction in an entirely personal way, building upon his or her own history of looking and making work. While recognizing each artist’s individual approach to abstraction, the exhibition also celebrates shared interests; between consistent patterning and loose compositions; between hard-edged painting and softer bruised lines. Just as we are drawn to the flickering lights and optical illusions fabricated in amusement parks, Coney Island designates the gallery as a space for the reception of lights, colours and lines.
Image: Renee Cosgrave, Tribal Lung 2015. oil on wood, 40 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
II.
Exhibition: The Small Sword
Artist: Brent Harris
Venue: Tolarno Galleries
Dates: Until November 4th
Brent Harris’ paintings and works on paper are brooding, dripping swamplands delineated in the most meticulous way. In Harris’ paintings, pictorial elements appear and compositions evolve through process-based methods. Elements of his compositions are built upon or worked over: for example, a smudge may develop into a figure, or be painted away. For his new exhibition The Small Sword, Harris presents a series of eleven new paintings where flat delineated areas of colour, intuitive mark making and figuration borne with a graphic sensibility form tight yet fluidly organic compositions. The figuration is barely realist - emergent imagery plays with symbolic meaning and various narratives related to our unconscious emerge but remain contingent.
Image: Brent Harris, the small sword, installation view. © Tolarno Galleries 2017. Exhibition: dissolve Artist: Adam John Cullen Venue: Gertrude Glasshouse Dates: 7 – 28 October
III.
Exhibition: Dissolve
Artist: Adam John Cullen
Venue: Gertrude Glasshouse
Dates: October 7th to October 28th, 2017
Gertrude Contemporary is a respected non-profit art gallery and artist studio complex that has been supporting emerging and experimental art practice in Melbourne for over 30 years. Their competitive and sought after studio program offers sixteen non-residential studio spaces to artists on two-year tenures. In 2011, Gertrude Contemporary opened a smaller gallery in Collingwood called Gertrude Glasshouse, which focuses on presenting solo exhibitions by artists that are part of their studio program. One of the current studio artists – Adam John Cullen – will be exhibiting in October. Adam works with sculpture, often employing industrial materials in new and experimental ways – for example, pouring concrete into molds that solidify as forms sometimes mimicking objects that exist in the real world. Often reusing old works within new works, his process is gritty, mixing different textures and resolving each work by being open to chance occurrences that play out with the materials construction and deconstruction. Cullen’s material investigations engage with ideas about consumption and waste, and his sculptural works and installations are often multi-layered and compelling.
Image: Adam John Cullen, Certain Remnants, installation view, Primavera 2017: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2017, hydrostone, plaster, oxide, cotton, marble, limestone, image courtesy the artist and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist, photograph: Jessica Maurer
Take a tour with Charlotte in Melbourne to discover more!
-
Banner image: Angela Brennan, An Open Future 2012. Oil on linen, 180 x 220 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.