Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 41 i Artist Profile

THE AP TEAM EDITOR Kon Gouriotis artistprofile@nextmedia.com.au ART DIRECTOR Kim Gregory kgregory@nextmedia.com.au DEPUTY EDITOR Lucy Stranger lstranger@nextmedia.com.au SUB-EDITOR Jamie McIlwraith CONTRIBUTORS DR ASHLEY CRAWFORD is a Melbourne-based arts journalist; cargocollective.com/ashleycrawford BRIDGET MACLEOD is an arts writer and curator. She is the Gallery Officer at Shoalhaven City Art Centre, Nowra JUDITH PUGH is a regional NSW based writer. She is doing a doctorate on Commonwealth visual arts funding LOUISE MARTIN-CHEW is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland; louisemartinchew.com ELLI WALSH is a Sydney-based arts writer LOUELLA HAYES is a Perth-based arts writer and gallery administrator OWEN CRAVEN is a Melbourne-based writer; he is a curator with Urban Art Projects MICHAEL YOUNG is a visual arts writer based in Australia SOPHIA CAI is a Melbourne-based curator and arts writer KIM…

Canberra-based artist Sanne Koelemij creates collaged compositions that recalibrate the dialogue between colour, shape and material. Her shapes warp in kaleidoscopic patterns while depth and surface merge in tactile constellations camouflaged by plays of light and colour, creating a visual tension that is both disarming and alluring. “I became drawn to materials with interesting ‘deformities’ such as a shoe print pressed onto surfaces; like a fingerprint. This became addictive and I started collecting any type of texture I could find – I was ‘dumpster diving’ at this time! IN WHAT WAYS HAVE YOU BEEN EXPANDING YOUR practice since graduating from the ANU in Canberra? During art school I had so many thoughts and ideas; I was constantly distracting myself with the wealth of making. I was given the advice to…

Paul Selwood is one of Australia’s foremost sculptors, creating beautifully fluid, complex works, often from a single sheet of steel, through his cut and fold technique. The Wollombi-based artist spoke to ARTIST PROFILE about his mythical introduction to steel on the Greek island of Paros, what continues to draw him to this material, and some of the unique opportunities and complexities that it presents. “I have done a lot of drawing directly into steel plate with the oxy torch. Drawing is a conduit from the brain ... this has characterised my sculpture since I evolved the cut and fold technique. YOU STUDIED AT EAST SYDNEY TECH UNDER LYNDON Dadswell and Godfrey Miller but left after just 18 months – why was that? After seeing Ian Fairweather’s Drunken Buddha show at…

Sonia Payes’ art practice defies easy classification. She expresses her concerns for our changing environment and its effect on the human condition partly through photography, but also through sculpture and new media. And coursing through her many creative threads in inventively variable forms is her muse, her daughter Ilana. It’s a creative partnership which is constantly evolving and rich with meaning. A RECENT COASTAL INSTALLATION BY MELBOURNE artist Sonia Payes resembled bleached stone that had been buffeted for eons by ocean waves, honed clean, washed and sculpted by nature to the point that this mass of stone, rising out of the sand, closely resembled a feminine human face. Of course we seem to naturally ‘see’ human faces in the strangest of places. We spot a majestic profile in skimming clouds,…

“Jennifer Goodman’s leap into the openness and expansiveness of this new pictorial venture is indicative of a heightened level of sophistication and technical dexterity. JENNIFER GOODMAN REFERS constantly to the principles of harmony, balance, geometry, stability, structure, symmetry and asymmetry. They are the foundation that underpins her practice. In the past this dance with equilibrium was played out within the structure of the grid, but since her 2010 exhibition, Ocular Spectra, she has dismantled that stylish geometry and fabricated a space in which arabesques loop elegantly. Captured within the strict rectangular frame of the canvas, this exploration of pictorial space extends endlessly in a parallel universe of nonreferential, abstract meandering. At first her recent paintings seem like a complete break, a rupture with a previously stable world and headlong entry…

“I BELIEVE AN ARTIST HAS TO GET a life rather than a career. They have to experience the wide variety of things that life can give you, all the changes that can happen.” William Robinson’s cover story interview with Louise Martin-Chew for this issue of Artist Profile is a fascinating read, full of apt observations and good advice, especially for anyone whose life is involved in the visual arts. There are particular artists whose achievements are important to an understanding of visual art. Robinson is undoubtedly one of those artists, and not to recognise him is to be unaware: there are few who can surpass his sensitivity. And at 81, he still has something to achieve. After being absorbed in media accounts of the 2006 “July War” between Israel and…

Jude Rae works in conversation with space and light, playing with the eye of the viewer as her works shift and coalesce between representation and abstraction. Methodical in her process, she works with a range of mediums from video to etchings to realise the composition of her impressive large scale paintings. In this variety of form and content, what remains consistent is the artist’s awareness of a painting and examining what its role is. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR UPBRINGING, AND how that has informed your artistic focus today? My dad was a painter and he and my mum met at the Julian Ashton Art School. Mum was an amateur cellist and working as a life model. I went there on Saturdays when I was about 12, which was…

Bradd Westmoreland has developed a practice that is deeply rooted in routine. His consistent method of sketching, writing and life drawing is the foundation of his art-making. ARTIST PROFILE visited Westmoreland in his Northcote, Melbourne studio to learn more about the intricacies of his practice, his inspirations and motivations. IN YOUR WORK I SEE A MIXTURE OF WHIMSY, expressionism, abstraction, landscape. Tell me how you see your art; what is it that you investigate or try to portray in your paintings? I guess you could say they are paintings about painting. It’s about using the actual materials; I love oil paint, the brushes, the canvas. I love all the tangible possibilities, the malleable qualities of the actual materials – they’re always changing and unpredictable at times. In terms of the…

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU cross an artist-run gallery, a commercial art fair, and a curated group exhibition? Something like Notfair, which purports to be all and none of these things at the same time. Founded seven years ago as a satellite event to the Melbourne Art Fair, Notfair has grown in size and scope since its inception. When Anna Pappas announced in early 2016 that the Melbourne Art Fair was to be no more, Notfair found itself in the curious position of no longer being a satellite event, but arguably one of the main attractions dished up alongside other ‘fringe’ art fairs. For its fifth iteration, from 11 to 19 November 2017, Notfair is showcasing even more artists in a larger context. This year also sees the return…

I NEVER EXPECTED TO TRAVEL TO the other side of the world for a painting. But in 2014 my partner Rachael and I found ourselves there – struggling for breath on the muddy, near vertical slopes of the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda, fighting through bamboo forest to alpine plateaus chilled by winds whipping off the snow-laden peaks. Then again in 2016. Under a relentless sun we entered Harar in Ethiopia, the fortified town and fourth holy city of Islam, making our way through ancient gates and navigating narrow winding alleys to stand under the 500-year-old mud and rubble walls infused with history. By the time you read this we will be on our way back from Dar es Salaam, the spice markets of Zanzibar and the isolated deep south of…

MORE THAN ANYTHING MY WORK has been inspired by scenes from novels, and 1970s science fiction has been my most significant source of inspiration: writers such as Stanislaw Lem, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. What draws me to these writers is their talent for reframing well-worn philosophical problems in a way that’s both exotic and compelling. They open the possibility for new perspectives by pushing the reader’s imagination with thought experiments packaged as narrative. While disarmingly absurd or improbably speculative, the best of them finish with critical positions on contemporary issues in a way that only science fiction can deliver. I’ve often chosen to interpret some of these narratives through painting, both as homage and a means of rethinking these stories. Illustrating a science fiction novel…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, AS THE 2017 EDITION OF SYDNEY Contemporary (SC) art fair hit its straps, one visitor among the many attending the four-day event could be seen attentively navigating her way between the spacious booths. That was Maree Di Pasquale, the recently appointed CEO of the Melbourne Art Fair (MAF) who has been charged with resurrecting the biennial MAF, the last edition of which was cancelled in 2016 at short notice among accusations that it had become moribund and irrelevant. Many thought MAF’s condition terminal, but it will return to the art fair calendar on 2-5 August 2018 at Southbank Arts Precinct, just a few weeks before SC transitions from a biannual to an annual art fair. Both fairs will be vying to attract the same collectors, buyers and…

William Robinson has reached the greatest heights available to an Australian artist and is the only living Australian artist with a gallery dedicated to his work, the William Robinson Gallery at Old Government House in Brisbane. Reaching international acclaim, William Robinson: Genesis has just opened in Washington DC, and will travel to Paris in January 2018. He works across subjects from epic landscape paintings to characterful portraits and, increasingly in recent years where age restricts his ability to be in the landscape, still-life. In his 81st year, he remains committed to taking his paintings into new territory. “Not knowing how the picture is going to be resolved is a very important thing. I think you need to look suspiciously at your work. YOU COULDN’T PRACTISE FULL-TIME AS AN ARTIST until…

Abstraction has equal value in Leonard Brown’s icon and non-icon paintings. As he has refined his understanding of Byzantine traditions he has brought expanding sensitivities to his abstracts. ARTIST PROFILE caught up with him in his home and studio in Ipswich, Queensland. HOW DO YOU BEGIN YOUR DAY? I tend the olive oil lamps. I’m a lighthouse keeper for the Holy Icons. The one in the bedroom icon-corner burns 24/7, while in the studio, the lampada is lit before my day’s painting begins. The oil lamp is the living flame denoting the presence of Christ, which is a meditation in itself. Then there’s a cup of tea, I walk Fergus (the Scottish Terrier) and then I post the ‘Icon for the day’ on Facebook. I’ve been posting three or four…

ROARING GUSTS OF WIND WHIPPED up layers of salt and sand and clay and blew them across the lunettes known as the Great Wall of China. Such is the force of nature at Lake Mungo, just one of a series of dry lakebeds in the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area of NSW. This southwesterly blowing wind is how the lunettes were formed thousands of years ago, and how they are changing still. It was a particularly ferocious wind in this March when I was attempting to paint using plastic cylinders filled with washes of colour and a 10-metre roll of watercolour paper laid out on the ground. As quickly as I could pour paint out, the wind lifted it up, seemingly suspending it mid-air before hurtling liquid colour and…