Turning Over
Art Systems Wickham 18–27 November, 2016
"Lyrical link... an energetic show" – John Barnes, the Newcastle Herald, November 2016
Art Systems Wickham 18–27 November, 2016
"Lyrical link... an energetic show" – John Barnes, the Newcastle Herald, November 2016
PODzome
The University Gallery 10–27 September 2014, curated by JenDenzin
"a brilliant group show... one of my top picks for 2014" - Jill Stowell, the Newcastle Herald, January 2015
The University Gallery 10–27 September 2014, curated by JenDenzin
"a brilliant group show... one of my top picks for 2014" - Jill Stowell, the Newcastle Herald, January 2015
Abstraction NOW
By exhibition curator Ahn Wells, Newcastle Art Space 2 - 19 October 2014
In 2014, Abstract Art is not new, nor is it foreign to the viewer when describing what kind of 'art' is on exhibition. Artists working in this overall genre of 'abstraction' today owe their freedom to experimental artists who challenged the art making of their time. They pushed the boundaries to create a new genre of art, now named and accepted throughout art history.
Abstraction NOW, references art history while exploring the concepts of what Abstract Art is now. In this exhibition, we can see influences from many different Abstract Art genres, from the Minimalist qualities found in the blue pebble works by Lezlie Tilley and the obsessive mark making of Bruce Roxburgh's delicate works on paper to the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic of Caelli Jo Brooker, Anne McLaughlin and Priya Joys' paintings. While suggestions of Futurism and Cubism are referenced in Alison Smith's drawings and Ahn Well's paintings and wall sculpture.
While the artists' work in this exhibition can be written about and given art history descriptions, the making of the work and the inevitable public display for an audience, is the most important part of an artist's job today. Abstraction NOW has been brought together and curated with this idea in mind.
By exhibition curator Ahn Wells, Newcastle Art Space 2 - 19 October 2014
In 2014, Abstract Art is not new, nor is it foreign to the viewer when describing what kind of 'art' is on exhibition. Artists working in this overall genre of 'abstraction' today owe their freedom to experimental artists who challenged the art making of their time. They pushed the boundaries to create a new genre of art, now named and accepted throughout art history.
Abstraction NOW, references art history while exploring the concepts of what Abstract Art is now. In this exhibition, we can see influences from many different Abstract Art genres, from the Minimalist qualities found in the blue pebble works by Lezlie Tilley and the obsessive mark making of Bruce Roxburgh's delicate works on paper to the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic of Caelli Jo Brooker, Anne McLaughlin and Priya Joys' paintings. While suggestions of Futurism and Cubism are referenced in Alison Smith's drawings and Ahn Well's paintings and wall sculpture.
While the artists' work in this exhibition can be written about and given art history descriptions, the making of the work and the inevitable public display for an audience, is the most important part of an artist's job today. Abstraction NOW has been brought together and curated with this idea in mind.
Surface and depth
Extract from the catalogue essay by Ashley Whamond, for the Surface Seeking exhibition at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, 26 October - 9 December 2012
What does it mean to focus all our attention on the surface of things, particularly when those things are works of art? It could initially be seen to be something of an intellectual shortcut. Certainly the language in which we find references to surface would suggest that: 'superficial', 'only scratching the surface', 'only skin deep'. Indeed 'on the surface' something could present a misleading version of a truth that lay hidden somewhere 'deeper', and we appreciate 'deptch' as opposed to 'shallowness' in terms of thought, emotion and creativity. With respect to works of art, a common lament amongst viewers might be the inability to see meaning 'behind' the work as if there is nothing to be gained from an engagement with the surface at all. If this is true, it is a brave decision by curator Ahn Wells to use the theme of surface to bring together the works of selected Hunter-based artists in Surface Seeking [Debra Byrnes, Jonathan Hardy, Frank Murri and Alison Smith]....
Alison Smith's process relies on the meeting of two surfaces in the literal sense of printmaking. The image produced is a trace of that meeting always implying the absence of one surface. Smith uses this inherent tension of the process to address the changing urban landscape with its language of scaffold and shade cloth. To locals, such developments and redevelopments evoke a sense of the ever-present absence of the past, a paradoxical experience that is communicated so effectively through the interplay of surfaces.
When selecting works for an exhibition, a curator is attempting to draw out some kind of collective meaning from the works, adding layers and dimensions to works that may not be obvious when the individual works are viewed in isolation. Wells' attention to the experience of surface in her own work has informed this grouping of artists. The result is a collection of surfaces that offer quite different experiences. In each case the surface is not working to hint at a deeper level of meaning underneath, the surface is the point of engagement with the work - the variations of textures speak to us in different ways but always through our own tactile knowledge. Meaning is indeed generated at a deeper level, but that depth is within our own bodies not in the metaphorical depth 'behind' the surface of the work as would be implied by modernist theories of surface such as Greenberg's. Wells is suggesting that we take notice of surface when engaging with these works, and not attempt to look behind it but look at it and see the depth that already exists in surface.
Ashley Whamond, September 2012
What does it mean to focus all our attention on the surface of things, particularly when those things are works of art? It could initially be seen to be something of an intellectual shortcut. Certainly the language in which we find references to surface would suggest that: 'superficial', 'only scratching the surface', 'only skin deep'. Indeed 'on the surface' something could present a misleading version of a truth that lay hidden somewhere 'deeper', and we appreciate 'deptch' as opposed to 'shallowness' in terms of thought, emotion and creativity. With respect to works of art, a common lament amongst viewers might be the inability to see meaning 'behind' the work as if there is nothing to be gained from an engagement with the surface at all. If this is true, it is a brave decision by curator Ahn Wells to use the theme of surface to bring together the works of selected Hunter-based artists in Surface Seeking [Debra Byrnes, Jonathan Hardy, Frank Murri and Alison Smith]....
Alison Smith's process relies on the meeting of two surfaces in the literal sense of printmaking. The image produced is a trace of that meeting always implying the absence of one surface. Smith uses this inherent tension of the process to address the changing urban landscape with its language of scaffold and shade cloth. To locals, such developments and redevelopments evoke a sense of the ever-present absence of the past, a paradoxical experience that is communicated so effectively through the interplay of surfaces.
When selecting works for an exhibition, a curator is attempting to draw out some kind of collective meaning from the works, adding layers and dimensions to works that may not be obvious when the individual works are viewed in isolation. Wells' attention to the experience of surface in her own work has informed this grouping of artists. The result is a collection of surfaces that offer quite different experiences. In each case the surface is not working to hint at a deeper level of meaning underneath, the surface is the point of engagement with the work - the variations of textures speak to us in different ways but always through our own tactile knowledge. Meaning is indeed generated at a deeper level, but that depth is within our own bodies not in the metaphorical depth 'behind' the surface of the work as would be implied by modernist theories of surface such as Greenberg's. Wells is suggesting that we take notice of surface when engaging with these works, and not attempt to look behind it but look at it and see the depth that already exists in surface.
Ashley Whamond, September 2012
Ingrained: Smith + Cannon
Extract from the exhibition review by Madeleine Snow on UrbanInsider, May 2011
...For [Smith and Cannon] the making process, the actual length of time it takes to create the works, is literally an idea present within the work, in Smith's case urban expansions where buildings rise and fall. Smith's prints are sketched and designed, the woodcuts carved and sculpted, before being printed, and each layer of ink can take up to a week to dry.
Smith is interested in architecture and the urban landscape amidst urban expansion and development. She depicts that space between buildingd when you are surrounded in the city. The image is a little like scaffolding - solid, grid like and ephemeral only lasting the length of a build, and something which Smith was drawn to.
For both artists their connection is the material quality of the wood. In Smith's prints the grain is evident as a texture, pattern on the surface and a subject within the work.
Madeleine Snow, May 2011
...For [Smith and Cannon] the making process, the actual length of time it takes to create the works, is literally an idea present within the work, in Smith's case urban expansions where buildings rise and fall. Smith's prints are sketched and designed, the woodcuts carved and sculpted, before being printed, and each layer of ink can take up to a week to dry.
Smith is interested in architecture and the urban landscape amidst urban expansion and development. She depicts that space between buildingd when you are surrounded in the city. The image is a little like scaffolding - solid, grid like and ephemeral only lasting the length of a build, and something which Smith was drawn to.
For both artists their connection is the material quality of the wood. In Smith's prints the grain is evident as a texture, pattern on the surface and a subject within the work.
Madeleine Snow, May 2011
"virtuoso printmaking"
Jill Stowell, Newcastle Herald, 2013
"emphatic woodblock prints"
Una Rey, Newcastle Herald, 2011
Una Rey, Newcastle Herald, 2011
"Smith's carefully structured, coloured and layered wood block prints retain just enough of the city of their sources... They evoke the concrete and steel and glass towers of the modern world but the images are carved in a wooden template using a traditional method. This is an evocative and somewhat Asian paradox."
Matthew Tome, Head Teacher Newcastle Art School, Hunter TAFE, 2011
"techniques inventively explored"
Jill Stowell, Newcastle Herald, 2010