Eastern Suburbs Art Group

This is a fabulous space tucked away near the train station. You go in through the library entrance then double back and cross a bridge inside, to find yourself in a study area with facilities. A frirned had curated this show so I wanted to see what was happening. Some surprising finds (see above) like a work by Loraine Simiana that combines a kind of deliberate abstraction with surreal components to create a frozen landscape. The title is reflective of this fact, actually I used the expression before checking the title. But there were other types of work (see below) like this naturalistic almost scientific portrayal of a n orchid by Tony White. And then there were Neville Dawson's determinedly figurative but nevertheless expressive studies of tree roots (see below). This one in black and white, another one in colour. Jennifer Shames' floral study was also expressive, almost embarassingly so (see below). The range of styles on display was compelling. I also liked Jennifer Mulle...

I had a nice invitation to contribute to this show and put in some collages, one of which I sold. The woman who bought the item also had something in the show. Trinity Myers' piece (see below) is a fridge covered in some sort of growth, something green that stands out against the hard lines of the kitchen appliance. Trinity has made a kind of domestic collage. The fridge contains food but it doesn't chill, everything is at room temperature so you'd probably not want to eat it. We chatted for a while and I took this snapshot. I was reminded of a work I made last year, one of my Fridge! series (see below). I make a similar comparison in a brochure produced for Ryde Library collage classes. A household fridge is a kind of collage, except instead of glue you use magnets. In my series I try to show this alongside the remnants of a life - a life I lived - illustrated with the sort of snapshots people put on their fridges. I mean everyoine has a fridge right?  In the digital colla...

The prize this year was rather muted. This might have had something to do with the size of the exhibition space. In fact all of the three shows seemed to be in smaller spaces than usual. In the Wynne I liked this watercolour (see below). Sort of speaks for itself, you don't really need to describe the painting. The quality is there in the intense figuration that draws the viewer in. The suprising sort of modern notes like Pop art colour swatches somehow highlight the skill involved in the realistic scene. I'm only making a small selection this year, including this night sky with bits of space junk streaming over the earth (above). The painting above is 'Garrapara' a polymer painting on aluminium, quite striking. Like  I said the number of paintings in each show seemed to be smaller than usual.

The room with the portraits was quite crowded, but funny to say people were just sort of hanging around near the works, apparently not even looking at them. Just sort of filling the room like someone had put in an order for 100 people to fill a room and they had turned up like movie extras. This sore looking face is Dale Rhodes' 'Suzie', I quite liked the raw nakedness of the woman's face. It has a sort of painful caste but the woman also looks like she can hold her own, she might be exposed emotionally but she is not going to collapse. Sarah satha's painting is sort of appealing, the strange black border around the figure of the man and possibly his son forming a kind of circle encompassing the two figures. Maybe it is protective. In any case the black border is out of synch with the beach scene, I mean beaches are usually where people go to be exposed. the border doing the opposite, enclosing. Nick Stathopoulos' margaret Fink is arch and superior, perhaps she ...

Some really nice paintings this year including a James Drinkwater painting magnificent in its scope (it is huge) and colour (see below). This artist is really talented and keeps on producing work of class and originality. This one looks like a Drysdale landscape but of course it is not. The horizontal split in the upper part of the canvas suggesting a horizon line. This Nathan Hawkes painting (see below) has lovely colour use also, and a strange sense of fantasy that the explosion of colour tends to mitigate. The little faces that peep out are expecting what exactly. Is it with malice or something else. I guess each viewer will come to their own conclusions. A painting by David Griggs has a rider on a horse (see below), but the horse is an odd sort of bright red. I mean the grass is green and the sky is blue but why a red horse, and this particular type of red? A green dog in Jessica Nothdurft's painting (see below) has a rangey outback feel about it, like is it feeding the man (Ro...

While I was in town I took in as many of the displays in the gallery as possible. I was curious about Tell Us A Tale because it is quite naive, though obviously there is support in the administrative apparatus for a show like this that features the multicultural aspects of the city. The pictures are by children and there is interpretive apparatus left next to the images to help guide visitors around the walls. The display took up an entire room on one of the gallery floors. The interpretive apparatus is held by the same type of frame used to hold the drawings. This is curious, and you can see why it was done, since clearly it is simple to use the white frame for everything. It does end up being a littel confusing however. The frames weren't always perfectly fitted to the artworks furthermore, but this is a minor issue. But it was as though the explanation was as much a part  of the show as the drawings. I am not sure what I think of this, as normal curatorial practice is to disting...

I was a bit curious about these works on paper by Peter Sharp. Some seemed intriguing but there was a bit of a lag between seeing the work and understanding the artist's intention. The references are a bit esoteric, for a start. I mean I know that Albers was a psychologist and artist of some sort - but I may have that wrong. In the whow there was not much explanatory material or at least I didn't see it if it was there. But this is the curator's responsibility not the artist's. For example the items above are titled interaction with Albers. Presumably there was some sort of idea exchange or else a stylistic handover. But what was it, how did this exchange happen and what was the result. The items on display presumably. But what then? Actually these pieces (above) are not very attractive. They are a bit dull and possibly intentionally modest in their expressive capacity. So I wasn't sure about this artist and will have to keep an eye out for his work down the track. ...