Eastern Suburbs Art Group

On Tuesday I went down to Shaffer Gallery in Darlington to meet with Virginia to see this show by photographer Sam James. James works at my print shop Pixel Perfect so I've meet him before and really wanted to see his photos. They're very personal, intimate shots of the city. When I spoke with James on the night he noted how many of the plant photos were taken during Covid lockdowns. I liked the way he alternated shots of the natural world with photos of friends. He calls the work a "personal atlas" as you really feel as though you are with him as he wanders round the city. The show was well-attended and created a nice stir in the gallery, everyone including friends and family mingling in the small room. Damien got up as usual (see photo above) to say a few words. James is standing next to him on the step.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be having my first solo show from 2-5 November at 163 Wilson Street Newtown. Opening party is 5pm on 2 Nov, the Thursday. This is a big moment in my life and I hope at least some people who're reading can make an effort to come along. It will be so much fun. Behind me in the above photo is ‘Colour as a plot device’ from the first group show in August. It’s now hanging over my desk because it didn’t sell. For the new show, ‘Media of mass psychology’ I’ve picked the works along with my brilliant gallerist Annie Laereskens. I took everything to the framer’s yesterday and specified it all, there are 13 works in the new show including my signature watercolour/collage works as well as paramontages: layered photos with poems attached to form unique and interesting artworks.  ‘Media of mass psychology’ will look at the ways we interact. The term “public sphere” is used a lot by people when they want to sound informed, you see people on X throwing it out wh...

I jumped on the wrong bus and had to change to a train then get another bus because I was in a hurry and not paying attention, but in the end I got to Liverpool Street Gallery after 5pm on Thursday. In the background behind the woman standing you can see Dick Watkins’ ‘Bird’. I think this artist was at the show, or at least an elderly man made eye contact with me then put down his beer and left. Noone makes introductions at art show openings. I have one work by Watkins and like his style. Next to it, the pink painting on the wall behind the standing man is Lisa Patroni’s acrylic on canvas untitled painting ‘XXX’ which up a bit closer looks like a rendition of a lower torso seen from behind. You can just about make out an outline in a darker shade of pink. I really liked Steven Harvey’s ‘New Guinea Snow’ which is hanging to the left behind the woman in the photo above. It’s cut with an implement to make a rough surface but the colours are wonderful, rich and expressive. It really looks ...

I went along to see this show organised by Damien Minton at Sheffer Gallery in Darlington on Tues night. There I met Virginia and her friend. I also met Simon from Esag later. It was a great show. I own nine Zochowski paintings having started collecting her works in about 2008, I have six of them in my house including landscapes and cloudscapes. I also have a painting of African violets. In her show ‘Begonia and Boats’ Zochowski explores the unique Australian landscape with its muted, subtle colours and vibrant light. Minton’s introduction made much of the fact that Zochowski, having come to this country when she was small, possesses a particular sensibility trained in Europe but that matured under different conditions. You can see the masterly command of colour in the above photo. But there’s also something else, a kind of stillness, a waiting, as if at any moment a bord might flash across the sky, a small marsupial might scuttle through the undergrowth, and insect might jump up in th...

I went along last week to see the show having kindly received a ticket from Rochelle Summerfield, a Northern Rivers artist. I actually saw her at her booth but she was talking with someone else so I didn’t have a chance to say thank you. I did get around to a lot of other booths, including Tezukayama Osaka, who were featuring Mitsumasa Kadota (see image below). His colourful paintings seemed to have been made with a palette knife sloshing vast quantities of oil paint around. They’re amazing. Mars Gallery from Melbourne (see below) had some bright neon works, some of which were on the walls and some of which were on plinths. There were other electrified works, some things made by a Japanese artist that were entirely mechanical with words being made out of bicycle chains. I talked a bit about these with mark a friend who I met at the show and he wondered aloud how you’d deal with such a work if it broke down and needed repair. I said that the traditional methods are more reliable. As you...

In late August I went to the Art Gallery of New South Wales with Ming, a friend, and we looked at the paintings. I was particularly struck by Erica McGilchrist’s 1971 ‘Mandala for my mother and father’ which was donated by Patrick White, the novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of White’s novels, in fact one of my favourites, is ‘The Solid Mandala’ and this painting can be seen as just that, a solid mandala as opposed to an ethereal one. Down in Sydney Modern, which seems like a gallery designed to celebrate the beauty of Sydney Harbour (not surprising when you think of the disaster of Tokyo Bay with its docks and refineries), they’d changed a lot of the works, so I got to see Sancintya Mohini Simpson’s ‘The fire’ which was made in 2022. I picked it out to feature because like some of my works it’s made in four parts. I wonder how they attach this work to the wall, mine are framed in the traditional style with a box around the outside holding everything in.