Eastern Suburbs Art Group

Actually I didn't go of course for the purpose of seeing the painting but the painting turned out to be more engaging than the seminar. The mural is enormous and occupies an entire wall of the huge space.  The theme is the City 2 Surf marathon that is held in Sydney every  year, though it's not completely obvious from looking at the painting that this is the subject. The ICC's theatre is located in the same space. Because of this the mural by Hodgkinson (had never heard his name mentioned prior to today) reminded me of similar art in the Sydney Opera House. I don't mean that Hodgkinson has a mural in the Opera House, obviously not. If he had one there I would have known about him. Unfortunately as you can see from the above image the mural is sort of closed off by escalators. Most of the work is blue (echoes of Whiteley), cream, yellow and black. There are strips of orange in places. But due to the presence of the equipment required to get people upstairs to the third f...

The prize has been going for over two decades, which in itself is impressive, but the works on display are really nice. The works are personal in scope, which is intersting. They are also all quite different in style. The prize went to Auckland-based artist Virginia Leonard for Glad that you are not here all the time — an urn for unwanted limbs and other things, made from clay, pure gold and resin (see below). The work is interesting it sort of exudes a sense of fatigue, which aligns with the title. You want people to be around but not all the time, in fact the exhausting work of the artist mandates a lot of free time. In my world I call it grey flabby time, the spare hours surrounding creative moments, or rather creative periods. I'm not comparing my world with Leonard's by any means but I was struck by the sense of familiarity I had when viewing her sculpture. Another winner was for the Mayor's Choice Award, going to Alicia Cox for Rack (see below). The gallery says this ...

What a frantic week. Delayed materials. Last minute dash over the bridge. Forgotten bookings. Then four days talking to people wandering in the aisles of Hall 4 ICC. Last night Mark and I emptiued out the booth, put everything in the ute, and brought it home. Mark, Natasha and I took turns on the booth. The show every day from 10qam to 6pm. If you do that one day it's already enough, but the energy you get from talking to people offsets the fatigue. Down the track we'll have a debrief to mull over the consequences of the show, what it meant, how to package the ideas better in future. I hate marketing language too but the word "package" sort of works to collect a whole range of ideas, of words, and of memories. Dreams, too, and plans.

A friend had a painting in this show. The central theme is drawing. Many of the paintings evince a high degree of skill and application in the design.  Sorry I don't know where the room sheet as I went to this show a while ago. Only went back because some images dropped out of my phone. The above image reminds me of a set of paintings a friend of mine did some years ago. There is something of Cressida Campbell in this. This (above) is Mark my friend's painting, normally he does watercolour but this is oil. The above image is a painting by a woman, again apologies the room sheet has escaped. This woman has two items in the show and they are beside each other. I like the conception it is very evocative and sensual. The colour scheme is very restricted however, so there is a kind of tension in the work.