Media Kit Article: Look! The Artists

THE ARTISTS
Richard BELL (born Australia, 1953)
Richard Bell’s work is charged with political content, often underscoring the injustice towards Australia’s Indigenous people. Little Johnny was made in the layered, multi-dot style of Emily Kam Kngwarray. The text in the painting reads ‘I am Not Sorry’ taking former federal government to task for refusing to apologise to Indigenous people over the Stolen Generations issue.

Shane COTTON (born New Zealand, 1964)
Shane Cotton explores the interactions between Maori and European cultures. His paintings have a strong narrative quality based on the political, social and art history of New Zealand. Cotton combines images and texts from Maori art, folk culture, ceremonial design and European history.

Janenne EATON (born Australia, 1950)
Since the early 1990s Janenne Eaton’s work has focused particularly on an examination of Australia’s colonial past and its post-colonial present. These people is from a series that originated with her growing anxiety about social inequalities, racial intolerance and political conservatism.

Judith ELLISTON (born England 1960, arrived Australia 1963)
Cubism and traditional landscape painting provide two distinct frames of references for Cubist Landscape by Judith Elliston. Elliston was one of a number of Melbourne artists who shared an interest in geometric abstraction during the 1990s. Cubist Landscape is the result of the artist’s intense observation of the landscape.

Luigi FUSINATO (born Italy 1952, arrived Australia 1960)
Fusinato meditates on the cycle of life and death in his multi-panel screen-printed work Untitled (Life and death). The artist has combined repeated images of a young baby and a post-mortem photograph of Marilyn Monroe, separated by an image of Michelangelo’s Pieta. Fusinato’s gesture is reminiscent of Pop artist Andy Warhol’s appropriation of media imagery and use of screenprinting.

Louise HEARMAN (born Australia, 1963)
Louise Hearman often includes strange and out-of-place images creating a disquieting, otherworldly atmosphere in her work. In paintings such as Untitled #472 she extends this theme with the inclusion of fragments of familiar things in unfamiliar and unlikely surroundings where the unexpected looms large and threatening.

David JOLLY (born Australia, 1972)
David Jolly’s particular style of realism combines a detached and almost documentary pictorial style with personal observations of everyday life. Jolly’s paintings both evoke and confront the often mundane genre of the travel photograph or picture postcard, highlighting the aesthetic realm where the commonplace is transformed by the creative gesture.

Anne-Marie MAY (born Australia, 1965)
Reflecting on her work Untitled (Construction of coloured rays) Anne-Marie May has commented: ‘Making assemblages from everyday materials such as felt or denim, I was attempting to link the visual or pictorial experience to objects. I chose to work with the physical nature of materials specifically for their structural qualities; malleability, fusion, tension and mass, leading me to invent or appropriate processes from other disciplines such as craft and design’.

Arthur MCINTYRE (Australia, 1945–2003)
Throughout his career, Arthur McIntyre frequently used collage in his paintings as a means of layering images, textures and colours to reflect his observations and experiences of everyday life. In a statement from 1995, he wrote: ‘In my paintings I try to communicate the marvellous, as well as the malevolent, mysteries, complexities and tensions of being alive’.

James MORRISON (born Papua New Guinea 1959, arrived Australia 1977)
Aspen Grove is closely related to Morrison’s 2004 master work The Great Tasmanian Wars, a fifty-five panel painting which presents an epic narrative encompassing scenes about evolution, human conflict and otherworldly beings. Aspen Grove, while more intimate in scale, continues Morrison’s exploration of the haunting aspects of the natural world.

Rose NOLAN (born Australia, 1959)
My way to God# 1-30 is representative of Rose Nolan’s personal concerns with spirituality, particularly with reference to her Irish-Australian upbringing. In each component of this work she alludes to the symbolism of the Roman Catholic Church, using abstract forms and colour to explore underlying meanings behind the religious imagery.

Adam PYETT (born Australia, 1973)
Pyett’s Narcissus is painted in the tradition of the vanitas, a still-life tradition popularised by Northern European painters active in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Paintings executed in the vanitas style, which often feature skulls, watches, rotting fruit and musical instruments are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure and the certainty of death.

Blair TRETHOWAN (Australia, 1974-2006)
Sweating Logos, Trethowan’s portrait composed of tiny circular painted stickers, comments on the vapid decisions we face as consumers while also cleverly playing with Pop art’s emphasis on the Benday dot. The Benday dot is the building block of photographic images in newspaper and magazine printing, and was embraced by Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol during the 1960s. Continuing this tradition, Trethowan has appropriated the symbols and language of the everyday to create paintings and photographs that explore the values of contemporary culture.

Scott REDFORD (born Australia, 1962)
Having grown up on Australia’s Gold Coast, Redford was always enveloped by the culture of surfing. Playing off the surfboard as a mimimalist object of beauty as well as a consumer item lending itself to flashy logos and graphics, Redford uses actual surfboard foam, resin, airbrushing, and fiberglass lamination techniques in the creation of objects that share attributes of the surfboard itself, but exist in the space between painting and sculpture.

Eugene CARCHESIO (born Australia, 1960)
Eugene Carchesio’s drawing can be divided into two streams: recurring representational images including angels, skulls, clouds and compositions made up of abstract geometric forms. Decay of the angel continues Carchesio’s interest in compositions that recall the Russian Constructivists and through which, as the title suggests, he aims to communicate ideas of spirituality and otherworldliness.

Dinos CHAPMAN (born England, 1962)
Evoking the horrors that lurk deep in our collective unconscious, the Chapman brothers’ Exquisite Corpse series continues their exploration of inflammatory, taboo and violent subject matter. Flagbearers of the historical avant-garde, the Chapmans believe firmly in the Modernist tenet of shocking the viewer into a place outside usual comfort zones, while also acknowledging our fascination with abomination.

Adam CULLEN (born Australia, 1965)
‘Hate is the only thing that lasts is a dislocated narrative; dislocated in that the images and symbols are recycled and re-contextualised into many possible visual stories. The images deal with information overload and the white noise of the everyday. The figures are in psychological, physical or spiritual disrepair – all of them consuming or being consumed by their environment, eventually transubstantiating into ghosts or ghouls of their former selves. They become cultural stereotypes, victims of mass media and the Australian vernacular.’ Adam Cullen, 2004

Brent HARRIS (born New Zealand 1956, arrived Australia 1985)
The untimely no. 7 and The untimely no. 3 are the first woodcuts Brent Harris made utilising the nineteenth-century artist Edvard Munch’s multiple-block printing technique. They form part of a series of work from 1997 to 1999, comprised of ten paintings and numerous associated drawings. These prints relate directly to Harris’s paintings from the series, which are explorations of fluid, bodily forms that are intentionally ambiguous, allowing various interpretations and personal associations.

Damien HIRST (born England, 1965)
Hirst’s interest in modern medicine has taken on several guises including medicine cabinets, pharmacy and operating room installations, and in the case of Chicken, pharmaceutical packaging. Hirst explores our denial of death and the manner in which we relieve pain and suffering. Chicken pays homage to Pop art’s fixation on consumer brands, but also plays with the clean, minimalist design of prescription medications.

David MCDIARMID (Australia, 1952–95)
David McDiarmid was largely responsible for increasing the profile of gay culture in mainstream Australian art. McDiarmid lived and worked in New York from 1979 to 1984, where he revelled in the city’s exuberant and highly creative gay culture and witnessed the encroaching AIDS epidemic. Texts such as ‘Dear Death’ and ‘Discard After Use’ signify the fear experienced by those whose lives were threatened by the spectre of AIDS.

Luke PARKER (born Australia 1975)
In Untitled (Joy Division inverted) Parker has performed a double appropriation: the background image is actually the work of another artist, the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and the image on the surface is taken from the cover of late 70s rock band Joy Division’s first album, Unknown Pleasures. The moody quality of this work reflects several layers of poignancy: the darkness and sadness of Joy Division’s music; the suicide of the band’s lead singer at the zenith of their critical success; and Gonzalez-Torres’ death from AIDS in the mid-1990s.

Narelle JUBELIN (born Australia, 1960)
Narelle Jubelin’s Trade Delivers People, incorporates found ‘tramp art’ frames, needlepoint embroideries made by the artist, as well as Egyptian earthenware pots from the NGV Collection. Her installation addresses the notion of cultural exchange and the way in which the materials and philosophies of local cultures can become globally transported, commingled and perceptually distorted.

Janet KORAKAS (born Australia, 1955)
Janet Korakas’ elaborate ceramic works are informed by many stylistic influences that range from the work of sixteenth-century French potter Bernard Palissy, Baroque and Rococo decorative art, Majolica-ware, and early twentieth-century Australian ceramics. Symbolic of universal life and death, Yama’s cenote refers to the destructive and regenerative powers of Yama, Lord of the Underworld in Tibetan cosmology.

Nick MANGAN (born Australia, 1979)
Eamon O'TOOLE (born Australia, 1957)
Issues surrounding technology inform several works in the exhibition and are explored in both sinister and playful ways. Nick Mangan and Eamon O’Toole, for example, depict the motorbike from two very different perspectives: as a fragmented and nightmarish entity out of J.G. Ballard science fiction and a fun, cartoon-inspired adolescent fantasy, respectively.

Kate ROHDE (born Australia, 1980)
Kate Rohde uses the format of the natural history museum diorama to explore issues of extinction, our power over nature, and our desire to collect and display once-living things as both trophies and specimens.

Ricky SWALLOW (born Australia, 1974)
Ricky Swallow has stated that his works are about his generation. In his work, Model for a sunken moment, Swallow refers to the 1977 film Star Wars and its moral tale about the forces of good and evil personified by the character Darth Vader. Science fiction and popular culture have provided fertile ground for Swallow whose works often embody a sense of nostalgia, decay, and the passing of time.

Louise WEAVER (born Australia, 1966)
Louise Weaver’s works invite us to consider distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the beautiful and the uncanny. Since the mid 1990s she has methodically encased objects within hand-crocheted carapaces, transforming animals, botanical specimens and domestic objects into seductive imaginary forms.

Martin PARR (born England, 1952)
Martin Parr’s photographs of pink, pig-shaped cupcakes and a hamburger in the process of being devoured by a woman with bright blue sparkly nail polish can be read as both celebrations and indictments of kitsch culture. As in much of contemporary art that explores consumerism and popular culture, it is increasingly difficult to ascertain whether the artist is revelling in or is revolted by the subject matter.

Ant Farm (United States, 1968-78)
A group of radical architects who were also video, performance, and installation artists, Ant Farm was founded in 1968. Ant Farm’s most famous endeavour was Cadillac Ranch, the art installation along Route 66 in Amarillo, Texas. Ant Farm partially buried ten Cadillac automobiles in a wheat field - both celebrating the evolution of the Cadillac’s tailfin and at the same time mocking American carmakers’ history of planned obsolescence.

Aleks DANKO (born Australia, 1950) and JOAN GROUNDS (born United States, 1939)
Aleks Danko and Joan Grounds’ We should call it a living room presents a time-lapse film of a lounge chair in an enclosed space that sprouts grass. The film resonates with our current embrace of ecological sensitivity as well as contemporary art and music’s revival of psychedelic sensibilities from the late 1960s and early 1970s.