Anne MacDonald
Party
3-27 April 2013
Artereal Gallery
www.artereal.com.au
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Photo artist Anne MacDonald does not depict the grossly rampant, tangled and trampled mess, the tumultuous chaos, confusion and clutter that we associate with boisterous children’s parties and the debris that is left behind after the last mother has collected her over-excited child.
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Instead, a sense of emptiness, of stillness, of silence and fragility and loss pervades Anne MacDonald’s poignant images of the aftermath of a children’s birthday party.
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The clamour and noise is no longer. A spilt drink, cake crumbs, a spent party popper, a spatter of glitter, a few nonpareils, a discarded party hat, limp ribbons and a deflated balloon are all that remain;  sad and solitary remnants that symbolize another passing birthday and yet another year of childhood gone.
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Her still life photographs are a paean, a touching homage. They are stylised tableaus; understated quasi memorials to the transience of childhood and a mother’s sense of the inevitability and loss experienced with each outwardly celebratory rite of passage associated with the annual birthday party:
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“As a parent, observing my child growing up fills me with wonder, but also a sense of loss.
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Children’s birthday parties are important social rituals, and on the surface of things, joyous and festive celebrations of life. However, on another level, they are compelling indicators of time’s inexorable passing. Children’s party decorations, food, gifts, games, toys and costumes alter each year with the age of the child. Their role extends beyond pure ornament and artifice to become symbolic of a transitory childhood world.
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Looking at children’s birthday parties as symbols of loss and impermanence, ‘Party’ continues my exploration into the relationship between the photographic still life, transience and mortality. In this series I have recreated ephemeral banquet scenes of party cakes and decorations.  The images record the aftermath of the party, when all the fun is over, the presents have been opened, the cake eaten and the guests have left.” 

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Image: Anne MacDonald_Party no. 6_2012-13_Fine art ink-jet print_110x160cm_Ed of 5.

Karina Wikamto
6 February – 2 March 2013
Artereal Gallery Project Space
www.artereal.com.au/home/project-space

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Cultural dignity is at the heart of my artistic practice. It is a quality that was suppressed during my upbringing and a characteristic which I aim to both restore and retain through my work.   Many generations of cultural repression has inherently affected my family’s sense of identity and belonging, as well as my own. In the time of the Vietnam War, the Chinese who were living  in Indonesia were subject to extreme modes of cultural prejudice. Unfortunately, my father was one of those in the succeeding generations whose lives we

re tainted by the latent repercussions of this austere period in history.

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This work is meant to be a personalised and physical representation of the life and character of my father. Each peanut was savoured by him, and each shell opened with precision to be salvaged for this work. The triangular configuration of the inverted shells are intended to illustrate a binary for the notions of strength and fragility. Metaphorically the process was a symbolic act of piecing together my father’s story for him, that also eventually became a test of my strength and fragility. He insists that the work illustrates my dedication as an artist, though I feel that it proves his dedication as a father.

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Karina Wikamto
Artist Statement
2012

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Image: Oey Oen Hok – my father, 2012, digital print on rag paper, edition of 5, 109 x 78.5cm.

As part of Art Month Sydney 2013, the Rozelle Contemporary Art Precinct presents a series of innovative and engaging contemporary art experiences including exhibitions, performances, artist talks, site specific public artworks and outdoor screenings. With a dual focus on both emerging artists and experimental artistic practices, the RCAP program highlights the rich and diverse contemporary art scene which exists in Rozelle.
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Featured exhibitions and events are spread across participating venues along Darling Street, Rozelle throughout the month of March – with a special ‘Art Month Sydney Precinct Night’ program on Thursday 21 March 2013 from 5-8pm.

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Grab some friends and gallery-hop your way down Darling Street from 5-8pm, before heading to Sydney College of the Arts for drinks and music at the Art Month Sydney Art Bar from 8pm til late.

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All welcome!

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Click here to download the RCAP program.

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Image: Hayden Fowler, New Romantic ii, 2011, colour pigment print on cotton rag art paper, 85 x 85cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Artereal Gallery, Sydney.

NEW OLDS
Design between Tradition and Innovation
Curated by Volker Albus
21 March – 27 April 2013
Sydney College of the Arts
www.sydney.edu.au/sca/

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The Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations in cooperation with the curator Volker Albus, and the Goethe-Institut Australien and Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney will present the exhibition NEW OLDS Design between Tradition and Innovation during March and April 2013. The exhibition will feature sixty objects, made by forty-five designers and groups of designers whose main focus of work is in Germany, Europe and the United States. The designers have reinterpreted pieces of furniture by reflecting on their own culture and by questioning the traditions of design, transforming established classics or recombining them.

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Image:  Bo Reudler Studio, Slow White Table, Slow White Chair, 2009. Table, chair. Gathered wood, beech, birch, oak, FSC timber, painted. Table: 115 x 70 x 75 cm, chair: 45 x 40 x 115 cm. One only, limited edition of 8. Photo / Copyright: Bo Reudler, Netherlands.

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Thursday March 1 2012
Click here to view article 

Tianli Zu
Shadows of Strange Things
6-29 March 2013
Sydney College of the Arts
www.sydney.edu.au/sca/

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Image credit: Tianli Zu, Shadows of Strange Things (detail), 2012. Acetate  film, painted and hand cut, installation, light projection and animation with sound.

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Katie Sorrenson
Trashscapes
6 February – 2 March 2013
Artereal Gallery
www.artereal.com.au

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Katie Sorrenson pushes the boundaries of traditional printmaking practice to explore the transient nature of our visual experience and the pliant way in which we focus and re-focus our perceptions of time and space.

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The subjects for her digital prints are the banal aspects and objects of everyday domestic living that we take for granted; the chairs and couches we sit on, boxes and the numerous piles of non-cherished or discarded things that populate our surrounds. For herTrashscapes series of prints, Katie Sorrenson seeks to accentuate the fluid and transient nature of the seemingly inconsequential manufactured and mass-produced and often disregarded objects and detritus of daily life and our seeming inattention to them.

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Image: Katie Sorrenson, Couch #2, 2012, digital print, 71.5 x 117.5cm, edition of 5.