Michael Cusack | Transverse Series

As the final touches are put in place for Michael Cusack's upcoming exhibition, Transverse Series we thought we would give you a glimpse into this new body of work... in the words of the artist.

This stream of work began in 2009 with an exhibition in which the walls of the Aran Islands (off the west coast of Ireland) with their interlocking shapes held together by weight, weather and time were the beginning of a seed of influence. The metaphor of those walls (sometimes called famine walls) is long forgotten in the making of the work in that the work is not specific per se and can be read as autobiographical as much as any reference to a certain place and time.

What isn’t forgotten is the sort of logic of construction. With a long time interest in the diagram, the architectural blueprint, engineers’ drawings, boat diagrams etc, the interlocking shapes in building and technical drawing. It is not as if the paintings have to stand up as an architectural model but they do have to a certain purpose. I am trying to make work that has a certain logic, but at the some stage that logic is interrupted.

With every new body of work I am trying to re-write. Not a new language but trying to inform my current language with new codes, new rhythms, new passages. I don’t want to give too much as I want the reader to have something to do. I am interested in space and although I have abandoned perspective per se I am interested in the relationship between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional space.

Michael Cusack, July 2011

Transverse Series opens on Wednesday July 6, from 6-8pm.

Apology

We would like to apologise for the Heather B. Swann post which was emailed earlier today - this was a technical error. The Heather B. Swann show took place from March 30 - April 30 2011.

Warm regards,

The Karen Woodbury Gallery team.

Lisa Roet: Adelaide Zoo

Lisa Roet’s sculpture Chimpanzee Finger 2006/07 has been donated to the Adelaide Zoo by collectors Paul and Bronwyn Smith.

The sculpture was unveiled earlier this month by primate expert Jane Goodall, and now sits in the zoo’s entrance forecourt.

Meeting Goodall was an incredible highlight for Roet who told the Adelaide Advertiser,

"For me, it's huge, it's like meeting my childhood hero. When I was about 10 or 11, I was reading one of her books – I was fascinated by chimpanzees and her research. I wanted to go and study primatology or zoology but I did very badly in physics."

Read more about Roet's work and her path to becoming an artist in our gallery interview, here.
Roet's exhibition of primate inspired prints finishes today at the APW.

Gallery interview: Rhys Lee

Rhys Lee, image courtesy of Cory White / Mr Blanc

We sat down with Rhys Lee for a quick chat about his newest exhibition Scarecrow...

Tell us about the process of putting this show together?

I have always had in my mind that I wanted to make vessels and as you know I’ve made bronze things before but I ran out of money so I had to come up with a way of making new works on the cheap so I decided I’d get some clay. It’s a lot less expensive but it’s actually a lot harder because you are making something that becomes the finished product... when you make a bronze you can make it out of anything it goes into a mould and becomes a bronze thing so it was a lot more difficult than making a bronze.

It’s been really nice as well, Pia had a little show of ceramic stuff and that got me really interested in doing it when I saw that she was quite good at it and made some really beautiful things. Our studios at home are right next to each other, we see can each other and work in the same space and ideas bounce off each other so the work evolves together and almost becomes one work in a lot of ways.

bird 2011

What about the other artists you worked with for this exhibition?

They are all people that I admire and have a reasonably close relationship with, some I’ve known a long time, some not that long. I'd been wanting to curate a show for a long time with people’s work I really love and seeing all their work together. With this show I really liked the idea of an eclectic group of work that feels like someone’s collection almost and I think the show has that feeling. Usually people’s collections have a few things like a sculpture, a painting and drawing so there is that element to it as well that I like. I wanted to mix it up and make it more interesting than just paintings on the wall.

irma (picnic at hanging rock) 2011
collaboration with Heidi Yardley

What would you say are your main influences at the moment?

That’s a really strange question because I am easily influenced by things. I might see something while walking down the street or I might look at someone’s blog and there might be a photo I’ll remember or go back to. If I feel like doing a painting I’ll just go down to the studio and maybe turn my phone on and that image will come up and I’ll start painting that image and that will evolve into something else. Like a visual memory that feeds into the work? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. So it’s constantly different things influencing the work.

Can you tell us a little about your background and what led you to become an artist?

I was never discouraged to draw or paint or do that stuff growing up. My parents were always pretty good with that and encouraging me. If you don’t get told not to do something I suppose you just keep doing it if you feel like doing it. It’s always been a constant thing that just kept going. The graffiti thing was a pretty big part of my life for awhile in the nineties - pretty much all the nineties - then I moved to Melbourne. I had no money so I started doing drawings then selling them to people, trying to get them into shops and I had work up in Fat 52 (now FAT) they would buy drawings off me so that gave me a bit of a kick-start showing work here and then it just evolved from that into the gallery thing.

the bunyip that William Buckley saw 2011

Do you have a typical day in the studio? What does that involve?

There’s never really a typical day in the studio. When I am making work for a show I will dedicate a solid block of maybe 3 or 4 months everyday I’ll go to the studio. I’ll be working on bits and pieces, maybe work on a painting for an hour then do a bit of sculpture, a lot of the time is spent pacing around thinking.

Do you have a dream project?

I don’t have a dream project... It changes depending on what I’m working on at the time I suppose it’s not about one definitive project it’s about how I am feeling at the time. If I want to make some ceramics then I’ll dedicate time to making that and I’ll have an outcome and be happy. Or if I want to make a book I’ll make a book and be happy with that and if I want to make 10 paintings… It’s more about the little things than one big thing.

baboon 2011

I think you were asked this recently… If you could live with any artwork every made what would it be?

There are nice things that would be nice to have around but there’s not one thing. No one could be happy with one thing. That’s why people buy stuff - that’s why people have ten pairs of shoes!

boxer, 2011
collaboration with Rob McHaffie

Magda Matwiejew: Black Box White Cube

Magda Matwiejew features in Black Box White Cube a free exhibition that explores the creative intersections between art and performance in contemporary Australian art at the Arts Centre. Starting with performance art from the 1970s, the exhibition captures the vitality that music and dance, staged photography and film, theatricality and the spectacle of performance infuse into contemporary Australian art. Current until September 25.

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

Australian Pavilion, Hany Armanious

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

Peggy Guggenheim

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

How to get around when in Venice (left)
Palazzo Bembo (right)

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

Venezuela (left)
Venice by night (right)

Michael Cusack

Michael Cusack has been featured on the johnnygoodsir blog this week - offering a sneak peak into some of the works he is making for his upcoming exhibition at Karen Woodbury Gallery, from July 6-30.

Jonathon Nichols and Derek O'Connor: Cologne

Jonathon Nichols and Derek O'Connor have work included in the exhibition *Schnittmengen/Intersections* at Galerie Emmanuel Walderdorff in Cologne.

If you happen to be in Cologne be sure to check it out.

Current until July 9 2011.

Lara Merrett | new website

Gallery artist Lara Merrett has recently launched her new website. Save it to your bookmarks and take a moment to explore Lara's backlog of exquisite works and projects.

www.laramerrett.com

Art Guide Australia launches iPhone app

We're pleased to be involved with the new Art Guide Australia iPhone App. Download it here for the most up to date coverage of what's on in the visual arts.

Danie Mellor joins Karen Woodbury Gallery

Karen Woodbury Gallery is pleased to announce that Danie Mellor has joined the gallery.

We look forward to exhibiting Danie's work in 2012.
Please contact the gallery on info@kwgallery.com regarding available works.







Piccaninny Paradise 2010

Titania Henderson: News

Our congratulations to Titania Henderson who has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious 9th International Ceramics Festival, Mino in Japan with her work Piled Up (Orange) 2008/09.

Please contact the gallery on info@kwgallery.com for enquiries about available works.

Artist Profile: Current issue

The current issue of Artist Profile is a feast for the eyes in more ways than one!

Del Kathryn Barton features on the cover and in an in-depth interview with Owen Craven - offering a sneak peek into her studio and exquisite new works in progress. Brett Ballard previews Jane Burton's stunning new body of photographic works and Dan Rule talks to Locust Jones.

Certainly a bumper issue and definitely worth picking up a copy...

Gallery Interview: Monika Tichacek

On the eve of her highly anticipated performance and solo exhibition after an absence of 6 years from the arts scene we spoke to Monika Tichacek about art, life and what's been keeping her inspired...

breathing dark soil maze 2009/11

Describe your work in 5 words. Mysterious, Alive, Manifest - un-manifest, Intricate

Tell us about your practice? I am still very interested in the experience of self. Still investigating myself personally in relation to what is present in my inner life. Whilst this is the constant, the environment where the self is engaged has changed. My earlier works reflects my sense of self being very anchored in the physical and social constructs of femininity with an air of oppressive confinement and constriction. In the Shadowers I dove more deeply into the psyche, portraying parts of the ego through distinct characters. Habituated workings of the mind were exposed as self-limiting and self-torturous. The relationship to the natural world was portrayed as conflicting and disturbed. The behaviour of the different characters was controlling and destructive... And yet throughout the darkness there were many glimmers of light, literally communicated via the use of light and sequins, jewels and rubies glistening in images of death and decay.

During my past years with much time spent in silence in nature I was able to see my western cultural inheritance. Our approach to nature, one of domination, control and destruction our cultures obsession with superficial surface appearance. The Shadowers was an outcry at this condition, like taking the lid off the pressure cooker. Since then, and in my travels I have let nature teach me and I have spent much time investigating the nature of the mind. Therefore now my interest in the experience of self is investigated via my interest in the complex workings of our ecosystem, which I believe is a metaphor for the internal workings of the body/mind experience.

I am finding that drawing is very intimate and very kinaesthetic. There is not so much separation between myself and the process - in the sense of embodying the process directly. I felt that with the video works there was a lot of process, which was very practical, and to do much with planning before I would get to the part of physical embodiment of my ideas. With drawing the process is happening right in that moment, I have to be intensely present.

the Albert Street boys pitching in to get Monika's work off the truck

The new exhibition at Karen Woodbury has been long awaited, tell us about the journey of making this project come to life? That is too big a story really! All of my travels and life essentially collide into this project. Everything I have experienced up until now has brought me to express in this way at this point. However, I can say that the drawings began in the jungle, where I sat in 2 months of semi solitude. I would break open some ink pens and randomly splatter the paint on the paper. Then I would sit and watch to see what shapes would emerge. I would draw what I saw and that was the beginning of this drawing series.

Beauty shattered all ideas of who I am 2011
(performance with harpist Robert Neil 120 minutes)

Tell us a little about your travels. Much time spent in nature, listening, observing and letting go of the fast paced life as much as possible. I experienced as much as possible of indigenous ceremony and ways of life as possible.

Who or what inspires you to keep making? Art is my language. It surpasses the intellect and cannot be confined or categorised. It is endlessly creative with limitless potentiality. I like that…it’s a doorway to touch infinity.

What path led you to become an artist? Ever since I was little I wanted to be an artist and I used to draw from the time that I could hold crayons. Art was always my favourite subject in school. After high school I went to art school for a year in Zurich. I then diverted for a few years and studied social sciences to quench my thirst to know more about the human psychological and social experience. However I eagerly went back to art as my creative side was dying in such an intensely academic environment.

What does a typical day in the studio involve? There isn’t really a typical day, but with this last project it would mostly be drawing. I also spent a lot of time just looking and meditating on the painting with my eyes open until the shapes to be drawn would appear.

to all my relations 1 2009/11 (detail)

What is your dream project? Whatever comes from the most genuine place of inspiration

If you could live with any artwork ever made what would it be? I do live with it - I live in the bush…Actually it is the light, and the way it plays with the surfaces…to me it is one of the most beautiful visual experiences.

the space in everything 2009/11

Albert Street Galleries Open Day

The annual Albert Street Galleries Open Day is in full swing and it's great to see so many people brave the cold to listen to our program of speakers across the 5 galleries, visit the pop up book store and enjoy a burger from Beatbox Kitchen.

Anne Marsh's discussion of Monika Tichacek's newest body of work, to all my relations, was a full house! We look forward to doing it all again in 2012.








Monika Tichacek | to all my relations | until May 28

Monika Tichacek | to all my relations

Monika Tichacek's newest body of work, to all my relations, has been a highly anticipated event at Karen Woodbury Gallery and for Monika's many dedicated followers. It was 2005 when we last saw a major body of work by Monika and this new performance and series of sublime watercolour, ink and gouache works on paper have certainly been worth the wait. The performance aspect of the exhibition is taking place as I type it is quite simply uplifting and moving - and a privilege to experience (May 7 3-5pm).

Monika Tichacek, to all my relations, is current until May 28.

Note: We will post images and footage as soon as they are available.