Past Exhibitions
Kudditji Kngwarreye
6 February – 3 May 2009
This retrospective exhibition presented significant works by Utopian artist Kudditji Kngwarreye from the Hank Ebes Collection.
Kudditji Kngwarreye was born circa 1928. For the majority of his life he worked as a stockman, like many other Aboriginal men, and resided on pastoral leases throughout Central Australia. Kudditji (pronounced Kubbitji) was one of the first established male artists in Utopia and is the younger brother of the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye.
Kudditji most frequently depicted his inherited ancestral totem, the Emu. The stylistic compositions of his paintings often incorporated either a checker-board background or brightly coloured dots. The concentric circles represent water holes where the Emu goes to drink. Several of these are situated around the Boundary Bore region.
Kudditji's style developed over the years of his creative practise. His sophisticated dot work that he employed in his early career transformed into a preference for a much looser brushstroke in large blocks of colour in later years. He produced bold and confident paintings, with stark or subtle contrasts depending on his choice of shades, executed in a painterly manner.
This series of later works are called 'My Country' and represents the entirety of the artist's country with the abundance of wildflowers that are ever present. These works are especially reminiscent of the last style of painting by his sister, the famous Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who is likewise famous for her remarkable sense of colour and unique brushstroke.
Past Exhibitions
Kathleen Boyle: Leitmotif
23 July – 27 September 2009
'My work is often concerned with those aspects of life which remain a mystery to us. Suffering, joy, relationships, the particular experience of being a woman, a child, of touching the world and others, of nature and grace' – Kathleen Boyle
This exhibition profiled key drawings and monoprints from Kathleen Boyle. While Kathleen's broader body of work ranges across media from printing and drawing, to painting, collage and most recently wooden construction, this exhibition offers a short review of her more figurative drawings and prints. Even within this framework, however, Kathleen's adventurous approach to experimenting with various media and materials is evident in the various papers and surfaces she works on and the techniques she employs to express her vision.
Kathleen explains drawing as more than the simple copying of an object, seeing it rather as the construction of an image using line, shape and scale, together with shade, light, and tonal contrast. Kathleen uses the process of drawing as a means of exploration, translating the world according to her creative vision. And this vision tends to return to philosophical questions. The interplay of outer and inner worlds is a concept frequently explored through her work.
Over her lifetime, Kathleen Boyle has been involved in and witnessed much of the development of the artistic world as a practicing artist, art student, and teacher in Melbourne.
From 1960 to 1987 Kathleen Boyle was a Lecturer in Fine Art at Chisholm Institute of Technology (later Monash University). During this time she undertook a Master of Fine Arts Degree in San Francisco (1973-1975).
Kathleen Boyle, who lives in the Dandenong Ranges, has won several awards for her work, held many solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows nationally and internationally. She is represented in the private and public collections in Australia and overseas.
Winning several awards for her artwork, Kathleen has held many solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows She is represented in the collections of several regional galleries and universities in Australia and also in public and private collections in Australia, England, Italy and the United States.
Past Exhibitions
Heather Fairnie: Mapping - Territories and Landscape
18 July – 27 September 2009
This exhibition explored the intersections of mapping across Western and Indigenous art traditions, including the contrasts and synchronicities with 'mapping country' works from the McLeod Gift Collection and new work created by contemporary artist Heather Fairnie. The exhibition aimed to foster engagement with the process of mapping across cultural divides, enhancing the way audiences & artists perceive the place of Aboriginal art in a contemporary context.
Maps are an integral part of our lives and have a remarkable effect on our view of the world. They offer us a picture of our environment, an apparent reflection of our world and a guide to the way we might navigate the landscape and define our territories. From sketchy hand drawn directions to the latest GPS navigation systems, in contemporary Western culture we rely on maps in the everyday, equating their linear directions as some kind of truth. A map is essentially limited, however, in order to offer a readable likeness.
The process and form of mapping any space is inherently subjective and loaded with conscious and unconscious omissions. Maps have the ability to inform, interpret and interrupt, to re-contextualise our conceptualisations of not only where we live, but of who we are. Informatively then, the differences in how cultures 'map' their territories directly informs the divergent ways in which they approach their lived culture on a daily basis. Mapping explored the way we give visual form to landscape and territory by looking at the shape and substance of mapping across cultural divides.
Heather Fairnie is primarily an Abstraction artist, with an oeuvre ranging from print making to painting. Since completing print making at RMIT in 1994 she has exhibited extensively in many galleries across Australia and internationally.
Fairnie has always been intrigued by the notion of time, place, spirit and the creative possibilities of memory. In creating the work for this exhibition she in no way intended to depict any specific Western topographical form, or any Indigenous narrative or direct representation of Indigenous artworks. Rather, as she stated, her artworks depict imagined landmarks as 'marks without location, without history, yet they are marks that assimilate a location'.
Looking down at the landscape from above and noticing the abstract marks forming textures and patterns was an inspiration for Fairnie in creating this series of prints. Her father had a pilot's license and would often take her with him on his flights. Fairnie remembers fondly the visual journey over the vast landscape that this aerial perspective allowed her:
'It was during these times that I would discover the geometric patterns of suburbia and the abstraction of the desert plains. It is the abstraction of the desert that I feel a greater affiliation with as an abstract artist. The landscape of the Pilbara especially inspired marks that are found upon these sheets of paper.' – Heather Fairnie.
While not drawing literally from nature or history, within her practice Heather reinvents and re-interprets the memory of and sense of being or not being part of landscape. Exploring the compositional elements of space and density, this sometimes creates the illusion of topography, though always abstracted. Creating space around more intricate forms of information, Fairnie depicts a certain vastness of place, both physical and spiritual.
'They are locations in dreams, in creating artworks that may some day be found to exist.' – Heather Fairnie.
Past Exhibitions
Diane Kilderry
9 May – 12 July 2009
A collection of old metal objects found at a country tip became the starting point for the abstract paintings and drawings in this exhibition. Inspired by the form and essence of these found objects, Kilderry's ghostly, meditative artworks create space for the viewer to move past the literal world to the subjective space beyond.
'These objects have now lived out their useful lives, but still reside as powerful evocations of purposeful presence... The purely functional role that was their only reason for being has now been overshadowed by the attraction of their general obsolescence and imperfections and has resulted in their current state of intentionless grace.' – Diane Kilderry.
Local Belgrave artist Diane Kilderry has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for the past 20 years, including solo exhibitions at Roar Studios, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Chapman & Bailey and Ochre Gallery. Her work is held in many collections including the Australian National Gallery, G J Coles, and the Lefebvre Collection. She recently completed her Masters in Fine Art through Monash University exploring transformation and the layering of consciousness through her creative practice.
