Exhibition dates: 19 Feb - Sun 1 March , 2020

Solo Show
A typical?
Stacey Korfiatis

As the vessels that house human consciousness, our bodies map the course of our lives. From birth, the scars, wrinkles, freckles and “imperfections” we collect tell our individual stories - charting the growth and change of each unique experience. A typical? is a series of hyperreal paintings; un-airbrushed, unaltered portraits that empowers the subject and viewer by challenging conventional definitions of beauty.

Each model who volunteered to be painted for Atypical? describes themselves as having a disability, or a part of their body that does not conform to Western beauty standards. Many of the models also manage mental illness and/or sit somewhere within the LGBTIQA+ spectrum. Baring all: surgical scars, birth marks, stretch marks, wrinkles, and body hair, each model stands before you, allowing the effects of time and experience to tell their story.

While many of these models require mobility aids, appearing with neither aid nor costume circumnavigates the reflexive othering the perception of difference can trigger, drawing the viewer instead to ask “how are we similar?” Atypical? rejects the notion that beauty is homogeneous, and the existence of a universal norm for beauty with respect to age, sexuality, gender, ability or skin tone. Atypical? celebrates the magnificence of bodies whatever their appearance.

Sponsored by City of Yarra

Exhibition dates: 5 Feb - Sun 16 Feb, 2020

Space 1
Long way round
Jennifer Tarry-Smith

Jennifer Tarry-Smith is a Melbourne based artist working in the medium of printmaking and drawing. She produces works that are abstract distillations of her experience of place and memory. The sequence of impressions are informed by Jennifer’s recent travel’s to Europe. In the arabesque line, the arches of moorish architecture are recalled; the soft ochres and turquoise colours are reminiscent of the painted houses of Venice; the velvety texture of pastels and lithography recalling the patina of age. Like a view glimpsed through half closed eyes, there is a sense of recognition of feeling or emotion, the shadowy imprint of the spirit of a place in her work.

Space 2
Pussy
Grace Ware

‘PUSSY’ is a space prompted by the patriarchy and its wonderfully excessive vocabulary around the multiple words used to describe a ‘vagina’. The use of the word vagina has always caused cultural controversy, these cultural issues have sparked a rise to the development of an incredible range of slang terms for the vagina. Despite the force driven behind these words our power does not always lay with them. When you hear the words “pussy, vagina, cunt, cooch, fanny, furry taco” how many of these words hold a negative connotation? How many offend you? How many do you avoid? How many make you laugh? When confronted with these words, do they fuel you’re your shame? Some may spark a lived reality which confronts your discomfort. ‘PUSSY’ is a space which has been made to reclaim the power that these words have held over us and celebrate our vast, complex dictionary of vaginas. It challenges of the stigma around our pussy vocabulary and encourages the active use of these words in and the power of humour to reclaim our shame. ‘PUSSY’ grabs the lingering smell of our pussy squeamishness lurking amongst our current climate and champions its capacity to empower and teach us.

Space 3
Smelly
Evangeline Clark

My intention is for my work to act as a spatial disruption through the ephemeral invasion of colour. My work examines the boundaries between the decorative and the feminine, the grotesque and the pretty, the meaningless and the significant. My aim is to redefine intense shapes and colours not as pejoratively ‘girly’, silly and hollow, but as inherently momentous and powerful. I use the saturated colour of the acrylic paint and the fluffy texture of the faux fur to explore the idea of excessive prettiness that verges on being tacky and ugly.
This installation propels the viewer’s sensory involvement past just passively observing. This work smells and each colour radiates a different scent. Viewers are encouraged to step onto the floor work and engage with the smells emerging from the work.

Exhibition dates: 22 Jan - Sun 2 Feb, 2020

Space 1
The little big
Skylar Ru Silva

‘The little big’ is an intimate and playful exploration of the relationship between self reflection and beauty.

In this series I draw inspiration from the mediocre, the minute and often overlooked; the intricate and changing abstractions in finger smudges on smart phone and tablet screens. They fascinate me. They’re an organic byproduct of a digital function. The transient tire tracks of Automatic reflex, executed with unconscious precision and rhythm.

Space 2
The value of identity
Avan Anwar

War is destruction and leads to displacement of people. Displacment significantly impacts on identity and its deterioration. Only memory rescues identity and connects past with the present and the future. For displaced people identity has a value which connects them with their roots.

Space 3
People I Sought of met
Tim Coleman

I predominately paint with oils and acrylics to try to capture the essence of a brief moment or idea through multiple perspectives both visually and emotionally. Two people could walk down the same road and have completely different experiences; my aim is to create artworks that visually construct fleeting memories that people can read and somehow identify empathetically with some aspect of the image and use this as a starting point to explore what’s happening within the image. I use references from found photos that have been lost or discarded, self-taken photos as well as images formed from my personal experiences. With this series I explore portraits of people I sought of met at a job one day. There were so many new faces and stories that they started to meld together so I decided to paint them based on my distorted memory of who they were. I don’t know them, they are people I sought of met, much like many of the people you have sought of met. The works are painted in acrylic and oil on offcuts of ply from varies building jobs.

Exhibition dates: Wed 8 Jan - Sun 19 Jan, 2020

Space 1
The Noon Hour and Other Cities
Giordano Biondi

Giordano’s most recent work are imaginary cities that set themselves in an eternal midday hour. Noon is the time when the sun flattens the world through the absence of shadows cast by objects, and the demon of the midday hour sows restlessness among things that have briefly lost their weight and consistency.

The viewer then looks at these cities from above, the gaze equivalent to the direction of a sun that shrinks away the shadow of buildings and renders them utopian and ideal, abstract entities without memory. The plazas, streets and courtyards collect the wandering eye and project it along these urban atlases, restless in the midday these cities have appeared in.Giordano’s drawings seek to depict an ideal cityscape as a narrative that invites the gaze to linger in every one of its components. The eye finds itself ringed by the buildings of an open square. It flies and travels through the straight lines of the boulevards, exiting away from the art or entering into it. And each house and palace is the locus of an encounter or an idea, expressed through the peculiarity of its architecture.

The whole picture is then an alphabet or an archive into which the gaze consults, travels, or finds refuge and solace. this fictional city is intended as a sort of dream catcher for the eye, a portal (or perhaps end point) of an invisible land.

Space 2
Impacts and Impressions
Aneta Bozic

No action or presence stands alone, in isolation. We all connect to others in some way. The balance in this interaction and connection with nature seems to be skewed too often at the expense of nature. A growing awareness of the long term impact we are having on the natural environment is increasing attempts to minimise the negative effects, and focus on the positive connections with nature.

This body of work explores these impacts in both concept and process. It uses locally sourced and handmade organic materials and tools, limiting use of pre-made, processed and conventional materials. It experiments with the handmade, the foraged, the imperfect and the organic. It uses processes of steaming, grinding, ripping, detailed and abstract mark making, paper making and eco-printing to express both the constructive
and destructive impressions of our relationship to nature.

Some of the materials used include, but are not limited to: jacaranda flowers, eucalyptus leaves, flowering maple, jasmine vine, green walnuts, roses, mulberry, smoke bush, thistle, red cabbage, onions, herbs, various berries, and all sorts of weeds; bamboo, twigs, feathers and hair; crushed earth, charcoal, twine, vines and wine, and recycled frames. These materials were used to create inks and pigments, in paper making and
eco printing and mark making tools.

** DONATE of sales to Animal Rescue Collective.

Space 3
Where's the Petrol Dingo
Paul Pirie

A soupy hodge - lodge of snarling Australian and curvaceous women, stranding time and place in an imagined universe of sand and storms. An exploration into that sinking feeling, a real hard try to paint fear. The petrol dingo is the man under the exhaust pipe.

** DONATE any of sales to @wireswildliferescure.