Category: Visual Arts Writing

Exhibition & Catalogue Essays, Visual Arts Writing1 Comment

Amanda van Gils: E-Motions

Carrie McCarthy

Long car trips along great stretches of highway…tree after tree flashing past…blue skies turning orange as the day ends…whispery white streaks of cloud…bugs on the windscreen, wipers flicking them off again…the first glimpse of ocean as you come around the headland…the purple and green of the mountain ranges…damp old rain-forests…burnt out landscapes where bush-fires have torn through…steam rising off the bitumen…dozing in the passenger seat, fresh air from an open window to keep you awake in the drivers seat… The romanticism attached to road trips has never really fallen away, even now those things so particular to road trips – … Continue reading Amanda van Gils: E-Motions

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Through a Glass Darkly: the art of Belinda Sinclair and Clairy Laurence

Carrie McCarthy

It was short and sweet and over so quickly I almost missed seeing it altogether, but fate intervened and thus it came about that I made it in to Jugglers Art Space for Through a Glass Darkly just before the show began bumping out. A joint show by local artists Belinda Sinclair and Clairy Laurence, walking in to Through a Glass Darkly was a little like stepping in to Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, which was a bit weird given I’d been writing about it not half an hour earlier. With the monochromatic intaglio prints of Sinclair providing the perfect relief for the … Continue reading Through a Glass Darkly: the art of Belinda Sinclair and Clairy Laurence

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William Bustard: Painting With Light

Carrie McCarthy

“I can only say that I am captivated by the rich contrasts, beautiful skies, trees and clear light of this great land, and I am happy to say that I find countless people who respond in a similar way; and consequently derive great enjoyment from the never ending beauty of the Australian country side.”  William Bustard, 1955 You need only have driven any of the roads winding through the Sunshine Coast hinterland or Northern NSW to recognise the effect of sunlight on the landscapes in William Bustard’s paintings. Dappled leaves, shimmering rivers, a fishing line glistening as it moves with … Continue reading William Bustard: Painting With Light

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Controlled Chaos

Carrie McCarthy

“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order – and yet, deep inside the chaos, lurks an even eerier type of order.” Douglas Hofstadter Let’s talk about chaos and control. Specifically, let’s talk about the chaos and control currently on display in the Amber Wallis/Ari Athans joint show at Edwina Corlette Gallery. At first glance, the respective art practices of Wallis and Athans don’t appear to have a great deal in common. Wallis, based in Byron Bay, is a free-spirited painter of busy, emotional compositions full of bright colour and expansive brushstrokes. … Continue reading Controlled Chaos

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Erin M Riley’s TapArseTry

Carrie McCarthy

When I think of tapestry, I think of my grandparents’ house. Each room had at least a couple hanging on the walls. Not the expansive (and expensive) Belgian ones that decorate the Vatican and other European sanctoriums, but small ones, done by my grandmother, of English interiors, childhood scenes and landscapes of thatched roofs, floral gardens and footpaths that trailed off beyond the timber frame. They weren’t spectacular, and they didn’t reflect any aspect of life as I knew it, but they were special in their own way. I loved watching grandma attach the linen to the stretcher, prepare the wool … Continue reading Erin M Riley’s TapArseTry

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Monica Rohan’s Fall to Grace

Carrie McCarthy

It’s a funny sort of self portraiture that keeps the face hidden. I’ve never fully understood why an artist does it. Is it because they don’t want the work pegged solely as self-portraiture? Or they’re rubbish at painting faces? Maybe seeing their face before them is a bit like when I hear my voice on a recording and recoil in horror. That’s not me.  Perhaps it’s that faceless self-portraiture protects the artist from explicit recognition and having to explain. Whatever events and emotions may be covered in a work, without the inclusion of the face, the identity of the protagonist … Continue reading Monica Rohan’s Fall to Grace

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Abbey McCulloch’s The Shallows

Carrie McCarthy

Swimming in deep water unnerves me. I discovered this about a million years ago when I was a lifesaver on the Gold Coast. Being scared of what’s below you in the darkness is not ideal in that line of work, though it did tend to manifest itself in rather fast swim times just so I could get back into water shallow enough to see through. On the long training swims, way out past the break, I used to chant a little poem by ee cummings to myself to keep my mind calm and focused “for whatever we lose (a you … Continue reading Abbey McCulloch’s The Shallows

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Fashion as Art…so…FART?

Carrie McCarthy

Oh, blerg. It’s ‘fashion as art’ season again. This happens every few years – the major public galleries around the country throw their doors and wallets open and devote their main exhibition spaces to blockbuster fashion shows. There was Vivienne Westwood at the National Gallery of Australia a decade ago, the Valentino retrospective at GoMA in 2010, and I vaguely recall an Yves Saint Laurent one happening during a Sydney trip in the heady 1980s (Pixie Skase and Eileen Bond must have been all over that). Right now, we have no less than three fashion exhibitions running concurrently across the country. Everywhere … Continue reading Fashion as Art…so…FART?