JOHANNA LEECH
THEY ARE NOT ALBINOS
14 FEBRUARY – 16 MARCH 2012
A kangaroo drying his paws, a pelican statue, pap, a naked nymph, mix and match meat packs, UFOs, skylab, scrotum tobacco pouch, sexy celery, creepy ornaments, weird logos, puppies in windows, teeth grotto, pies, sexy lager, urinating manikins, found hen, interference mitts, big things, old tom, killer whales, and a wombo.
’THEY ARE NOT ALBINOS’ is a collection of obscure yet familiar icons, images and stories from across Australia.The exhibition will showcase new drawings created by Irish artist Johanna Leech in response to living and traveling in Australia in 2010 & 2011. These site-specific narratives will take the form of paper, vinyl, wall and window drawings juxtaposed with text. They invite the viewer to decipher their connections as storyline’s merge and emerge. An interactive blog of the project will accompany the project. It invites you to contribute your own stories and will be updated throughout the creation and presentation of the project.
http://theyarenotalbinos.wordpress.com
http://johannaleech.wordpress.com/
Pussyland
10 January – 10 February 2012
A series of embellished photographs of ornamental cats that inhabit a kitsch and colourful suburban feline fantasy world. Inspired by the magical home of Phyllis Chambers (1930-2010), Pussyland celebrates the life of an eccentric Cat Lady and dearly departed friend.
Part of the 2012 Midsumma Festival Program.
Nada Polsjki
The Lonely Hearts Column
6 December 2011 – 10 January 2012
The Lonely Hearts Column is a vivid and eccentric portrayal of finding a companion or lover.
The mailbox serves as a vessel storing classified ads from the reclusive gigolo.
Finding love is no longer a private crusade but a public flaunt of ones personal quest to unearth sexual desires and chance upon new friendships.
Owen Hammond
The Wonderful House
1 November – 2 December 2011
I am fascinated with the places in which people live, the shelter they have made for themselves and where they have made it.
I am curious about the circumstances that have dictated their choices, whether it is political, environmental, traditional or accidental.
The construction of the place can be myriad, from leaves to concrete, from cars to crashed aeroplanes. They can be made with love or with madness.
I am intrigued with how people live within their houses. They are full of a multitude of feelings, connections, histories and memories. The material “stuff” contained within can be minimal, functional, wasteful or inseparable from their psyche.
I love to explore the relationship a person has with their house and the larger relationship of that house with the world around it.
Images L-R: Rick’s House, Newton’s House, Cave, 2011. Photography by Rae & Bennett.
Owen Hammond image gallery: HERE
Symon McVilly
Judgement Day? Or Just Bad Weather
10 May – 10 June
Part of NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Over the past year Symon McVilly’s practice has been principally concerned with the subject of society and its perceived decline, exploring the idea of social entropy as a natural process of civilisation. He questions whether decline is unique to our generation or whether it is a pattern seen throughout history as different societies become aware of the self-destructive nature of humanity.
Judgment day or just bad weather? takes the form of sculptural monuments and graphic signs reminiscent of the kind found along highways to mark motels and other areas of interest. They are presented as artefacts of pseudo-religious iconography, that has decayed and weathered over time.
Each piece embodies an oblique narrative or allegory informed by motifs that are popularly — though often contradictorily — understood to be indications of man’s decline. These include, for example, puritanism, drugs, sex, greed and God. These totems are retrospective oracles; they imply that, perhaps, decline ain’t so bad after all.
Scott Lyon
27 September – 28 October 2011
f l e u r o n s.
this project is a tribute to robyn tudor, a fellow teaching colleague {up in sydney}.
fleurons is a on-going research of type, ornamentals and legibility.
working on both large and small scale, scott uses hand-cast {ludlow}
slugs {hot~metal} and a variety of unorthodox letterpress techniques.
more info,
Part of MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL PROGRAM
IMPACT PRINT SYMPOSIUM
Ian MacTilstra
EKNEB
23 August – 23 September 2011
Somewhere between conceptual text-based art, structural poetry, and
inspired by linguistic studies of globalized commodity-based trading
languages in antiquity, exists this experimental project: an attempt
to convey a sense of narrative within such language. That it fails to
do this in any conventional sense of “narrative” is a feature of its
deconstruction of consumerist language, and relating more directly to
what has been termed “social commentary and observation” (Paper Radio,
Melbourne), while being disguised as a poetic exploration of emergent linguistic systems of globalized trade. The shifting dynamic between
the linguistic and the discursive, between the material effects of
language and the meanings it subtends, makes this work both visually
unconventional and semantically compelling.
Melissa Reidy
Birds of Prey
19 July – 19 August 2011
Birds of Prey is a collection of hybrid birds presented in 19 different handmade antique books. Each hybrid creature has been born out of a bird and it’s prey, exploring what happens when two enemies become the same creature. Each creature is displayed on the page of a handmade book, 19 of which will fill the cabinets of Mailbox 141. The series of books will create the feel of looking at an ornithologist’s library and is partly inspired by Neville W Cayley’s, ‘What Bird Is That?’
Melissa Reidy is a Melbourne based artist who works with HB pencils on paper. She has a fascination for creating hybrid creatures in her drawings, taking two or three seperate species and fusing them into one strange creature. Her drawings also feature men’s suits, people in improbable situations and a lot of feathers. Her work has appeared in the Tango comics anthology and her first solo exhibition was held at NineOnSeven in November 2010.
A note to the stallholder
14 June – 15 July 2011
Like postcards home, these drawings capture odd and enchanting encounters from the artist’s travels.
Fleeting impressions of city streets and the familiar gestures of travelling companions are documented in pencil and thread. Strung together they tell stories of people and places.
http://demelza.com.au
Installation detail, 2011.
I steal from work and I steal from You Tube
NOW Sally Tape & Candice Cranmer
5 APRIL – 6 MAY 2011
OPENING Tuesday 5 April 5.30pm
NOW is the collaborative practice of Sally Tape and Candice Cranmer.
In the unique Mailbox space, they present a collection of collage and photographs. The artists perceive the space as an apparatus by which to explore and invite voyeuristic pleasure. Tape’s images take the appearance of venetian blinds, allowing partial glimpses. They are composed abstractly using the remnant strips found in the photo-printing machinery of a workplace.
Cranmer’s are directly taken from ‘the funniest falls ever (I think)’, a You Tube collection. Whilst Tape collects, archives and reflects on memory relative to the ‘now’ point in time, Cranmer investigates fulfilled expectation and anticipation. This extends her research into the futile and voyeuristic pleasure of watching people’s slapstick failings on You Tube.
http://www.sallytape.com.au/
candicecranmer@blogspot.com
