February 2008 issue

Caz Guiney
Precious Nothing

Craft Victoria
January 30 to March 1
Melbourne


Precious Nothing is a collection of finely crafted 18ct yellow gold jewellery pieces inspired by the city of Melbourne - its landmarks, debris, layers of grime and intimate corners.


Caz Guiney, Pinpi, 18ct yellow gold brooch, 10 x 2.5cm
photograph by Terence Bogue

Lloyd Godman
enLIGHTen

Burrinja Gallery
February 8 to March 30
Melbourne


"Over almost three decades, Lloyd Godman's art has developed from relatively traditional landscape photography to include elements of performance, audience participation and multimedia installation to explore the tensions between the electronic consumer society and the ecosystem - utlising the planet itself as an image-making source."

- Lawrence Jones, "From the River to the Source: Lloyd Godman's Ecological Explorations",
Artlink, Vol 25 no 4, Dec-Jan 2006 Lloyd Godman, Chambre Noire, light installation, 2007, steel, black polythene, fog, light (fog state) -
L'Arbre de Vie Chateau de Blacons, France (detail)

Anke Stäcker
Unknown Zone

Peloton P19
February 28 to March 22
Sydney


Stäcker's images transform city scenes into zones of uncertainty. Her work reflects upon personal memories and emotions evoked by urban places and architecture. It also examines the impact of socio-political and cultural conditioning on perception.


Anke Stäcker, White Bay, 2007, C-type print, 40 x 60cm

Maryanne Wick
Still Lives
Cultural Exchange - Australia & China

Robin Gibson Gallery
February 2 to 27
Sydney


Maryanne Wick demonstrates her fascination with China through paintings and drawings focusing on ancestral portraits from one of Hong Kong's oldest cemeteries.
In conjunction with an exhibition by Chinese-born artist Qian Jian Hua, Cultural Exchange is an umbrella event of the City of Sydney's 2008 Chinese New Year Festival.


Maryanne Wick, Portrait of a Husband and Wife, 2007, ink and pencil on wood, 19.7 x 29.5cm

David Gregson
A Desire to Relate

Shire of Mundaring Arts Centre
January 25 to March 2
Western Australia


A survey exhibition tracing the art and life of the late David Gregson (1934-2002), whose prodigious career spanned over 50 years. Gregson was a much-loved and highly regarded brush painter who was dedicated to the communicative power of art, his unique attitude to life shaped his artistic vision and fuelled his passion for educating others.
Curator: Catherine Czerw.


David Gregson, Expressions of Spring, 1984, oil on canvas

Emily Floyd
Temple of the Female Eunuch

Anna Schwartz Gallery
Through February
Melbourne


Temple of the Female Eunuch is an exploration into the complexities of feminism. Germaine Greer's 1970 publication, The Female Eunuch, provides the content of Floyd's reconnaissance of the language and symbolism of feminism.
Seagrass, jute twine and raw pine are used to evoke this era.


Emily Floyd, Temple of The Female Eunuch (installation detail), 2007, pokerwork and plastic on wood, dimensions variable

Scott Redford
On the Beach: Two Recent Painting Projects

Scott Redford On the Beach: Two Recent Painting Projects Jan Manton Art
January 30 to February 23
Queensland


On the Beach is a collaborative project between Brisbane artist Scott Redford and landscape painter Ritchey Sealy.
Sealy lives at Mossy Point (NSW South Coast), where he has followed a family tradition of landscape painting.
Redford grew up on the Gold Coast, and one of his interests has been the way in which landscape imagery can capture or convey a sense of social or personal identity.
Redford discovered Sealy's work, which is composed in a style akin to Australian Impressionism, on eBay. Redford has since been working closely with Sealy to produce this new series of experimental paintings that draw together strands of 'traditional' and 'conceptual' art histories.


Scott Redford, A Painting by Ritchey Sealy #1, 2007, oil on canvas, 46 x 61cm

Sophie Knezic
A Pocket Full of Stones

Area Contemporary Art Space
February 20 to March 1
Melbourne


Sophie Knezic's paper cut-out series Pooling presents a cluster of abstracted forms derived from landscape architectural drawings. Thousands of lines are first pencilled then cut: an aggregate of seemingly infinite repetitions. The cut-out sections enact what might be called a 'negative construction': each incision marks the point of the paper's deletion leaving both discarded paper shards and the necessary intervals of 'nothingness' that comprise the work. The constitutive dimension of the cut is not only the shape of the image but the transformation of the paper from its previous blank mattness into a new shimmering opacity.


Sophie Knezic, Pooling (detail), paper, dimensions variable

Mischa Kuball
Remix/Broca II

Experimental Art Foundation
February 29 to March 16
South Australia
in association with the Adelaide Bank Festival of the Arts 2008


From Düsseldorf, Germany, Mischa Kuball has worked conceptually with light for more than 20 years, using it uniquely to make social and political statements.
This installation, ReMix/Broca II (Letters/Numbers), is a development of an earlier work, broca'sche areal. With both, the titles refer to brain regions that form language capability and the basis for human communication. Rotating projectors cast letters and numbers across the gallery wall on to sculptural elements modelled on the artist's digitised brain waves.

According to Kuball: "When language and light come together, the basic elements of knowledge are present."


Mischa Kuball, Broca Re:Mix, 2007, multimedia installation, dimensions variable
Photograph © ONUK / MNK/ZKM Karlsruhe

Greg Leong, Suzan Liu, Pamela Mei-Leng See
Heavenly Bodies

Gallery 4A, Asia-Australia Arts Centre
February 6 to March 1
Sydney


Heavenly Bodies is an umbrella event of the City of Sydney 2008 Chinese New Year Festival.


Greg Leong, Cixi - Empress Dowager (Portrait 1), 2008, digital print on archival paper

Karen Ward
Nexus 11

Gallery 101
February 5 to 23
Melbourne


Nexus II is an exhibition of sculpture and works on paper that explores the relationship between architecture and human experience.
Karen Ward is interested in the relationship between interior and exterior spaces; between thought and process; structure and skin. In a kind of reverie, the viewer is invited to imagine how these facades, portals and thresholds might be inhabited. Minimal form and richly articulated surface manifest the nexus between personal and public.


Karen Ward, Urban Landscape, 2007, acrylic paint, pastel, oil pastel, oil paint and plywood on arches paper, 76 x 113cm
Photography by Mackenzie Hester

John Edwards
Pictographs from the New World

King Street Gallery
February 12 to March 8
Sydney


Edwards' works are fresh, raw, pretty and almost tribal.
Edwards explores his home life and how the family works as a tribal entity, often depicting his two beautiful daughters.
These large paintings are offered up as thanks to the family and the positions held by the women of the 'house'.


John Edwards, Shared Thoughts, 2007, oil on canvas, 22.5cm x 21cm

Annie Aitken
Taking Shape

Tin Sheds Gallery
February 2 to 23
Sydney


The origins of these objects lie in the ubiquitous, normally unnoticed, plastic fruit and vegetable bags.
Through a process of tripping, sewing and re-making, items of absolute ordinariness are re-animated into delicate and feisty works that refer as much to drawing and sculpture as they do to the craft of weaving and sewing.