Written By Tesha Malott

2022 ARTISTIC PROGRAM

KIERAN BUTLER
’80 YEARS FROM NOW’
13 January - 4 February

Image: Close up, Kieran Butler, I want to bathe with you in the sea, 2019. Digital collage of images including sun flares, waterfalls, mountains, red dot patterns and an arm, printed on cotton rag.

Kieran Butler, I want to bathe with you in the sea, (detail), 2019. Digital print on cotton rag. Image courtesy of the artist.

80 years from now is a solo exhibition that presents a new body of work by Kieran Butler. The exhibition uses the prompt 80 years from now to imagine possible collective futures of identity, queerness, politics, climate change, and community - we are working towards, riding into the horizon.

 
 

ALISON BENNETT
’VEGETAL/DIGITAL’
13 January - 4 February

Image: Alison Bennett, Blossom: Silver Princess, 2021. Image of a small branch with green leaves, seed pods and red flowers on a back background. The branch looks as if it had been tossed in the air.

Alison Bennett, Blossom: Silver Princess (work in progress), 2021. Screen capture of photogrammetry point-cloud. Image courtesy of the artist.

Exploring vegetal thinking, digital gardening and post-human neuroqueer phenomenology through the affordances of expanded photography, artist Alison Bennett considers native blossoms as celestial encounters.

 
 

PAUL WILLIAMS
’RECURRING MOTIFS’
17 February - 18 March

Image: Close up, Paul Williams, Sleep and Dreams, 2019. Abstract painting of layered brushstrokes and drips, colours of shades of blue and purple with small red and orange accents.

Paul Williams, Sleep and Dreams (detail), 2019. Acrylic, gesso and glitter on polycotton. 254 x 162cm. Photography by Grant Hancock.

Recurring Motifs is an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture. Abstract in nature they combine geometric and organic shapes in works that are visually and spatially ambiguous.

Using techniques of scraping, layering and masking Williams re-configures and re-presents narratives he has unearthed through his investigations of domestic and urban environments. At times unsettling he draws us into Lynchian like nightmare as the ground shifts and feels like it could crumble and collapse beneath our feet. He lays bare that comfort might only be temporary and what appears stable could unravel at any time.

 
 

KIRTIKA KAIN + SAJAN MANI
’EARTH 200 CE’
31 March - 29 April

Image: Close up, Kirtika Kain, The Solar Line VI, 2020. Image of dried dark, depp red pigment, cracked and clumping together in parts. In the cracks, a yellow colour shows through.

Kirtika Kain, The Solar Line VI (detail), Gold paint, indoor pigment, binder medium, disused silk screen, 59 x 46 cm, 2020. image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery; Photography by Luis Power.

Sajan Mani, Caste-pital durational performance 9.30 hours, “Specters of Communism. A Festival on the Revolutionary Century" conceptualized by Okwui Enwezor, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2017 l Curator: Raqs Media Collective. Image courtesy of Marion Vogel, courtesy artist and Haus der Kunst.

Sajan Mani, Caste-pital durational performance 9.30 hours, “Specters of Communism. A Festival on the Revolutionary Century" conceptualized by Okwui Enwezor, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2017 l Curator: Raqs Media Collective. Image courtesy of Marion Vogel, courtesy artist and Haus der Kunst.

Two artists, one shared history. Showcasing a six-month collaboration between Berlin-based artist Sajan Mani and Sydney-based artist Kirtika Kain, Earth 200 CE presents their shared experience of being Dalit, through vastly different mediums. Mani’s intersectional practice utilises durational performance, video and painting to explore the marginalised body, and its relationship to migration, colonial history and ecology. Kain’s materially rich practice foregrounds screen printing and sculpture to envisage artefacts from an ancient Dalit material culture. Both artists work from archives to embolden a contemporary Dalit voice, reimagining and celebrating a history that has been derided and cloaked in invisibility, stigma and subjugation.

Kirtka Kain is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Sajan Mani is represented by NOME Gallery, Berlin

 
 

ELISE HARMSEN & NICOLA SMITH
’THE EMPTY ROOM FEELS BIGGER’
13 May - 10 June

Elise Harmsen, Last Sentences, 2019. Video projection, 5min 16 sec looped. Photo credit: M.P. Hopkins.

Elise Harmsen, Last Sentences, 2019. Video projection, 5min 16 sec looped. Photo credit: M.P. Hopkins.

Image: Nicola Smith, Je tu il elle #17. Expressionist painting with areas of textured brushstrokes and smooth fills. A figure holding a bottle and a seated figure at table with red cloth and plate with Nutella.

Nicola Smith, Je tu il elle #17, oil on wall, 598 x 450mm, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.

The empty room feels bigger explores time as a visual medium within the works of Nicola Smith & Elise Harmsen. Each artist works with the heavy presence of passing time associated with the frozen frame of the celluloid strip (made possible through its digitisation) through painting and projection.

Nicola Smith is represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery

 
 

CHANELLE COLLIER & JOE WILSON
’EVERYTHING IS OK :)’
13 May - 10 June

Image: Installation view, Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, TwentyOne 002, 2020. Two pieces of yellow cloth draped over the entrance to AGNSW. One over solid steel ramp railing, other over the steps.

Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, TwentyOne 002, 2020. Dimensions variable found vintage canvas at AGNSW. Image courtesy of TwentyOne Program.

‘Everything is ok :)' is a series of textile works with solvent transfer images (and/or text). This series pairs the political economy of found vintage French tents, that are deconstructed into wall hanging and suspended textiles, with image and text that is informed by research into the Situationist International practices.

 
 

EO GILL(CUR), FRANCES BARRETT, ARCHIE BARRY, BRIAN FUATA, STANYA KAHN AND HARRY DODGE, SIONE MONU, JIMMY NUTTALL, NAT RANDALL & ANNA BRECKON, GARDEN REFLEXXX, P. STAFF, ATHENA THEBUS & CHLOE CORKRAN
’SCREWBALL’
22 June - 22 July

Image: Athena Thebus & Chloe Corkran, In Dramatic Roles Such as These, 2022. Image of figure with shaving cream on their head, revealing only eyes and mouth. Image has a dark red hue, with stripe of lighter red on the left.

Athena Thebus & Chloe Corkran, In Dramatic Roles Such as These, 2022, vinyl, dimensions variable. image courtesy of the artist.

Screwball refers to a classic Hollywood comedy style depicting gender and sexual tensions, often across class lines. This exhibition harnesses the comedic, conflictual and charged nature of the ‘screwball’ to frame video and filmmaking practices that draw on methodologies that also disturb heteronormative order, work to prevent the possibility of a coherent identity, and challenge what is considered intact and valuable.

 
 

ANNA MAY KIRK
’FORECASTING THE TOUCH OF CHANGE’
3 August - 2 September

Image: Anna May Kirk, Forecasting the Touch of Change (storm glass), 2021. Blown glass sculpture in tear drop shape with clear and white liquid inside, sitting in a metal stand. The background is black.

Anna May Kirk, Forecasting the Touch of Change (storm glass), 2021. Hand blown glass, oxidising copper, storm glass chemical composition according to the 1859 instructions of Admiral Robert FitzRoyy. Image courtesy of the artist.

Forecasting the touch of change priorities the senses to encounter the spectral nature of climate change. Through sensory sculptures and installation the ungraspable forces, intensities and scales of atmospheric change are drawn into the intimacy of the body, emphasising the body as a conduit for perceiving a transforming world.

 
 

SHAN TURNER-CARROLL
’BODIES ON A ROCK’
3 August - 2 September

Image: Installation view, Shan Turner-Caroll, Bodies On A Rock, 2020. 7 boulders installed with technological material and found items such as projector, screen and wires in a gallery space with white walls and concrete floors.

Shan Turner-Caroll, Bodies On A Rock, 2020. Found and made objects, polystyrene, plaster, costumes, screens and projectors. Photo credit: Maitland Regional Art Gallery.

Bodies On A Rock includes moving images and sculptures, developed during an artists in residency program in the Icelandic town of Seydisfjordur. The imagery developed play’s with ideas of nature, the body, perception and looking to existing colonial visions of land and the blueprints that lay within assumptions of reality.

 
 

THEA ANAMARA PERKINS
’THAT WHICH ENDURES’
15 September - 12 October

Image: Thea Anamara Perkins, Station 6, 2021. Stylised landscape painting of a rocky mountain and trees. Thick brush strokes of muted colours of pink, purple, brown, grey and green.

Thea Anamara Perkins, Station 6, 2021. Acrylic on clayboard, 45.7 x 61 cm. Image courtesy of N.Smith Gallery.

That Which Endures seeks to examine the storied layers within records, the confluence of the personal and political, and the indeterminate nature of memory. To illuminate the many connections that flow through lifetimes - to explore what calls and compels us, and what endures.

Thea Anamara Perkins is represented by N. Smith Gallery

 
 

‘2022 USU CREATIVE AWARDS’
CURATED BY ANNEKA SCHOLTZ
24 October - 4 November

Image: Mohammed Bajrai, Eolia, 2018. Photograph of a fire of dried palm leaves with a figure veiled by a white sheet standing to the right. In the back, there is a fallen ladder and brick wall.

Mohammed Bajrai, Eolia, 2018, photographs on paper, 406 x 851mm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Open to all students of the University of Sydney (USyd), the USU Creative Awards is an amazing opportunity to showcase artistic works to peers, industry professionals and the local community at the USU’s contemporary art space, Verge Gallery.

 
 

TARIK AHLIP
’PHOSPHORUS’
17 November - 16 December

Image: Close up, Tarik Ahlip, Phosphorus 1, 2021. Abstract image of green marks, varying in colour. The pigment forms trails, appearing like bacteria or plant matter under a microscope.

Tarik Ahlip, Phosphorus 1, 2021.Plaster and pigment, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist

Phosphorus was an installation of seven large scale relief works invoking the traditions of landscape and the Sublime, and their ethical implications in the context of grave ecological crisis. This was accompanied by the premiere Sydney screening of the video work Of Paradise and Fire.

 
 
Tesha Malott
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