Anie Nheu

20 December - January 20    an elephant in the room

Anie Nheu’s art is about space. Most literally in this piece it is the space between 2 pictures. This place where something isn’t, as Anie describes it, the elephant in the room.  In this piece the gallery like space around the work has been artfully “sculptured” into a form of equal importance to the objects that make up the exhibit. And it is the art of a dance. A painted colour doesn’t cover an entire surface; it leaves a colour behind that pushes the form back while correspondingly the wall pushes forward. At another moment holes cut in the work offer lagoons of white wall while off shore two islands of colour seem to have been deposited, “Spratley like”.

an elephant in the room, 2015. Acrylic on plywood. Dimensions variable

This picture is not presented on a wall, it’s colonising the wall. Gently underlining the fact that it has taken ownership of the space. Gracefully wrapping around a corner in the wall and quietly stepping off the wall on to the floor this work has arrived in our space, subtly merging with our space as we observe its elegant form. 

In her notes on the piece Anie Nheu describes her work as “identity formation” a process where the obvious can go unsaid. Here among the morphing relationships of her forms she reads the emotive content of the work. It replicates her life as a migrant. Travelling with her parents from Taiwan through the 3rd worlds to Australia. What might have been a firm foundation for most of us was fluid for Anie. Things have never been just one thing for Anie. And if we think for a moment few things are ever just one thing.This elegantly restrained work approaches the edges of most art and fearlessly steps across them. Without hesitation it side steps the self-serving clatter or transactional enterprise, and in its place offers us poetry, reflection and silences that otherwise would remain unseen, the elephant in the room, perhaps.

For more information on Anie's work, visit http://anie-nheu.artabase.net/

Jayanto Damanik

December 18 - February 24   cremation

a DIP - Darlington Installation Project: 30 Golden Grove Street, Darlington

Cremation, 2015. Strung folded joss papers.

Jayanto Damanik says he is confused about his identify.

He is an Australian citizen, born in Indonesia to Chinese parents. As for identity he could take his pick but has chosen Indonesian. And in doing that he has possibly adopted a particular 21st century Australian identity of people form diverse places who make homes here. But it’s the greeting “ni hao“ that grates for him he is not Chinese.In Cremation Jayanto is adjusting this situation by conflating the 3 major festivals, Christmas, New Year and Chinse New Year into a single continuous celebration until the end of Chinese New Year on February 23. His celebration, an exquisite curtain of joss papers folded origami style in a manner remembered form his childhood could only be improved with the addition of Hanukkah, Deepavali and Eid al-Fitr to this bonfire in celebration of the future years possibilities.

While Jayanto’s works are exquisitely crafted with a relaxed precision his artistic concerns reach across art objects to a conversation with others around the proposition of making something. It is shared experience that leaves a residue of considerable harmonious beauty.  One such project was mounted during Mental Health Month at the Alexandria Town Hall.  Untutored participants made pinch pots – individually thick, ungainly and disproportionate objects that when seen collectively became an instillation of harmonious serenity. The very thing I believe that Jayanto brought to his untutored collaborators.

Harmonious serenity, it is also the quality offered up here in this blaze of joss paper lightly tossed in an unidentified celebration.

For more information on Jayanton's work, visit: jayantodamanikart.blogspot.com.au