Kathryn Cowen

Link to artist's site

02 December - 6 January      #Otherworlds

Kathryn Cowen. #Otherworlds {in daylight}
2017. Ultraviolet light, posca pen, acrylic, aerosol, and fluorescent paint on board. 1.5x2 m

Kathryn Cowen. #Otherworlds {at dusk}
2017. Ultraviolet light, posca pen, acrylic, aerosol, and fluorescent paint on board. 1.5x2m

This large scale landscape in an amalgam of disparate elements gleaned from a variety of sources. The intention was to create a strange environment that is  inspired by the world and yet presents a portal to an alternate reality; a meeting place of the real and the imagined.

This painting installation is an experiment. For the first time I have incorporated light as a medium. In order to further explore my interest in time, space, place and memory; two versions of the landscape are held within the one painting. The reading of the work will morph from day to night. Once darkness descends, ultraviolet light interacts with the painted work in order to transform the space and reveal an alternate dimension, a world that is “Other”.

#Otherworlds. 2017. Installation view in daylight.

#Otherworlds. 2017. Installation view at dusk.

With thanks to Tony Twigg for providing a venue to bring art to the street and so
generously accommodating this crazy experiment at SLOT.

And to my partner in life and love, Matt Macadam. Without his encouragement, support, lighting and installation skills this project could not have been realised.

Kathryn Cowen

December 2017

Jack Frawley

11 November - 02 December      Blessed

 

 

 

Jack Frawley. The Persecuted. 2017.

 

BLESSED

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness
for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

                                                                                                                       Matthew 5 : 3-10

Jack Frawley. The Blessed. 2017. Coloured Print.

Melbourne Aquino

22 October - 11th November           Pinoy Cubism

 

Melbourne Aquino’s painting is derived from the urban environment of Manila, which it’s self is the basis of the Filipino understanding of Cubism. Historically described as Barong Barong this kind of painting draws a graphic parallel between the shanties of the city and the faceted surfaces of cubist paintings. More importantly there is a dialogue between the constructive inventiveness brought to found objects by Cubism and the inventiveness of necessity applied to the traditional Filipino Balai or house re-interpreted with available or found materials in the urban environment. Aquino’s paintings that obviously refer to overlaid and torn posters connect this intuitive cognizance of Cubism to the arresting beauty of dilapidation that is the patina of Manila.

Melbourne Aquino. D CV2 VIVA-13.

I came across Aquino’s painting in a group exhibition at the Astra Gallery in Makati, Metro Manila. When I made the obvious association with torn posters he was quick to point out that his work is all paint. Then looking closely at the works I realized that I was observing a mode of painting rather than the representation of an image.  These graphically alert paintings hover at an edge, between representation and process, between what we know and what we assume we know. They are beguiling in their beauty and instinctively honest abstract paintings.

There was treat waiting for me when I mentioned to Aquino that I’d like to see more of his work. Quietly he handed me an iPhone and I started swiping. I collected a cold beer, found a quiet corner and went on swiping, and then swiped some more.

Melbourne Aquino. B CV2 VIVA-7.

Melbourne Aquino. C CV2 VIVA-12

I wasn’t looking at two paintings by a young artist in a group exhibition. I was looking at years of intently focused engagement with a process and an image that had been explored with meticulous, detailed observations. Like artists before him, Aquino has laid claim to his imagery. These are not paintings of torn posters; they are of torn posters reminiscent of Melbourne Aquino’s paintings.

-Tony Twigg 

Tony Twigg

17 September - 14 October      Paint?

   

Tony Twigg. Two by two (left), Two (right). 2017. Enamel paint on wood.

 

The application of paint is a question. 
As works are made they accumulate a patina of corrected errors, revised decisions, and compromises of craftsmanship that become a history of process. In theory at least it is a truth of the work.

 

When a work is “re-made” from a previous work this is even more pronounced. An echo of the past lingers, shattered on the surface of the new. Truth again shimmers as a veil of history tempering a view of the new.

 

Paint, tracing like a blind man's finger reveals the object washed of its romantisised past. The truth of the fact revealed is an object and nothing more.  Consider the object in paint, balance it with tone, embellish it with color, make it beautiful and finish it with paint.

Two. 2017.

Beauty, is it truth? Could beauty conceal truth? Could there be truth either side of the paint? Would truth be the position between what was and what could be? And if it were, would it be painted? 

 

 

-Tony Twigg

 

 

 

Two by two. 2017

 

 

 

 

 

Alfredo Aquilizan & Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan

 20 August - 16 September      Passage, Another Country, 2017

 

The art of the Filipino-Australian artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan is a traveler's tale, be that of the immigrant or the nomad. They have considered what is left behind, what is carried with the travelers on their journey and they have mined their own families’ migration to Australia as the subject and the substance of their art. 

Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan. Passage, Another Country, 2017. Cardboard construction with photographs of horizons.

They began working with their chosen medium, the travelers' discarded cardboard carton in a Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation project of 2012, “Inhabit another country”. This installation was an extrapolation of the homes built along the shoreline of Mindanao by the Bajau, the gypsies of the Sulu Sea. These encrustations are but one aspect of a broader architecture of poverty that has become a subject of Filipino Art and it imbued with an innate humanity. In recent museum scaled installations the Aquilizans have romanticized these necessities of habitation as boats, the travelers' vehicle and the nomads' home. 

The boat is an image with a deep resonance in Australian cultural psyche. From the armadas of convict ships in our mythic past to the fishing boats that ferried contemporary migrants euphemistically described as irregular maritime arrivals. Migration has defined Australia. The vast migrant ships assembled by the Aquilizans have also become an apparent destination in themselves, hinting at the darkest fate of the immigrant, a perpetual journey. 

The two shoe like walking boats exhibited here were made during the Aquilizans' recent residency at the Mosman Art Gallery that was part of the Bayanihan Philippine Art Project, a suite of exhibitions celebrating Filipino culture presented in various Sydney art galleries. And as in the Aqulizians' work, the Bayanihan Art Project addressed the migrants' central concerns of home, of be-longing and of utilitarian possessions reconfigured as cultural artifacts. 

- Tony Twigg, 2017

William Gaudinez & Valentine Brown

July 16 - August 19   Romancing the Colony

The installation titled, Romancing the Colony is Slot’s response to the Bayanihan Philippine Art Project at AGNSW, a series of exhibitions across Sydney galleries focusing on Filipino art practices. Here William Gaudinez and Valentine Brown offer romantic views of colonization in their respective countries, the Philippines and Australia. 

Retablo by William Gaudinez, Painting on wood by Valentine Brown, 'prayer book' by William Gaudinez, painting on wood by Valentine Brown [left to right].

The Filipino artist, William Gaudinez works within the votive Retablo form of the Spanish who’s period as the archipelago’s colonizer is bookended by the subject matter of his two works.  

'Retablo' by William Gaudinez. Painting on wood.

He illustrates the period before the Spanish with the mythological sea voyage of the people to their land while the period following Spanish colonization is encapsulated in the coming of the Filipino Republic.  


 











He offers a perhaps romanticized reading of colonization stretching from the mythic Bayanihan past of shared work to a present day amalgamation  of parts as series of purposeful and scarred interventions.

Valentine Brown’s map of Australia is a folk art form that is also the colonialist’s view of the continent first drawn in entirety by Matthew Flinders and Boongaree in 1810.

Valentine Brown's colonial narrative on map of Australia

His paintings illustrate the poetry of Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson who celebrated Australia’s 19th-century folk lore and in particular the battle between the old hand and the new chum fought out in Patterson’s poem Saltbush Bill.  Today the poem unintentionally reflects the position of both the Aboriginal and the refugee/immigrant with in the polyglot of pre-republic Australia. 

Today the poem unintentionally reflects the position of both the Aboriginal and the refugee/immigrant within the polyglot of pre-republic Australia. Through the agency of colonization our small exhibition links history to mythology in an articulation of the substantial connection we have with the place of our birth irrespective of racial identification.

In a second iteration of our response to the Bayanihan Philippine Art Project, Slot will present an exhibition of painting by the Filipino abstractionist, Melbourne Aquino.

Tony Twigg

Director, SLOT 

Janice Fieldsend

June 11 - July 14   FunkyTown : Discotheque Series 2017

   

Janice Fieldsend. FunkyTown, 2017. Acrylic on foiled wallpaper. 226 x 198 cm

For this work, Janice has supplied some texts that echo the emotions she tries to capture with this work on paper:  The best clothes, the best moves, the best hair…..  Soul Train youtube video   Papa was a Rolling Stone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g7KawdsVSQ

I was watching a video of George Michael dancing on stage in Rio de Janeiro 1991. He could do anything, be anything.

Figure out how to put satisfying marks onto a slippery surface. Subtle private marks, not big gestures. Nothing about imparting any wisdom to the world.

Janice Fieldsend. FunkyTown, 2017. Acrylic on foiled wallpaper. 226 x 198 cm

….I wish there could be a club in a plain-looking suburb where you could walk through the door on a Friday night and find a funk paradise - everyone you have ever liked or loved or slept with or rejected or been rejected by, adorable people you’ve never met, strangers looking into each other’s faces and bursting out laughing, detectives and journos in suits struttin’ with their elbows out, whole gangs of Asian students,dignified old Jewish couples, backpackers from every land, lonely boys and bored teenage girls rushing out onto the floor. All crippling thoughts of cool would explode and vanish, and everything would be forgiven, everything redeemed. 

Helen Garner 

                                                                                                          Sydney Morning Herald 3rd November 2012

Is painting the good object? 

Leave some things unanswered.     

                                                                                                                      

Janice Fieldsend is an artist I have collaborated with and from that experience, I witnessed first hand her acute sensitivity to the aesthetics of materials.  This sensibility has given humble materials, often cast-offs, a transformative journey, and often resulting in an eye catching art work.

This work has the same effect on me.  A humble foiled wall paper, perhaps salvaged from the Reverse Garbage, has manifested as the support for blobs of colourful acrylic paint.  Janice has not painted since her early twenties.  For this project, she has decided to return to painting, and in her own words, she wants to make 'mediocre' paintings that involve taking risks that she didn't have the courage to do in her early career as an artist.  To this effect, she has also shifted from her usual palettes of earth-rust-black colour scheme to brighter primary colours.

As her accompanied texts suggest, Janice's use of the humble bronze wall paper has assigned it to the centre of focus in the light box on Botany Road.  It exudes indulgence and preciousness.  The lights from the traffic reflect on the bronze wall paper, adding shimmers to discotheque effect.  The use of this ordinary material turned glamorous when covered with blobs of seductive primary colours.  Anything ordinary has the potential for 'good' and 'happiness'.

Anie Nheu

Caretaker of Slot