Top Arts 2015: Start Up

  It is my favourite time of the year in Melbourne: autumn and the annual display of Top Arts at the National Gallery of Victoria.  Every year, I accompany one of my daughters and her family to find out what the pick of the VCE Art and Studio Art students from the previous year have created.  We discuss the work on display, wonder how much the teachers influence the media chosen by each young  artists, and marvel at the creativity and ingenuity of these young "students".  Each year, the children in the family get a little bit older and develop their own responses to the works on display.   Each year, I appreciate anew the fact that all art appeals in different ways to different individuals. 

 

This year, we were greeted with an exhibition outside of the gallery by an installation by  Kathy Holowko called "Batmania".  In spite of their tendency to eat my fruit, destroy trees and spread awful diseases, I am still very fond of the Fruit Bat/ Flying Fox and really miss them spiralling round and round the art gallery spire.  They always used to remind me of flying dark angels.  So, I was rather keen on this display - especially against the gridwork of the building.  Master One and a Half and Miss Four were pretty chuffed too, though they would have liked to be be able to touch them.

 

This year's Top Arts Exhibition was called Start Up, and, as usual contained a range of media. Unfortunately, due to the lighting and the use of glass, and the limits of my camera, I couldn't photograph them all, but I am sure you'll get an idea of the range from the photos that follow.

A lot of the pieces were portraits.  Miss Four's favourite was Ashleigh Newman's presentation of two coloured pencil portraits and an accompanying speeded up video presentation of the creation of a few of her portraits, from blank piece of paper to finished work.  She kept going back to the video and watching it spellbound.  Her mother and I were struck by the fact that the artist did not usually start on the eyes, like we do, but at the hair, and that she did a small area at a time, rather than working on a tone at a time.

I thought the portraits, "John and Jane" by Sabrina Lewis using synthetic polymer paint on polymer clay were very effective and admired the patience required, and achievement of individuality out of apparent uniformity.

Another set of portraits, by Hayden Reid, called "Pride", inspired by a field trip to South Africa, were very photorealistic, and  demonstrated a lot of control by the artist over his medium - the graphite pencil.

Working in a different media again, Kate Fitzgerald embroidered her portraits, which could be viewed from the front or the back.

I was quite keen on this little oil painting, "Self-portrait: Jabberwocky", by Alana Meehan.  Her use of underpainting and control of light give this piece a strongly atmospheric feel and leaves it to the reader to determine the mood.  Very beautiful.

 This piece is one of a series of photographs by Megan Fraser, called "The mask".  It is quite a contrast to the above work.  Not very subtle at all as she distorts the features of her subjects with clingwrap and stresses their pallour and heightens their unattractiveness.

 

This last piece that I photographed, "A consumerist conquest", is knitted using very few colours.  However, Laurena Letico still manages to depict Julia Gillard well.

Not all the work was portraits however.  Miss Four was intrigued by this still life called "The widower".  All the objects  in the installation by Molloe Binnsare painted so that the piece echoes a flat painting on canvas and tricks the viewers eye.  Very, very clever.

Some works were abstract, like this piece by Natalie Cain, which is synthetic polymer paint, ink and gold leaf on canvas.

Others are expressive, like this piece called "Haze" by Emily Caudry.

Some work was drawing on wood bark, like this beautiful piece by Sophie Kons, which I adore. She has decorated the wood bark with chalk pen.  It reminds me of the scribbling designs many insects make on trees.

 I also liked "Dress" by Migle Zvirblyte.  The cotton dress is sewn with chia seeds and is photographed when the seeds sprout.  The photograph is displayed beside the dress after the plants have died and the demonstration of life's finiteness, and the value of both life and death, is strikingly displayed.

 

 

 

All the adults loved the beautiful fabrics created by Callum Crocker who  digitally transformed his own pencil and ink drawings and  then had them printed onto fabric.

 
I also liked this instillation of digital photographs on synthetic polymer resin, with light globes behind them.  Really effective.  They are the work of Eliza Bussell.

 

Another artist that we all admired was Lauren De Ryke.  "As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves" consists of two photo-based pieces which masterfully demonstrate the impact of the destruction of the environment on mankind.

Miss Four also liked works that had intaeractive displays, like Emerson Zandegu's book "Dullahan", which is also displayed digitally.

 My absolute favourite was this gorgeous, but disturbing, dress by Olivia Gardiner, called "Carnage" which so aptly shows the link between animals and human beings.  The workmanship and attention to detail is amazing.

Mind you, not everyone shared my taste.  One viewer was heard exclaiming "yuk".  And, Master One and a Half found the whole experience just too exhausting to give an opinion.

Themes from nature: Slow stitching, playing with collage, experimenting with hemp yarn on ecodyed paper and ink, and ink and salt works.

My slow stitching is plodding along, but it is beginning to come together as a whole.

 Here are some details from the quilt. 

As you can see, I am using a mixture of variegated cotton yarns and some variegated Perle cotton and a variety of stitches.  Although there are repetitions in the stitches, as there are in the use of the fabrics, colours, and motifs, I am trying to encourage the viewer to look at the details, but to also get a sense of the whole by avoiding symmetry.  I still haven't decide whether to add beads.  it may not need it.  We'll see.

 

Because I am trying to avoid being bored with my embroidery, I have been working with different media over the past  weeks.  The funny thing is that these pieces are also based on nature.  These collages are all finches.  It takes quite a while to collect the right colours and patterns from scrap paper and shape the pieces, but it is quite good fun, so I intend to do some more in this theme in the future.

When we were walking to a restaurant for a family yum cha, I saw some wonderful seed pods and eucalyptus leaves in the car park.  The seed pods now feature in a Japanese bowl I have in the living room, and the leaves are in a Danish vase.  This little doodle was created using inks as if they were watercolours and permanent ink pens. 

The second piece is made by joining 2 pieces of eco-dyed watercolour paper with hemp yarn.   I crocheted the leaves with the same yarn  and then sewed the leaves and the the stems on to the paperwith more of the yarn .

Some of my friends and family are biologists, and I think I must be a bit of scientist groupie.  I find the microscope images and the petri dishes of cultures full of  bacteria quite intriguing.  I decided to try and do artistic interpretations of these images using inks, salt and water on circles.  Then, I cut out the circles and glued them on blank greeting cards which I will give to friends and family. As well as being  like scientific images, some of the circles remind me of planets, some remind me of semi precious stones, and some remind me of the sea.  I am very fond of these, so I think I''ll do some bigger pieces in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

A visit to the Islamic Museum of Melbourne.

Facebook is a wonderful way of spreading art across the country, and indeed the world.  A friend in Sydney saw a post about an exhibition at the Islamic Museum of Australia, which is in Melbourne.  She shared the post and another friend and I spotted it and decided that a visit was in order.  What a wonderful find!  The museum is the first of its kind in Australia and shares with the visitor the artistic, social  and historic contribution that Muslims have made to Australia and the world.  In doing so, it also educates the visitor about the Muslim world and removes a lot of the misunderstandings that Muslims, Christians, followers of other faiths and non-believers  may have about Islam and the varying cultures it encompasses.  It is a fabulous excursion for all ages and interest groups because the staff are so wonderfully warm, welcoming and enthusiastic, the cafe serves scrumptious Islamic meals (on these wonderful mosaic tables),

the building itself is attractive and artisitic, the exhibitions are interesting, the shop is tempting, and, when it is all over, you can go for a bush stroll along the neighbouring Merri Creek.

I'm showing just a fraction of what we saw in the museum on this blog, which is focussed on the art.  There was also, for example, an exhibition  the Islamic contribution to modern civilisation, an exhibition of Islamic architecture, an exhibition explaining the faith of Islam, an exhibition of the contribution of Australian Muslims, and exhibition of Australian Muslim cameleers, and an exhibition on Abbas Ibn Fimas, the Spanish inventor of glider aviation and the modern engineers who have been inspired by him.

The art displayed was very diverse and quite intriguing.  It ranged from jewllery pieces, like this one by Seyma Yagci called "Metalised"

to colour collagraphs, like this one called "Looted" by Fatima Killeen

 

 

to mosaics and much more.

Many of the pieces on display seemed to be influenced by Muslim calligraphy, which was also displayed in some of wonderfully illustrated old books in the historical collection.  For instance, this wall hanging consisted of lots of buttons finely embroidered with Islamic calligraphy.  (Unfortunately, I didn't get the name of the artist.  If anyone knows, please get in touch.)

 

Sabah Arbilli' s acrylic painting, "Bismillah", also drew on traditional calligraphy

 

 

as did Peter Gould's colourful "Ishq"

 

 

Geometric designs were another recurring motif.  some features of the building itself reflected this Islamic liking of geometry:

 

 

And, of course, there were traditional tiles:

 

 

 But the geometric motif also occured in this digital print, "Emerald Firmament" by Jamaladeen al-Burhany.

 

And, it even  occured in some of the jewllery, like this necklace, "Mother" by Seyma Yagci.

 

Check out these fabulous surfboards by Phillip Georges.  Even I would be tempted to surf if I had one of these!

Some of the art work was abstract, like this "Transnational Advocacy Space and Place:  Roles and Capitalism" by Mohamed Abumeis

and his other oil, "Swanston Street and Epping Train".

 

 

 

Some of it was very realistic, like this oil painting of "Waleed Aly" by Abdul Abdullah. 

 

In other words, there was something for all tastes and interests.  Do yourself a favour, and find out what you love about the Islamic culture most .