Angus Fisher at Australian Galleries

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Australian Galleries SYDNEY

ANGUS FISHER

Terra Australis

MEDIA RELEASE

Exhibition Dates: 17 April – 6 May 2018

15 Roylston Street Paddington NSW 2021 Open 7 days 10am to 6pm

‘Terra Australis, Latin for ‘South Land’, is a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity, which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Many of my drawings play and expand on early European visions of Australia – The exotic, foreign and antipodal preconceptions of the South Land and the natural/ unnatural history that was assigned to it.’ Angus Fisher, 2018

Angus Fisher’s Birds of New Holland folio exists as a contemporary accompaniment to J.W. Lewin’s 1808 folio of the same name. Fisher’s folio consists of 24 editioned hand-coloured etchings that document the birds of the contemporary Greater Sydney region, similar to that defined as ‘New Holland’ in Lewin’s original 1808 publication.

The Birds of New Holland 2017 folio, just like Lewin’s original work, places its subjects in settings

and scenarios common to their habits. The folio, which features many urbanised settings, not only demonstrates this dramatic human development of the area in the 200 years, but also, the integration between nature and the built, human world. The folio aims to develop Lewin’s vision of the ‘Sydney’ area by providing a more mature, contemporary and holistic interpretation of ecology and the ‘natural’ world. No longer are birds simply ornaments of a wild and alien land, the natural domain and the domain of the human have become both literally and philosophically entangled.

Terra Australis showcases for the first time Fisher’s stunning Birds of New Holland folio in its complete, collated form, as well as a magnificent installation of the individual prints. Fisher’s intricately detailed and vibrant drawings are testament to the breadth of the artist’s deft technical skill across a variety of media and techniques.

Terra Australis is current until 6 May 2018.

For more details or images contact: media@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au 02 9360 5177

Aura: Repetition, Reproduction, and the Mark of the Artist – Ben Rak

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Aura: Repetition, Reproduction, and the Mark of the Artist is  a curatorial project I have been working on for the past year. The exhibition opens on Friday, July 21st at 6pm at Manly Art Gallery & Museum.

An exhibition of ten Australian artists, who use the perceived shortcomings of printmaking, to confound the viewer’s expectations of the medium and re-ignite the aura of the mechanically reproduced artwork. See wall-based prints, installations, sculpture and video from Alison Alder, Anna Kristensen, Ben Rak, Erica Seccombe, Gary Carsley, Judy Watson, Michael Kempson, Milan Milojevic, Samuel Tupou and Tony Curran.

Exhibition catalogue availble with essays by Ben Rak, Glenn Barkley & Tim Gregory
Opening:
Fri 21 July 2017, 6 – 8pm
Manly Art Gallery & Museum

Exhibition dates:
14 July – 3 Sep 2017

Artist talks:
Sun 30 July, 3 – 4:30pm

A review of the Artsite show by John Hardaker for sixtoeight.net

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http://www.sixtoeight.net/2016/03/artsite-sydney-printmakers-celebrating_21.html?m=1

Printmaking, like drawing, is often seen as the poor cousin to painting and sculpture. And I have as yet to work out exactly why that is. With all it’s wonderful techniques and the endless richness of it’s textures and wonderful ‘surprises’ in execution, printmaking has given us some eye-popping artifacts over history. Picasso loved it, so did Miro and Warhol.

The current show at Camperdown’s Artsite – Sydney Printmakers Celebrating 55 years – makes it even harder for me to understand the poor cousin attitude. As part of the 2016 celebrations of the Australia Print Council’s Year of Print, curator Madeleine Tuckfield-Carrano has put together sixty works by Sydney artists that span the range of printmaking, conceptually and technically.

From Neilton Clarke’s lovely surreal ‘Agikawa Spinner (33rpm)’ through Prue Crabbe’s smoke-fragile ‘Sublunary Diversions II’ to the brusque rust textures of ‘Landfall 1’ and ‘Landfall2’ by Anthea Bosenburg, the range is breath-taking. It is all I can do to not reach out and touch these works – print has that effect: the colours and textures, although aiming for the relatively flat, have a tactile, almost erotic attraction. Faint indentations, raised shallow welts, creases and almost imperceptible waves across the surface all draw us in subtly.

Though, flat is not all – Laura Stark’s ‘Totems’ stand as printed paper cylinder’s, tracing paper squares lean out and threaten to fly off the surface of ‘The Space Between’ by Robyn Waghorn. Tuckfield-Carrano’s ‘Autumn Rain’ has fabric stitches across the pigment.

The range of techniques – a couple had me groping for Google – is smartly covered here as well; it is one of the joys of printmaking that it’s techniques go from roughly stamping the paper with hard woodblocks through to gluing elements across the plate as in a collograph, or the relative caressing it with other approaches, such as aquatint.

Rew Hanks’ ‘Peaches and Cream’ (relief print) has that perfect graphic hard edge while the linocut ‘Scratching for Bugs’ by Joanne Gwatkin-Williams shows a charming vaguery of line.

Poor cousin? Bah. These pieces are all as exquisite as you will find, speaking with maybe a quieter poetry that their oil-painted relatives, but powerful poetry nonetheless.

John Hardaker
Guest Reviewer

5th March – 27th March 2016
www.artsite.com.au