18 July - 04 August 2012
opening Thursday 19 July 6 - 8 by Artist and Curator Gillean Shaw
everyone welcome
Nine
artists respond to Fetish.
A fetish can be many things. It can be an
object regarded with awe as the embodiment of a potent spirit or idea, one
which elicits reverence, respect or devotion. It can be a course of action to
which one has an excessive commitment, or something that causes a habitual
erotic response.
The nine artists who accepted the challenge
of responding to the theme of Fetish have explored its many permutations in
very different ways, resulting in an exciting range of works including sculpture,
printmaking, photography, painting and fibre art - Eleanor Jane Robinson, Curator
Leonie
Andrews employs long stitch to portray objects she
has stumbled across which seem to have a kind of animation about them. In her
hands, everything from parking meters to fishing floats might become fetish
objects.
Sally
Dooner is an avid collector of objects both natural
and man-made and suggests that her actual art practice and processes of
assemblage and sculpture are themselves a kind of fetish. Her collected
material is here displayed in light boxes and photographs.
Sarah
Jones likes her work to both hide and reveal at the
same time. Her long fascination with the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge
results in wonderful layered prints incorporating painting and stitching.
Gina
McDonald has responded to a Brancusi quote
featuring ‘fetish’ with delicate, sensitive prints.
Sylvia
Ray casts body parts in fine clay to create works
that are mischievous, provocative and amusing. Using friends and family members
as subjects and models, she explores the ideas of pleasure, play and fun in
ways that are light-hearted and sometimes profound. Her work for the show is
interactive.
Eleanor
Jane Robinson has always loved walking at night and
seeing glimpses of people’s lives like little lit tableau. She also believes
that in an age of surveillance cameras, cctv and reality television we all live
complacently in a voyeuristic culture. Her drawings of ‘gazes’ (the lookers)
and ‘glimpses’ (what is seen) have been stitched on swathes of cloth reminiscent
of curtains.
Daniel
Smith, a man with ‘way too many projects and not
enough time’, has nevertheless found the space to create quirky little dioramas
portraying some of the myriad sexual foibles and fetishes we humans are prone
to.
Rose
Turner, initially inspired by sci fi film,
‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, explores a flower/human morph which brings
the body and the plant world together in a disturbing union. Her painting realises the idea of probing and
fingering the fine depths of a flower.
Clare
Weeks has a fascination for relationships between
seemingly disparate co-existing elements. By taking found road kill, placing
and photographing it on wallpaper, she creates a new artificial landscape,
which portrays man’s impact on nature and the desire to bring the natural world
into the domestic environment.
