Tracing Materiality

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Expanded drawing discussion

Gillian Lavery, Camperdown Spiral, 2016, durational wall drawing, graphite on silk

The term 'expanded' is used across art forms to express how traditional art practice has developed with fusions of media, hybridism and changing understandings of materiality, space and temporality. In Tracing Materiality the artists' diverse practices are linked by mark-making hand gestures, that is to say 'drawing'. However, these drawing processes are expanded by duration, performance and documentation into ways of recording active embodied experiences of time, space and materiality, they communicate and discover various ways of analyzing the world and visual artistic languages using both non-traditional and traditional materials.

Please join our Expanded Drawing discussion to tease out some of these ideas around expanded drawing practices and how they are present and evolving in the processes and works in the exhibition. The discussion panel will include artists Gillian Lavery, Renuka Fernando and Kath Fries, and be chaired by Megan Robson, (Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia), 2pm Sunday 20th March, at Chrissie Cotter Gallery. Followed by finissage drinks with the artists, a final viewing of the exhibition and Gillian Lavery's erasure performance.

This event is proudly presented as part of Art Month Sydney 2016
http://www.artmonthsydney.com.au/talks/tracing-materiality--artists-talks/

We're looking forward to Megan Robson chairing our Expanded Drawing finissage discussion. Megan is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, where she recently curated the exhibitions Martu Art from the Far Western Desert, 2014 (co-curated with Anna Davis) and MCA Collection: New Acquisitions in Context, 2013. She has worked across a range of exhibitions including solo projects with Aleks Danko, Sylvie Blocher, Runa Islam, Anish Kapoor, Christian Marclay, and Annette Messager, and group exhibitions such as String Theory: Focus on contemporary Australian art, and Marking Time. She is currently working on an exhibition that explores the history of the MCA's Primavera series of exhibitions.
Previously she has worked for a number of art organisations in Australia and the UK, including the Barbican Centre, London and the Biennale of Sydney. In 2011, Megan received an Asialink grant to undertake curatorial research in Hong Kong with co-curator Joel Mu. She writes regularly on contemporary art for a range of publications and journals.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Kath Fries - chance and charcoal

Chance and instability are elements that intrigue me in art making processes, but chance by its very nature is difficult to set up, predict and influence without being overly heavy handed and theatrical. Trying not to be too precious or prescriptive, I kept my Dalliance layers of powdered charcoal intentionally unfixed and unprotected to see what would happen. I was unsure how carefully visitors would move around the gallery and how aware they might be of all our artworks off the walls and across the floor. Sometimes visitors are very cautious about negotiating their movements around unusual works, and sometimes they are not. Although this installation is situated in a wide-open space, it ended up being between the entrance and the bar – the opening night was busy – not very surprising then that someone would step straight through it. That footprint trace was documented and then buried beneath another layer of charcoal. Later in the week an excited dog ran across the corner and left some more delicate swishing paw-prints. Endearing! And the embarrassed owners are apparently relieved that I think so. These marks are being kept in situ for a few more days, we’ll see what occurs over the final weekend.

Kath Fries

www.kathfries.com