#1 September 9th
TWO MIGHTY GLASS DARKLY
John Barbour & Paul Hoban
Two thinking artists working with the irrational and with post-minimalist ideas of procedure, one related, seemingly, to Dada & Chance, the other to Bataille, negation & the Ideal. Hoban & Barbour have some time for each other’s work: do comparisons throw up useful ideas—to their minds? How do they think of each other’s work & its agenda? How have their own conceptions of what they are doing changed over time?
#2 September 16th
FELLOW TRAVELLERS
Bridget Currie & Peter McKay
McKay & Currie have been directors at Downtown. Their art comes out of a similar space in post 60s art—or does it—& they have come out of the same art school. But are they joined at the intellectual hip?
It is very different work we associate with their names. We wonder how they have thought of their art & how they think of it now—in a global, or a local context? in relation to which artists, what intellectual or thematic currents—for are we not all… ‘fellow travellers’??
#3 September 23rd
THEORY & SENSIBILITY
Paul Sloan & Angela Valamanesh
Paul Sloan has been amongst us just a few years—& is working hard, forcing his work thru numerous changes, adapting it to numerous contents. Or is his practice a kind of hungry maw that would engulf the world if it could, & just might?
Angela Valamanesh is a highly regarded Adelaide artist whose practice would seem to regularly cross whatever notional line separates art, craft & design, & whose procedures & resulting forms have been sourced equally in theory & sensibility. What has been the trajectory of her work, as she sees it, in the past & now?
#4 September 30th
IS SEEING BELIEVING?
Simone Kennedy & Marcin Kobylecki
Two artists whose work deals with emotional content—one whose art seems to dig for objective correlatives, an imagery that condenses projections and originating trauma, the other tracking an emotional gaze to see what it lights upon & to delineate the weight the process gives to everyday objects & scenes. Both have growing reputations & here consider their work of the last few years & discuss what has shaped it, what it aimed to do—again an evaluation of ‘progress-so-far’ & of self-orientation within contexts local, global & historic.
Angela Valamanesh and later …
Paul Sloan performed his talk with a 1950s drum kit, an elephant and a ginger bread man.
BIOS
Dr JOHN Barbour is Senior Lecturer and Research Coordinator at the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia. Dr John (the Night-Tripper) has held over thirty solo exhibitions since 1987 at galleries in Australia and overseas including Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2007; II Auckland Triennial of Contemporary International Art, Auckland, 2004; and the XXV Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2002. He was visiting artist at the Australia Council’s Milan Studio from December-March 2008. His work–dark, austere, intimidating, yet withal and by turns gentle and humorous–is represented in numerous collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. John Barbour is represented by Yuill/Crowley, Sydney.
BRIDGET Currie is an Adelaide-based artist who makes objects using a surprising variety of everyday materials. Predominantly working in sculpture, the roots of her practice are in post-minimalist art and historical theories of form, alloyed with an emotional and subjective view of the power of objects. She has recently returned from an art residency in Kitakyushu, Japan.
PAUL Hoban, a Head of Painting and Drawing at the South Australian School of Art, from 2003-2006, has stayed ahead of most painting and drawing in South Australia-by dint of ‘exile and cunning’? by ‘logic of strange position’? how has he done it-by pataphysics, has that helped? Exhibiting widely and to the consternation of the narrow-minded, Hoban was recipient in 1999 of an Anne & Gordon Samstag International Scholarship and studied in London. He has exhibited at Place Gallery, Melbourne, at Greenaway Gallery and Downtown in Adelaide. In 2001 he was awarded an Arts SA Leadership Grant and in 2003 he was represented at ARCO International Art Fair, Madrid. He is currently completing a PhD while on a Joyner Post Graduate Research Scholarship
SIMONE Kennedy was born in Acton, Ealing (UK) in 1963 and emmigrated to Australia in 1981. Within the year she commenced study at the SACAE (formerly South Australian College of Advanced Education) in Adelaide, graduating with a degree in Design. Since 1998 she has worked as an artist, painting in oils and developing soft sculptures & for the last ten years has been involved in solo and group exhibitions. In 2005 Kennedy completed a Masters by Research degree in Visual Arts at the University of South Australia, producing an interpretative investigation of the absence of the mother.
MARCIN Kobylecki grew up in Warsaw with images of war and socialist propaganda. He writes; “the latter were mostly idealistic depictions of anonymous people and architecture, whilst the war films and photography were grey with a blurred texture. Colour was not predominant in any of the imagery from that time. The basic palette was of green, grey, blue and brown, reflecting the pragmatic approach to image production under the communist rule. This austere climate, which forms the backdrop of novels by the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, or films by Polish directors Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski, has had an influence on my painting and on the photographic imagery I choose to paint.”
PETER McKay is an artist, writer and currently Curator at the Contemporary Art Centre of SA. His work is primarily concerned with our ability to wonder at the universe in our era. He has exhibited widely across Australia, in many group exhibitions, including Surface Tension Australian Centre for Photography, What form will a life take? MOP, As it is- As it can be BUS, Someone Shows Something to Someone Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Primavera 2006 Museum of Contemporary Art, and Keep Going Hazelhurst Regional Gallery. His next exhibition Flash, curated by Geoff Newton and Jan Dufy, opens on 19 September at Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts.
PAUL Sloan was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, came to oz, grew up in Adelaide. Studied painting at R.M.I.T Melbourne and is currently at the EAF studios. Paul Sloan is represented by Crossley and Scott Gallery, Melbourne and Gallery 9, Sydney.
ANGELA Valamanesh was born in Port Pirie, South Austalia, in 1953. Graduating from the South Australian School of Art in 1977, her practice primarily involved ceramics. In 1993 she completed an MA in Visual Arts at University of South Australia and in 1996 she was awarded an Anne & Gordon Samstag International Scholarship. Since then her practice has broadened to include a wider range of media and a number of collaborative public works with Hossein Valamanesh, including An Gorta Mor, the Irish Famine Memorial, Sydney and 14 Pieces, North Terrace, Adelaide. Her most recent works are comprised of simple ceramic forms which make links between plant, human and animal.
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