Curator's notes on the churchie 2008 exhibition
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23/06/2008
It was bigger than ever before, more people saw it and it’s on its way to achieving greater national recognition and increased sales. The Churchie National Emerging Art Exhibition has built its reputation primarily on the quality and diversity of works of contemporary art which, this year, tended to highlight the intersection between digital and traditional media. More than 100 artworks in many media signalled a shift in terms of thinking of what art can be; moving from a traditional understanding of art as painting and sculpture to art as something that’s more about the process, the concept and the idea. The 2008 winner Film Still (Portal) by Sam Smith explored parallel reality by way of a projected video image of a static plywood world. The work was wrapped up in the issue of truth and reality and indeed the electronic alternative projected on the flat monitor did seem more interesting than the blandness of the plywood world assembled on the table top. Other themes to emerge in the artworks included possession, desolation, seduction and irreverence. Portraiture was equally as strong as abstraction. Sam Cranstoun’s portrait, Josh, was a striking example of detailed brushwork communicating inner vitality. Paintings of seduction were costumed and theatrical but nevertheless expressive of tenderness. Interiors and exteriors captured the moodiness of a city or nightscape. Woolloomooloo by Ana Anderson followed the genre of making the ordinary extraordinary. Interior Disaster #5 by Francesca Rosa was a photographic surrender to the silence of personal disaster. Landscapes, whether imagined or real, invited emotional responses. Winter Solstice by Pamela Drewitt-Smith was an elaboration of raked rays of light and shadows playing on an isolated foreground. Ari Fuller in Twilight Forest transformed the landscape by interweaving cross-cultural motifs via the detailed inclusion of incised tattoo design on the trunks of eucalypts. Many non-representative works evoked past art movements such as the over painting of different media and forms associated with abstract expressionism, evident in Place and Non-Place, No.2 by Anthony O’Carroll. The winner of the painting category, Elizabeth Kunoth Kngwarray, was recognised for her simultaneously detailed yet abstracted elaboration of a cultural landscape, Yam Seeds and Flowers. The sculptural installations were varied in terms of medium and individual response to the environment. Sandra Landholt’s kinetic work Speed Loader revealed the repetitive nature of earth moving. Anxious Objects by Bernadette Jones evoked feelings of loss and loneliness when absence is present. Category winner Love Sick by Angela Rossitto was a more colourful, textural installation expressive of joy and light heartedness. Mastery of technique was evident in the skilful manipulation of cane toad skins by Linelle Stepto to resemble a botanical specimen of Bansksia integrifolia in Colonise-Coastal Banksia. Several digitally manipulated videos were included in the new technology category and each demonstrated either competence in image capture or image manipulation. Tod MacMilllan successfully blended repetitive human movement and sound in Go On to become the new technology category winner. His photograph I Bought These For You was the winner in the works on paper category. Shoufay Derz’s photographic images printed on metal, Depart Without Return and Sleep/Walk, were reminiscent of the earliest manipulated photographic landscapes with their moody atmospheric renditions of valleys and mountains. They received a judges Special Mention. The Churchie National Emerging Art Exhibition is an exhibition that enables the audience to question their assumptions about art: the exhibition can confound those assumptions and rebuild them again through the award process. Exhibiting the works selected by Simon Wright, Director, Griffith Artworks and Dell Gallery, provided an opportunity for the Emerging Art Committee to showcase the breadth and depth of contemporary art production. The choices of the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art joint judges, Francis Parker, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art and Jose de Silva, Associate Curator, Film, Media and New Technologies, reflected national trends in the ambitious contemporary art market. The Churchie National Emerging Art Exhibition is made possible each year by a generous grant from Brand and Slater Architects. Additional support is provided by WebResource, Biggs and Biggs Lawyers, Chapman and Bailey, Cardno, Fardoulys Constructions, Mac1 New Farm, National Storage, Rohrig, Pack and Send, Dr John Scott, Brian Tucker Accounting, Wiltrans, Zammit and the Churchie Old Boys Association. Dr. Tania ClearyConsultant Curator
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