April Exhibitions
7 – 22 April 2017
Opening: Friday 7 April 6-8pm
Artist Talks: Saturday 22 April 3-5pm
All Welcome!
Gallery One
Paula do Prado
Bomba
The Bomba artworks are made from a mix of humble materials: fabric samples, cloth remnants, paint and paper. The use of collage on fabric and paper relates to the traditions of ‘making do’ and the bringing together of seemingly disparate, unrelated and disjointed elements assembled together to create something new and cohesive. In Afro-Uruguayan culture there are still strong links to superstition and the merging of Christian and West African religious beliefs. Lines become blurred and slippages occur between religion, magic, art, music, dance, ritual and ceremony. Bomba or blast becomes a visual metaphor for cultural collisions and explosions, resistance and survival.
Paula do Prado is running a Fabric Collage Workshop, Bomba: Offcuts, and has organised two Afro-Latin Dance Workshops run by Mariu Meneses Betervide. Go to Paula’s page on the AirSpace Projects blog for booking links here
Gallery Two
Vilma Bader
Northern Encounters
Northern Encounters consists of two bodies of work – Käsintehtyjä Suomessa (Handmade in Finland) conceived and made in situ during a residency in Finland and Geometry and Colour System in the Doors of Tallinn researched in Estonia and completed in Australia. The works explore the mnemonic function of linguistics, semiotics and space in the construction of identity.
Käsintehtyjä Suomessa (Handmade in Finland) 2016 is an installation-based work that functions as a collection of visual poems. Made entirely from Finnish birch and spruce, the integrity of the wood is preserved. Paint is used sparingly and expressive gesture and concern for surface textures are retained, juxtaposing the hand of the artist with that of nature.
In Geometry and Colour System in the Doors of Tallinn 2017 the flattening of perspective and focus on geometric shapes and colours collide with the many linguistic metaphors and aphorisms associated with the door.
The Cranny
Sarah Eddowes
Imprints
Sarah Eddowes’ work explores the object as a static imprint of a process of transformation. Coming from a background in animation, she is interested in showing direct movement in her animated work and the extension of this to the implication of change in the static object. Despite the abstract nature of the imagery, it alludes to certain universal processes of change, notably those of the geological and the bodily. The translucency of the wax recalls bodily textures, the organic shapes resemble cells, organs or bruises, and the pervading colours of pinks and cool turquoise are rooted in the tones of the body. Elements of geology such as structural shifts and faults, layering and compression of sediment are also recurring visual features.
The process of slicing is a prominent theme, both as a method of transformation and as a means of revealing a specific view of an object’s interior, much like a geological cross section or a magnetic resonance image (MRI). This process is similarly employed in animation and cinema where an illusion of motion is created by revealing one image at a time. In this way, her static work may be seen as cinematic objects.
Deep Space
Rebecca Shanahan
Home Security
Home Security uses performed actions and self-surveillance to synthesise ideas about temporality, gendered labour and contemporary conditions of existence. Filming herself with security cameras, the artist unravels adult jumpers and uses the yarn to knit children’s hats. Home Security models and reveals the invisible volunteer labour (usually women’s) that underpins capitalist economies yet is unaccounted for. The history of women knitting for others is often political, and this work operates in the current context of global family trauma and displacement. Unfolding in real time, the activities and video meditate on transience and the multiple networked presences of performed and documented everyday life.
2018 Callout
Images top to bottom:
Paula do Prado, Bewitched/Embrujada 2016, fabric collage, 71 x 67cm. Image: Alex Wisser.
Paula do Prado, Rebel/Rebelde 2016, fabric collage, 73 x73cm. Image: Alex Wisser.
Vilma Bader, Geometry and Colour System in the Doors of Tallinn, 2017, acrylic on plywood on 48 panels, each 19 x 11cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
Sarah Eddowes, Cells II, 2016, wax and wood, 25 x 33cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
Rebecca Shanahan, Home Security, 2017. Image: Rebecca Shanahan.
Callout, airspace Projects.
AirSpace Projects 2014-2017 