Gallery One

Friday 7 – Saturday 22 July

Fangled

+ Sally Clarke + Brenda Factor +

+ Sean O’Connell + Laura Woodward +

Opening Night: Friday 7 July 6-8pm

Artist Talks: Saturday 22 July 3-5pm

And in this doleful mood he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were just old-fangled or not fangled at all as against the modern day when fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was, indeed, he thought, here to stay. Then he wondered: had anyone ever thought of themselves as a fangler? Terry Pratchett

Artists

Sally Clarke

Libidinous Beings, Desiring Machine

Sally Clarke, Big Cow 2, 2013, plasticine on wall, 130 x 130cm. Photography: Luminere Imaging

Brenda Factor

After Louise B.

Brenda Factor, After Louise B, 2008, spray paint on aluminium, 68 x 204cm. Photography: Luminere Imaging.

Sean O’Connell

Suburban Spirits

Sean O’Connell, Frangipani, 2017, 30,000 volts AC 800Hz across Fuji Velvia 100 colour slide film, 22 x 22 x 8cm. Image: Sean O’Connell

Using high voltage spark discharge imaging and X-Ray photography, Sydney-based mid-career artist Sean O’Connell explores the strange forces that move within the walls of our suburban homes.

Sean O’Connell will be exhibiting a selection of works recently displayed at PhotoAccess, Canberra.

Sean O’Connell Catalogue photoaccess

Laura Woodward

The Tolling

Laura Woodward, The Tolling, 2016, water, aluminium, acetal, acrylic, fasteners, motors, dimensions variable. Photography: Christian Cappuro

The Tolling is a kinetic, sonic and sculptural installation comprising tubular bells. Through its inherent systematic logic, The Tolling generates its own composition within the gallery, the deep tones of the bells resonating throughout the space.

Each of the bells is accompanied by a water-driven hammer which is connected to a vessel. The vessel gradually fills until it tips, causing the hammer to strike its bell. The duration between strikes, the force with which each bell is struck, and the overall sequence, is generated by the work itself and its inherent variabilities. A second tipping vessel contributes an additional sonic layer, submersing each bell-end which slightly shifts its pitch. These variable qualities converge to generate and compose the ever-emerging melody generated by the work.

Early experiments were sparked by explorations into Percy Grainger’s free music machines. The Tolling draws upon correlations between my own practice – in which I create looped systems often driven by the weight and movement of water – and the non-deterministic action of “gliding” across and between notes that was crucial to Grainger’s free music machines. The Tolling explores the ways in which gliding as both action and concept can function and contribute to a cyclical system that is embodied within a kinetic sculptural installation.

The Tolling teases out the sonic and spatial potentials that arise in the space between kinetic sculptural systems and water. In particular, The Tolling mobilises water’s inherent capacity for “gliding”; water in motion is incremental, analogue, non-binary, gliding. When coupled with a tubular bell, this shifting capacity of water has compelling potential; the submersion of a ringing tubular bell shifts its tone, the pitch gliding, exposing the full possibilities of the bell’s tonal range.

Biography

Melbourne-based artist Laura Woodward has been exhibiting sculptural, kinetic installations for ten years. Her current artistic trajectory involves the creation of looped systems embodied in these sculptural installations. These systems develop through the relationships between materials, movement, time and the artist’s hand, where each system’s inherent logic drives its formal and systematic emergences. Recently, video, animation and drawing works have emerged from Woodward’s studio, often generated through those same processes that she uses to create her kinetic sculptures.

Woodward’s work has been nationally recognised through prizes, grants, public commissions, solo exhibitions and significant group exhibitions. She received an Australia Council Emerging Artist New Work Grant in 2010 and Australia Council Mid-Career Artist New Work Grants in 2013 and 2014; won the Agendo Prize for Emerging Artists in 2009; and received both the Vulcan Steel Postgraduate Tutorship Award and a Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship Award in 2007. In 2015 she received a ‘Highly Commended’ award for the Art Gallery of NSW “Studios in Paris” Scholarship.

Solo exhibitions include “Resonate”, Stockroom Gallery, Kyneton and Airspace Gallery, Marrickville, 2016; “Writhe”, Ararat Regional Gallery, 2015; “Introverted”, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Southbank, 2013; “The Saltus”, Place Gallery, Richmond, 2011; and “Underwing”, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, St Kilda, 2010.

Significant group exhibitions include “Calling Percy”, Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, 2016, as part of the Melbourne Festival; “Composing Common Worlds”, Hawthorn Town Hall Gallery, 2014; “In Motion”, Airspace, Sydney, 2014; and the “McClelland Sculpture Award” in 2007 and 2010.

Woodward’s practice increasingly involves the creation of large-scale sculptural works for the public realm. Completed public commissions include “Voices” at Craigieburn Central Shopping Centre with Jem Freeman – a set of seven giant sensor-activated tubular bells – and the Horsham Highway Entrance Sculpture. Woodward is currently completing a major permanent public commission for Marina Tower, Docklands, Melbourne.