Extinct Extant

Friday 6 March – Sunday 29 March

Opening  Saturday 7 March 3.00-5.00pm

Sarah Eddowes, Nicole Ellis, Hayden Fowler, Shalini Jardin, Fleur MacDonald, Sarah Newall, Raquel Ormella, Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Ajay Sharma, Vivian White

 Extinct Extant explores humanity’s relationship with animals, plants and the environment. Artists reflect on the value of the world’s plant and animals both ecologically and culturally.

Image Above: Lynne Roberts-Goodwin. MORE THAN EVER a change of plan (burnout 1), 2014.
Archival photographic print–Museo Silver Rag 300gsm, 118 cm x 150 cm, Edition 2/3 EP. Courtesy of the artist and .M Contemporary Australia.

Sarah Eddowes

Nutrition, 2015. Encaustic on wood. 190 x 82cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

 Nicole Ellis

Taming the Golden Fleece (detail), 2015. Nylon rope, nylon string. Dimensions variable.

This work uses nylon rope to interpret the myth of the Golden Fleece. The ancient human method of washing gold from streams using animal fleeces as filters has been cited as the possible origin of the myth of the fleece. The work uses braiding and rope techniques to ‘tame’ the fleece while alluding to the ways in which sheep and other animals have been ‘used’ by humans in their desire for wealth and status.

 Hayden Fowler

Call of the Wild i, 2007. Mounted chromogenic photograph (series of 11), variable dimensions. Photo credit: Sarah Smuts-Kennedy. Performance documentation, Auckland festival, March, 2007. Image courtesy of the artist.

Call of the Wild ii, 2007. Mounted chromogenic photograph (series of 11), variable dimensions. Photo credit: Sarah Smuts-Kennedy. Performance documentation, Auckland festival, March, 2007. Image courtesy of the artist.

Call of the Wild iii, 2007. Mounted chromogenic photograph (series of 11), variable dimensions. Photo credit: Sarah Smuts-Kennedy. Performance documentation, Auckland festival, March, 2007. Image courtesy of the artist.

New World Order (production still iii), 2013. Colour Pigment print on cotton rag art paper, 54 x 75cm. Unique edition. Image courtesy of the artist.

Hayden Fowler is a New Zealand born Artist, based in Sydney, Australia. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the UNSW College of Fine Arts (COFA) in Sydney, as well as an earlier degree in Biology. Fowler’s methodology involves the construction of elaborate sets in which he choreographs human and animal subjects, creating hyper-real video, photographic, installation and performance work from within these fictional spaces. Fowler has exhibited nationally and internationally and his work is held in a number of public and private collections. He is a previous recipient of the Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, undertaking his year of study abroad at the Universitat der Kunst in Berlin, Germany. He lectures in the Sculpture, Performance and Installation studio at UNSWAD and is currently completing a PhD in Fine Arts.

 Shalini Jardin

expansion I, 2015. Archival chrome pigment on cotton rag, 37 x 53cm.
Edition of 3. Courtesy of the artist and Flinders Street Gallery.

expansion II, 2015. Archival chrome pigment on cotton rag, 37 x 53cm.
Edition of 3. Courtesy of the artist and Flinders Street Gallery.

expansion III, 2015. Archival chrome pigment on cotton rag, 37 x 53cm.
Edition of 3. Courtesy of the artist and Flinders Street Gallery.

 Fleur MacDonald

Parkes I, 2015. Gouache and bark veneer on ply, 36 x 40cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Parkes II, 2015. Gouache and bark veneer on ply, 36 x 40cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

The crockery was made in England with that rambling cottage look and was chosen mainly for who the owner was and where they lived.

Gloria Linnegar (nee Parkes) was a descendant and resident of the village Faulconbridge that was named by Sir Henry Parkes, the grandfather of Federation: this gives it cultural significance. But it’s also about the bark. After I spent years living in a concrete jungle there is now bark in my life: now that I am living in Gloria’s little house.

The blue background in Parkes I is the colour of the night sky in Faulconbridge and the yellow in Parkes II is the same intensity as pollen which, for me, gives a good clear understanding of the amount of native flora in the Blue Mountains.

 Sarah Newall

San Pedro, 2015. Cotton yarn, paint, pine and plywood, 16 x 21.5 x 120cm.

Sarah Newall is a Sydney based artist. She is trained in traditional hand-drawn animation and crossed over into painting/installation when the conveyer belt production line of commercially driven animation got too much. Having completed a PhD in 2010 she is now co-directing Marrickville Garage and the Bammy Residency. Sarah Newall is currently undertaking a sustainability project in Outer Space at AirSpace Projects.

My practice relates directly and indirectly to the domestic environment. By avoidance, escapism and aesthetic I mask the ‘grotesque’, which surrounds domesticity and in many circumstances must be endured.

 Raquel Ormella

Varied, noisy, 2009-2012. Interactive rubber stamps, variable dimensions.

In Australia the birds commonly seen in urban areas are often called ‘junk birds’. Like ubiquitous pigeons, these birds are found in almost every international city and dominate urban and natural environments. Varied, noisy features the Indian Myna bird (Acridotheres tristis), a species that was introduced to Australia from India in the early nineteenth-century to eat insects in the vegetable market gardens of the colony. Visitors are invited to be complicit in the proliferation of this introduced species by stamping their images on the gallery wall.

 Raquel Ormella is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

 Lynne Roberts-Goodwin

MORE THAN EVER a change of plan (burnout 1), 2014. Archival photographic print–Museo Silver Rag 300gsm, 118 cm x 150 cm, Edition 2/3 EP. Courtesy of the artist and .M Contemporary Australia.

MORE THAN EVER a change of plan (burnout 2), 2014. Archival photographic print–Museo Silver Rag 300gsm, 118 cm x 150 cm, Edition 2/3 EP. Courtesy of the artist and .M Contemporary Australia

CHANGING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES, TERRITORIES and AFTERMATH
The works of Sydney-based artist Lynne Roberts-Goodwin centre on the pivotal conceptual foundations of landscape as a record and aftermath of human values and actions imposed over time coupled with extreme locations in terms of geopolitical, remote topographical and culturally estranged. The artist’s work and research surrounding these broad concepts inspects visual representations of man-made and ‘natural’ landscapes that appear as ‘other’ in more than one way and are centred within locations or through histories of contested sites or geopolitically contested remote or elevated topographical territories. Confronting representations from different parts of the globe, Roberts-Goodwin invites us to engage with unfamiliar contexts and global structures of environmental conflict and sites of impact. Relinquished landscapes produced in different temporal and spatial locales in light of each other are laid bare and investigated, scrutinised and visually represented as a mode of seeing and as a site of control and resistance, intertwined with social and economic power structures. Lynne Roberts-Goodwin’s photographic work and installations can be seen as an aftermath of the fragmentary and enigmatic qualities of the photographic document as a path to return afresh to what we think we know of the past, and how we think we know it through present engagement and dissemination. The artist, within her imagery, engages the lens of ‘spatial aesthetics’; that is, ‘the complex entanglements between local and global ideas of place’.

MORE THAN EVER 2013-2014 series, speculates on the contradictory imagining & imaging of disappearance & loss as carrier of perhaps our deepest & most culturally specific values, actions and consequences. These works intend to reverberate and articulate a hard-wired propensity for the adoration & representation of locations cited along key ancient trade routes marked by environmental & geopolitical crisis, identified as estranging. It is within contested landscapes through which layers of geographic and geomorphic tableaus play out, and within which narratives of migration, exile and the reverberation of aftermath are revealed. The work connects issues of confounding and evoking anxious forgetting, fading thoughts, reclamation and the poignant stillness and strangeness of unwritten bodies and vistas.

LYNNE ROBERTS-GOODWIN 2015 CV

Lynne Roberts-Goodwin is represented by:
USA: Aberson Exhibit Gallery
ITALY: Nuova Galleria Morone
AUSTRALIA: .M Contemporary Gallery
AUSTRALIA: http://www.australianphotographers.org

 Ajay Sharma

Untitled, 2014-2015. Wasli (acid-free, hand-made) paper, stone pigments, liquid gold, 44 x 34cm. Image credit: AirSpace Projects.

We are trying to save ancient monuments from destruction, but our conservation efforts are futile and ineffective: like trying to keep monuments upright with strings attached to small trees.

Untitled (and detail below), 2014-2015. Wasli (acid-free hand-made) paper, stone pigments, liquid gold, 34 x 22cm, handmade paper, stone pigments, liquid gold. Image credits: Francine Haywood.

We are loosing nature, greenery and culture, but if we have trees, and good environment, if we live close to nature, then we will have good health and happiness.

Untitled, 2014-2015. Wasli (acid-free, hand-made) paper, stone pigments, liquid gold. 34 x 22cm. Image credit: AirSpace Projects.

Ancient monument buried under modern construction.

Untitled, 2014-2015. Wasli (acid-free, hand-made) paper, stone pigments, gold leaf, 44 x 34cm. Image credit: Francine Haywood.

Trying to save nature. Protection (umbrella). Earth (gold leaf). Beauty (flowers).

Untitled, 2014-2015. Antique hand-made paper (certification stamp), stone pigments, liquid gold, 34 x 22cm. Image credit: AirSpace Projects.

Animals are becoming extinct and like the lion that used to be the king of animals, they will become mere showpieces.

Mr Ajay Sharma is an internationally renowned master miniature painter who lives and runs his studio in Jaipur, India. Sharma made his foray into the contemporary art scene when he collaborated with American artist Julie Evans in 2010. They exhibited their works to much critical acclaim at the Julie Saul Gallery, New York, receiving reviews in Art in America, Art Forum and Vogue Italia. Miniature painting enthusiasts from all over the world frequent Sharma’s miniature painting school in Jaipur. He has taught at universities and colleges from India to London. Ajay Sharma will be having his second solo exhibition at AirSpace Projects in May 2015.

Ajay Sharma has created these unique works for Extinct Extant, his ideas are expressed below each image. The Wasli papers are handmade by a craftsman in Sanganeer village and are acid free. Ajay has been using these as his preferred medium as he likes the appearance and texture. He has been buying from the same supplier for three decades.  Such unique papers are almost impossible to find in the West.

 Vivian White

Pedigree For Sale: All Rounder, 2014. Oil paint and liquin on MDF, 13.4 x 13.4cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Pedigree For Sale: Centaur, 2014. Oil paint and Liquin on MDF, 13.4 x 13.4cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Pedigree For Sale: Human, 2014. Oil paint and Liquin on MDF, 13.4 x 13.4cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Pedigree For Sale: Pluckless, 2014. Oil paint and Liquin on MDF, 13.4 x 13.4cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Pedigree For Sale: Prolific Galore, 2014. Oil paint and Liquin on MDF, 13.4 x 13.4cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Pedigree For Sale: Seraph, 2014. Oil paint and Liquin on MDF, 13.4 x 13.4cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Vivian White is a recent Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate of UNSW|Art & Design. She developed this series during her final year of study to express her concern over the way the natural world is manipulated to meet global food demands.

Genetically modified foods have a negative connotation in the twenty-first century.

Yet, the invention of GMO is due to ever-growing consumer demand and market pressure of ‘Bigger, Better, Cheaper’. Food companies have radicalised their product development to keep up with consumer demands.

Animals and plants are no longer viewed as living beings with a free will, but rather as ‘by-products’ where they are manipulated to become easily transportable and more presentable on the shelf.

Chickens nowadays are no longer the same as their predecessors. Nowadays, chickens are bred to a slaughtering weight within five to seven weeks. The chickens are slaughtered at the equivalent human age of eight-months. Within the shorter growing time-frame, these chickens grow twice as large as before, with extra large breast meat due to the popularity of that cut.

If nothing changes, perhaps one day these squared chickens will be grown by farmers to meet consumer demand.

The size of each painting is the equivalent space each chicken has inside a broiler-tunnel before slaughter. Due to the speed in which they grow and gain weight, many cannot support themselves to walk.