VIPOO SRIVILASA

Wellness Deity 22 May 2021 > 22 August 2021

This exhibition will present the Wellness Deity Project, which Vipoo Srivilasa undertook in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This collaborative, community-driven project encouraged people to reflect on their experience of the pandemic. The artist invited people to submit a drawing of their Wellness Deity, a being that has a special empowering or protective power. Srivilasa selected 19 of these drawings to provide inspiration for a series of ceramic sculptures. Each deity has its own unique characteristics based on the personal stories submitted. Each work is also accompanied by a piece of commissioned creative writing.

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E-CATALOGUE

Established in 2015, the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize is a celebration of contemporary Australian painting. The finalist exhibition brings together a broad range of artists, both established and lesser known, whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of painting in Australia today.

The annual prize is an important opportunity for Bayside City Council to add exceptional works of art to its collection and to promote art and artists as a valuable part of the Bayside community.

Sally Mulda's work 'Town Camp Stories' 2020 is a finalist in this year's prize.

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Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. The exhibition draws together a breadth of artists with varied approaches to painting. This allows the Bayside City Council to futher promote artists to the Bayside community from across Australia, providing painters with support to continue their practice.

Tim McMonagle's work 'Put Upon' 2020 is a finalist in this year's prize.

IMAGE:

Tim McMonagle

Put upon 2020

oil on linen

138 x 138 cm

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Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. The exhibition draws together a breadth of artists with varied approaches to painting. This allows the Bayside City Council to further develop its collection and promote artists to the Bayside community.

Belem Lett's work 'Pineapples' 2019 is a finalist in this year's prize.

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WORDS EMMA-KATE WILSON

A few years ago, Sydney-based artist Julian Meagher welcomed the birth of his son and found himself working more instinctively. ‘I think I’m making better works because I am taking a lot more risks, I make so many more bad paintings that end up in the bin now than I used to,’ he comments.

When his daughter was born eight months ago, he went through a whole new level of sleep deprivation and heartbreak, with their little girl suffering reflux for six months. ‘Sleepwalking’ channels this energy, exploring the space between altered states, the subconscious and dreaming.

Alongside ultra-romantic pink and blue landscapes, complete with rainbows, built through active painting, raw brushstrokes and delicate fades, Meagher presents his sleeping family. The small and intimate portraits connect with the large glitchy, idyllic landscapes. ‘I’m trying to make sense of the complex human existence through the power and beauty of nature,’ he adds, ‘I feel like a rainbow next to a little sleeping baby is what we need right now … A hope that things will get better on both a personal and collective level.’

Meagher’s palette is deliberately muted, soft, subtle. He says, ‘I think painting is only good if you’re true to yourself. Painting is a kind of meditation for me in a way; I want the end result to slow down my breath rate.’

To construct his portraits and colour fields – which can be read as landscapes, abstracted, or the sky out of his studio window – Meagher applies thin layers and begins to remove the colour as it starts to dry. Working against the drying time of the paint stops the artist from ‘overcooking’ them. By revealing the linen below, the canvases hold luminosity, adding a watercolour effect evocative of the ocean-inspired landscapes. ‘We’ve all seen those storms out to sea; it’s in our collective consciousness,’ he explains, ‘most can associate strong memories and rites of passage with these coastline images.’

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Adrienne Gaha is featured in Art Collector issue 94, October to December, 2020.

What drives Adrienne Gaha’s latest work is the myriad different interpretations waiting to be discovered in paint.

Gaha’s work reaches into art history with oblique references to narrative painters like Titian, Rupert Bunny, Bouguereau. The images are rubbed out, painted over, and heavily abstracted, conjoined with contemporary references. Their aesthetic contains touchstones, a sense of familiarity that is hard to pin down but speaks to our recognition of well-known historical paintings and their tropes, juxtaposed with pop culture references (cartoons, the Disney image) and animals. This method of working, where Gaha paints, wipes back with turpentine, glazes, builds, drips and pools paint is, as artist Brooke Fitzsimons suggests, a space where figuration coexists with abstraction in such a way as to address the maxims of modernism.

- Louise Martin-Chew

IMAGE:

Adrienne Gaha, courtesy Jacquie Manning

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Written by Louise Martin-Chew

How Vipoo Srivilasa is repairing happiness

STUDIO

19 May 2021

Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa has a penchant for intricate and layered decoration that, he explains, is influenced by the ornate Buddhist temples he encountered growing up in Thailand. With an aesthetic he cheerfully describes as “more is more,” Srivilasa’s distinctive work also draws on European historical figurines and “a healthy dose of contemporary culture”. We chatted over cups of sencha tea in Srivilasa’s clean, bright warehouse studio in the suburb of Cheltenham, in Melbourne’s south-east.

Place
I’ve made this space really comfortable because I spend most of my time here, almost seven days a week. I come here about 7:30 in the morning and leave at 3:30 in the afternoon, go home, and do some shopping. Then I work on the computer, like writing or administration, in the evenings. Most of the time I’m just here; I live 10 minutes from here, so it’s really easy. Sometimes I go home for lunch—but I’ve found it kind of distracting, like you go home and it’s hard to come back again. So I bring my own lunch, or I’ll walk around the corner for a Vietnamese lunch.

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Bronte Leighton-Dore's work is part of Wangaratta Art Gallery's exhibition 'Contemporary Landscape Perspectives: A Group Show' from 13 March – 30 May 2021.

This dynamic exhibition of five contemporary landscape Australian painters, Max Berry, Holly Greenwood, Dan Kyle, Bronte Leighton-Dore and Andrew Pye explores individual perspectives of elements of the Australian bush, the terrain, landscape and key symbolism of trees and flora in their immediate environment.

All five artists are emerging as contemporary painters in the Australian art scene. Berry, Greenwood, Kyle and Leighton-Dore are New South Wales based (Sydney and Blue Mountains), the four have partnered with local artist Andy Pye, the group have connections both through friendship but also their oeuvre, their painting practice and style. Each artists surrounding environments are re-interpreted in large scale paintings and works on paper.

This collection of artists and their work presents a diversity of expression and contemporary representation of the Australian Bush.

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Dan Kyle's work is part of Wangaratta Art Gallery's exhibition 'Contemporary Landscape Perspectives: A Group Show' from 13 March – 30 May 2021.

This dynamic exhibition of five contemporary landscape Australian painters, Max Berry, Holly Greenwood, Dan Kyle, Bronte Leighton-Dore and Andrew Pye explores individual perspectives of elements of the Australian bush, the terrain, landscape and key symbolism of trees and flora in their immediate environment.

All five artists are emerging as contemporary painters in the Australian art scene. Berry, Greenwood, Kyle and Leighton-Dore are New South Wales based (Sydney and Blue Mountains), the four have partnered with local artist Andy Pye, the group have connections both through friendship but also their oeuvre, their painting practice and style. Each artists surrounding environments are re-interpreted in large scale paintings and works on paper.

This collection of artists and their work presents a diversity of expression and contemporary representation of the Australian Bush.

READ MORE HERE