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Stilled Life: 2012

Stilled Life, 14 - 29 April 2012, Artsite  Contemporary Exhibition Archive
Stilled Life | 14 - 29 April 2012 | Artsite Contemporary Galleries Sydney Australia. Exhibition Archive. Erika Beck | Margaret Bendit | Denis Clarke | Barbara Davidson | Angelika Erbsland | Anne Knowles | Graham Marchant

INGALLERY

14 – 29 April 2012

Stilled Life

Erika Beck | Margaret Bendit | Denis Clarke | Barbara Davidson | Angelika Erbsland | Anne Knowles | Graham Marchant

StilledLife is an exhibition of still life Paintings and Works on Paper with Artists: Erika Beck | Margaret Bendit | Denis Clarke | Barbara Davidson | Angelika Erbsland | Anne Knowles | Graham Marchant.

Still Life as soul food remains as popular as ever.

The still life works of these seven Sydney artists are mysteriously beautiful, slowing down time, personal without being overbearing, meditative at times, and yet strangely familiar, like a home cooked meal.

What place do these mundane objects have in our houses where a basic need such as to eat is overshadowed by an all pervasive, corporate advertising driven, visual backdrop of television and radio shows that vie for the newest/oldest/simplest/complicated meal that a single person (with a staff of 20) can prepare in one area formally referred to as the kitchen?

To cook with passion is to consume, to paint with passion is to endure. We see a beautifully executed still life as food, not for the body, but for the soul.

To share a meal is to share a passion for momentary things, once eaten never quite recaptured. To share a painter’s vision of a moment observed, is to share that moment repeatedly, to recycle, each time with a more subtle joy in the beholding and sharing.

Artists, like foodies, are driven by a passion for excellence and sublime experience shared.

Still life is not dead, we cannot eat it or savour its aromas, rather it tantalises our soul with promises often overlooked. Promises of memory; moments of sunshine; joy; beauty; happiness; colour; things eaten; experience suddenly remembered.

Recipes make us forget that not everyone can cook. Recipes presume prerequisite knowledge. A work of Still(ed)life has no such presumptions. What is on offer is what we see.

Captured moments on canvas and paper remind us of our own experience, as casually glancing we realise; the life that is still ours is no longer a life we have any real control over and, for a moment, we are stilled.

~ Curator Madeleine Tuckfield-Carrano

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