A Sydney Flower and Garden Show
07 - 29 July 2018

 

We live in a visually over loaded world where images bombard us via mobile, iPad, computer, electronic bill-board, television, street and transport signage, social media apps, those pesky sms received as you walk past shops.. (etc.), competing in a seemingly never ending visual cacophony for our attention.

Take a rest, shut your eyes - come and enjoy the experience of looking at one work at a time. Enjoy that first sighting, that moment of recognition when a painting calls, speaking directly to your senses and memories.

For this exhibition in the wintery unpredictability of July, and because that first experience of the texture and colour should be a visceral surprise, not dulled, second-hand via a flat screen, Artsite Contemporary Galleries and artists invite you to feel comfortable to visit, and revisit us again, and again. The work that you should take home will sing to you and bring you great pleaseure - painting and sculpture is always better experienced in the real.

With this exhibition we introduce you to four new artists:

 
A Sydney Flower and Garden Show | Artsite Contemporary Galleries | Sydney | 07-29 July 2018 | with Randall Sinnamon

Randall Sinnamon with his wonderful and somewhat cheeky birds... Of the Scissor headed Spoontail he writes "This deceptively placid and seemingly cute bird is one of the most dangerous of the spoontail species. They have been known to sever fingers from humans and remove ears from cattle. Found near paper mills and clothing factories."
Randall has exhibited widely in Sydney and the South coast.
He has been awarded the 2015 Shoalhaven Open Art Prize, Shoalhaven Regional Art Gallery; the 2011 Lady Ethel Nock Sculpture prize, Defiance Gallery, Sydney; the2011 Arts in the Valley Sculpture Prize, Kangaroo Valley; the 2010 Sculpture Prize, Blacktown City Art Prize; the 2009 People’s Choice Award, Sculpture on the Edge, Bermagui, NSW; the 2008 Emerging Sculptor Prize, 6x6 Sculpture Show, Defiance Gallery; the 2008 People´s Choice Award, Jervis Bay and Basin Arts Painting Prize; and the 2003 Robin Gibson Sculpture Prize.
Randall´s work is held in Public Collections including Shoalhaven City Council; Jervis Bay Maritime Museum, Bundanon; National Parks and Wildlife Service NSW; Trinity Grammar School; Pymble Ladies College and Candelo Hotel.Plus Private collections in Australia, Wales, Belgium, India, Scotland, England, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland and New Zealand.

A Sydney Flower and Garden Show | Artsite Contemporary Galleries | Sydney | 07-29 July 2018 | with Selina Kulitja
Selina Kulitja "is minyma Anangu, an Aboriginal woman from the Central Desert area of Australia. Part of her childhood was spent in the community of Areyonga before her family returned to their ancestral lands and the community of Kaltukatjara, or Docker River in the Petermann Ranges. Her mother, senor artist, Nyinku Kulitja, has taught her skills through the Tjukurpa, the Law and way of life governing their country. Selina began carving in her own right in the early 1990sand began painting with Maruku in 2007 and takes inspiration from her sister-in-law, Rene Kulitja. Recently Selina has become an ambassador for Maruku, bringing her people´s art to a wider audience through workshops and exhibitions. Selina also performs a crucial role as a Health Worker in her local community clinic and is an active community and council member."
"Kungkarangkalpa is the Tjukurpa of the Seven Sisters, concerning a group of women being pursued by a cunning man called Nyiru who attempts to lure them into marriage with him. He disguises himself in countless ways to trick the sisters, and is sometimes also invisible in paintings. In their escape the sisters travelled through a vast amount of Australia. They stopped to camp, build shelters and hunt for food, thus forming many features of the landscape and embedding the knowledge of survival in it. Eventually they fled into the sky where they became the constellation known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. Nyiru still follows them ceaselessly across the night sky as one of the bright stars in the constellation of Orion". (Extract from Maruku Arts Certificate of Authenticity DX1938-15.)
Selina Kulitja´s work is represented in the Imago Mundi Collection, Treviso, Italy.

A Sydney Flower and Garden Show | Artsite Contemporary Galleries | Sydney | 07-29 July 2018 | with Billy Cooley.

Billy Cooley, from Mutitjulu (NT) community, has a passion for carving snake punu (nb: Punu can mean many things; from a tree, firewood, to objects made from wood). When he was working as a stockman at Mulga Park Station where he also met his Pitjantjatjara wife Lulu, and began living with her people, he remembers watching some of the older people craving snakes from flat pieces of wood.
With the idea of recreating something more of the drama of the liru (a venomous snake e.g. mulga snake and western brown snake) he studied the different scale patterns of desert snakes to make his work as lifelike as possible. "Over the years he developed four etching styles for different snakes, notes Stephen Fox, (curator of the Punuku Tjukurpa catalogue and Education Kit, ArtBackNT, West Australian Museum), in order to replicate with authenticity the snakes walka (meaningful marks or patterns burnt into the wood with wire heated on a wood fire).
Billy Cooley is one of the few central desert artists permitted to take live wood and it is Billy´s ambition to continue with his carving and passing on the skills and stories as long as he is able.
Billy Cooley walks the landscape, with a keen eye for interesting roots or peculiar twists of wood in which lie the sinuous coils of hidden movement.
The Wanampi (water snakes) in this exhibition all have their associations with the Tjukurpa, the stories of the Creation Ancestors and the activities which shaped the land, the people and their Law. Although these Wanampi are inspired by the desert species he lives with, he explains it´s from his mother´s country at Boorooloola (Gulf of Carpentaria) Water Serpent Dreaming.

Billy Cooley´ snakes are held in major public Collections in Australia and Internationally, including The National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

A Sydney Flower and Garden Show | Artsite Contemporary Galleries | Sydney | 07-29 July 2018 | with Mayla Teamay
Malya Teamay "was born at Tjulu (Curtin Springs), east of Uluru. As a painter he expresses both the Laws of his country and issues of contemporary history. An inaugural member of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board of Joint Management, he is regularly called on as a senior traditional consultant, liaison officer and spokesperson for Mutitjulu and the National Park. His painting is on the National Park entrance ticket and his works can be seen throughout the Cultural Centre, in National Park publications and national Art Galleries." (Extract from Maruku Arts Certificate of Authenticity X1048-14.)
Malya Teamay´s works are held in major public Collections in Australia and Internationally, including The Museum of Victoria, Melbourne;

 

The exhibition continues to Sunday 29th July 2018.

All Welcome.