‘The things I see’: Helen Britton opening @ Gallery Funaki, Melbourne

Tuesday 11th November

Moving through Melbourne’s busy laneways from the Oleh Witer exhibition we arrrive at the intimate, stylish Gallery Funaki to view the work of Australian artist Helen Britton who works with the form of contemporary jewellery. The crowd spilled onto the street and the small space was busy with an interesting crowd in attendance.

The exhibition presents brooches, earrings, rings and necklaces built with the artists trademark assemblages. Whilst the necklaces are more prosaic (movie like reels and slinks of melted plastic restrained within metal banding) it is the brooches that capture and hold the viewer’s attention.
Sci-fi like grided circles collide with concave discs filled with glistening blue crystals; thrusters and steel from a miniature collapsed lunar landing vehicle vie with clusters of vibrant colors that appear to be imbedded into a lunar landscape: delicate crimped and folded metal landscapes with the appearance of collapsed geometric origami.

These are wonderfully inventive constructions, invigorating for their energy and exuberance. Britton has described her work as “industrial baroque”. Perhaps an equally pertinent description would be spatial, or ‘space baroque’ as the artist investigates the nexus, the cellular biology of matter, reality and the spaces we inhabit.

M Bunyan

 
Exhibition dates: November 11th – December 6th 2008

Gallery Funaki
4 Crossley St.,
Melbourne 3000
03 9662 9446

Opening hours: Tues – Friday, 11 – 5pm, Sat 11 – 4pm

 

Gallery Funaki website

Oleh Witer. “The Bee” 2008

 

Oleh Witer
“The Bee”
2008

oil on linen

Oleh Witer. installation view and opening crowd with “The Rhinoceros Beetle” 2008

 

Oleh Witer
installation view and opening crowd with “The Rhinoceros Beetle”
2008

oil on linen

Oleh Witer. “The Elephant Beetle” 2008

 

Oleh Witer
“The Elephant Beetle”
2008

oil in linen

Oleh Witer opening @ Space 39 Gallery, Melbourne

Tuesday 11th November 2008

A warm and lively crowd was in attendance for the opening of the latest Oleh Witer exhibition at Space 39 in Little Collins Street, Melbourne. Nine paintings are presented in the open space of the gallery and what magical paintings they are.

Two of the main canvases feature rearing beetles in the foreground, almost photo-realistically painted, lit from above while in the background geometric red and blue squares are overlaid by enigmatic shadows – almost as though the shadows were the interior structures of a fantastical light shade.
Other canvases feature a bee and a wasp facing each other with cellular geometric patterns and overlaid shadows in the background. Between these two seeming adversaries is a large canvas of a black skull with candle flickering in the it’s lobotomized top sitting on a spiral shape with geometric shapes and the shadows of an almost tarot like ‘ten of swords’ pattern overlaid to the background.

The strongest work features geometric forms with dark surrealist imagery. These are talismanic images with a strong connection to taoist and shamanic principles. A concern with the connection between all things is evident – archetypal pentagrams, spirals and swords are linked to the principles and proportions of the golden mean equation. Contemplation is required to access the inner meanings of the work but they reward extended looking as their magical phosphorescencs are revealed over time. Recommended viewing.

M Bunyan

 
Exhibition dates: November 11th – November 22nd 2008

Space 39
Level 2, 39 Little Collins St.,
Melbourne
0423 976 315

Gallery hours: Tues – Sat, 11-5pm

Berlinische Galerie Opens Panoramic Photographs of Berlin, 1949 – 1952 Exhibition

 

Details of the exhibition on Artdaily.org

Sony World Photography Awards 2009

Deadline: 31st December 2008

 

For Professionals

“The Sony World Photography Awards are entirely international, welcoming professional photographers from across the globe to submit their photographs into a highly competitive awards programme.

As an entering professional photographer, you will be judged by the World Photographic Academy in the hopes of being recognized by leading industry figures and taking the stage in Cannes to receive one of the 12 prestigious category awards and, the most coveted prize, L’iris d’Or, given to The Sony World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year, with the recipient taking, amongst other things, prize money of $25,000.”

For Amateurs

“The Sony World Photography Awards are entirely international, welcoming people from across the globe to submit their photographs into an exciting amateur competition, which is run alongside the Professional Awards.

As an amateur photographer, you also have the opportunity to be judged by the World Photographic Academy in the hopes of taking the stage in Cannes to receive one of the most sought after prizes in the competition: The Sony World Photography Awards Amateur Photographer of the Year.”

Paul Virilio. ‘The Vision Machine’.

“Empirically acknowledged as tragic, the photographic print was really just that when, at the turn of the century, it became the instrument of the three great authorities over life and death (the law, the army, medicine). This is when it demonstrated its power to reveal the unfolding of a destiny from the word go. As deus ex machina, it was to become just as ruthless for the criminal, the soldier or the invalid, the conjunction between the immediate and the fatal only becoming more solid, inevitably, with the progress of representation.”

 

Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine (trans. Julie Rose). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, p.43.

Marcus Bunyan. ‘The Shape of Dreams’ 2008

 

“It’s really nothing fellas!” from the series ‘The Shape of Dreams’ 2008
M Bunyan

 

Marcus Bunyan website

Darren Wardle. “Inland Empire” 2008

 

 

Darren Wardle
“Inland Empire”
2008

oil and acrylic on linen