Flinders Lane Gallery

• by Aaron Martin
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Exploration 7 at Flinders Lane Gallery was launched on Tuesday night. Initiated by gallery curator Claire Harris in 2000, Exploration is now in its seventh consecutive year. With the focus on showing recently graduated and unsigned artist the annual exhibition has uncovered some delightful results, and given rise to a number of flourishing art careers such as Roh Singh, Robert McHaffie, Josef Marzi .

This year nine artists have been selected to show their work. The artists in this show have demonstrated experimentation and investigation over a range of disciplines, painting, photography, sculpture and computer generated images.

The Queensland based artist Paul Adair has presented a series of digital photographic prints; these staged photographs use taxidermy animals placed in artificial constructed environments. The animals poised on top of milk crates, 44 gallon drums, and artificial grass, challenge the concept between animate and inanimate, between nature and man- made objects. Despite the two dimensional format they contain a strong sculptural quality.

Hannah Bertram 200x250cm lace paper curtain is about waste and reuse. Bertram splices together scrapes of paper, supermarket receipts, envelopes and discarded met tickets. Just as a dressmaker might do, the material is then overlaid by a predrawn pattern and carefully cut. The result is delicate and ornate and surprising beautiful for such extraneous material.


Alizon Gray`s are loose, fluid paintings where sparse areas of color give way to expose underlying patterns. Freehand drawing of plants and animals are drawn on the thick layered enamel surfaces which are rich and lustrous.

James Parrett`s sculptures pose questions of form, sculptural process and material. The sinuous sculptures constructed from marine ply are inviting, but the ruggedness of the deliberately exposed screw heads and unsanded corners or the unevenly cut cardboard; maintain our awareness of the materials used.



Alan Garcia colorful expressionist paintings on board are playful abstracted landscapes, the color is lurid, and the paint is applied with gusto, pushed and pulled across the surface. Composition, light, texture and gestural brush work all come into play.

Canberra`s Naomi Zouwer`s carefully constructed still life paintings, express feminine qualities, painted in vivid colors they explore intricate patterns, through what could be otherwise a banal subjects; a silk dressing gown left near the couch, a pin cushion with a vase a pair of slippers and floral carpet.

Cut from cardboard and cascading across a corner of the gallery are the binary coloured realistically rendered feathers of Pamela See. Each feather carefully cut, shaped and positioned on the gallery wall and floor which in turns becomes the part of the work.


The dark and evocative prints of Georgina Campbell blend skulls, flesh and aged polished timber with a gothic sensibility. They invite to come closer for further investigation only to be faced with ones own reflection in the slick gloss surface of the digital prints bonded to board.

Heidi Yardley miniature paintings are exquisite, measuring only 13 x 11.5 cm painted on boards corners rounded off. These vignettes hint at something more, not dislike an edited out film frame that ends up on the cutting desk they are part of a greater story, but we are unable to see the previous frame  and are left to ponder the possible following frame. Images of an empty swimming pool, the exterior facade of a lowly lit house, the back of a woman all of which have a sense vague familiarity about them.

 
Flinders Lane gallery is nestled nicely in Melbourne s tradition art precinct, flanked by commercial galleries and artist ran spaces, artist studios fashionable resturaunts and bars.

Current Show

Title: Exploration 7

Artist: Pamela See, Hannah Bertram, Georgina Campbell, Naomi Zouwer, Alan Garcia, Alizon Gray, James Parrett, Paul Adair, Heidi Yardley

Type of Show: painting-photography-installation

Date: May 08, 2007 to May 26, 2007

Time: Tue,Wed&Fri 11:00am-6:30pm, Thurs 11:00am-8:00pm Sat 11:00pm-4:00pm