Innholdsfortegnelse for 33 i Artist Profile

I UNDERSTAND YOU grew up in a rural area in Queensland? My dad’s a dairy farmer so I grew up on a property in the Kerry Valley in the Gold Coast hinterlands. I spent a lot of my childhood and teens just wandering around the hills, having free rein there. My parents let me go to art lessons, and I was always pretty focused. I could spend hours and hours drawing all the time. I was also the youngest; my siblings are quite older than me so I had a lot of time left to my own devices. Who has influenced your practice? Particularly one painting, Édouard Vuillard’s ‘Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist’, 1893. In the work there are two figures, especially the sister who is standing and…

SALVATORE ZOFREA’S ADMIRATION for the masters of the Italian Renaissance has in recent years given way to a zeal for the Australian bush, fi nding inspiration around the scrub near Zofrea’s second studio at Kurrajong on the lower slopes of the Blue Mountains. Born in Italy in 1946, the painter and printmaker arrived in Australia in 1956. Known as much for his wonderful woodcuts as well as his paintings, he is proud of the fact he has always lived solely by his art. What does painting bring to your life personally? Why do you need to do it every day? I need to express my joy of life through painting, to celebrate life, and how I perceive what’s happening around me, and the meaning of life. I think every day…

The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art takes place across two venues, in the Queensland Art Gallery and in select spaces within the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. NATIONALISM CAN BE a dirty word. But shrewdly by celebrating tradition, hybridity and, importantly, change, the artists represented in the Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) fly the flag for pan-Asia. APT8 takes place across two venues, in the Queensland Art Gallery and in select spaces within the Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). More than 80 artists and performers from over 30 nations will be on view from 21 November to 10 April 2016. The presentation marks its largest geographic footprint to date and celebrates 22 years as the leading platform for Australian, Asia Pacific and now Central Asian…

IT IS WELL KNOWN that living artists are the core of Artist Profile. We have presented the work of about 500 Australian and international artists since Artist Profile was established over eight years ago. Our commitment has been dedicated to artists at all stages of their practice. We talk to artists rather than about them. Our writers are invited to use various approaches, from previews and conversations to stories, essays and reviews. The artist’s authentic environment is what we endeavour to bring to you through these pages with the support of the artists, their galleries, collectors and the public museums and galleries that curate and also collect their work. Expanding on our dedication to artists, for my first issue of Artist Profile as its new editor, I have included two…

NUSRA LATIF QURESHI, an artist from Lahore, Pakistan, now living in Australia, studied at the National College of Arts in Lahore, undertaking formal studies in Pakistani miniature painting, which included Western and Eastern art history. Qureshi’s artistic directions continued her investigations of 18th-century Pahari paintings from the sub-Himalayan mountain ranges. Pahari imagery is said to be more spacious than that found in Mughal miniatures, the Pahari focus being the subtle complexities of human relationships, often between couples. The ethos of the National College of Arts was profound for Qureshi because of its disciplined training in traditional methods but also because of its emphasis on the “inner self” in an environment of equality, irrespective of social or financial circumstances. Entry into the National College of Arts in Lahore was based on…

ARTIST PROFILE spoke to Philippines-based David Griggs about his new series of paintings titled Horror Business, where David has turned his attention away from his previous focus on the locals’ struggle to survive on Manila’s mean streets to his own turbulent inner battles with depression. As he says, putting his feelings and moods onto canvas is a new direction in his work. I like to work straight from my thoughts to the canvas, and once I have drawn things up in my mind, I go for it. YOU’RE CURRENTLY WORKING ON NEW PAINTINGS titled Horror Business, where you are now the total subject of the paintings. The primary subjects in your past paintings engaged with prison gangs or fraternities and skateboarders etc in the Philippines. How does it feel being…

ALEX GAWRONSKI IS an artist, writer, gallery director and educator, best known for his installations. Here, Artist Profile talks to him about some recently exhibited, smaller works. I’m interested in your paintings of obscure, Eastern European book titles. Where do these hail from, given the predominance of other themes in your work? Part of the works come from teaching at Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University, and consequently wanting to reconnect with painting, which I hadn’t done for a long time. Also, it comes from the simple idea of being able to paint anywhere and at any time, as distinct from building objects for an installation-based practice. A lot of the works also developed from discoveries made during my work as a librarian. For example, the title ‘Proceedings of…

THE BIOGRAPHY OF THINGS Objects have a funny way of pulling at our heart strings. Whether mementos of loss, intrigue, histories or people, for the individual they can hold a narrative that is hard to let go. In this collaborative exhibition, 11 artists encounter the objects and the diverse memories of place, culture and people that they hold. Speaking to a universal understanding of the biography of an object, each artist expresses a unique interaction with objects – physical fragments of time – that act as keepsakes of the individual’s fading memories. Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, VIC 11 December 2015 – 21 February 2016 www.accaonline.org.au Brook Andrew, Harvest (installation shot), 2015, Victorian redgum, carbonised Victorian redgum, glass, brass. Courtesy the artist and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art MONSTER POP!…

PIPPIN DRYSDALE SAYS, “Landscape is all about colour, whether subtle and soft or vibrant with contrast.” There is no intent to accurately describe a scene or to be pictorial. She captures fleeting moments of memory with a vision that is emotional and intuitive, remembering a sunset or cloudburst, looking at the earth and sky before and after rain, contrasting splurges of red, magenta, orange, yellow, green, blue and soft greys to recall ravines, chasms, outcrops and the screeching calls of corella birds. As much as colour defines Drysdale’s work so do the complex layers of finely incised and meticulously brushed lines on the surface of her vessels. These provide a flexible graphic language to describe tracking, mapping and traces of time in this most ancient of geologies. In recent years…

INSIDE THE ARTIST’S STUDIO JOE FIG’S BOOK sings to Artist Profile’s tune. Taking a sneak peek into artists’ studios, and most importantly hearing from the artists themselves, Inside the Artist’s Studio is an illuminating look into the practices of both upcoming and celebrated artists. Using a Q&A format, Fig’s approach at first glance is pretty straightforward, however his perceptive questions result in diverse and unexpected revelations of the magic and madness experienced by each artist. Whether it is how singeing off a friend’s eyebrows inspired the waxworks of Peter Coyne’s wax pieces, or how the cemeteries of Cypress Hills lured Leonardo Drew, there is a constant tongue-in-cheek attitude that dissuades too serious an interpretation. Interviewing 24 artists, Fig provides a cohesive taste of the diversity of contemporary art, including painters,…

MELINDA SCHAWEL IS an artist who embeds her works with personal feelings through tearing, sculpting, drawing, drilling and painting. Her recent series, Out From Under Me, sees colours coincide and separate to create textures and patterns which are distinctive characteristics of her art practice. Schawel integrates a variety of tools and materials including drawing ink, fluid acrylics, water, pencil, plastic, sandpaper, a scalpel and Dremel drill. She often commences with a diluted ink wash brushed onto 640gsm paper. With a scalpel, she tears one piece at a time until a form emerges. This process can be guided although only to a certain point as the shape and direction of the tears are unpredictable. The precarious nature of this procedure sees the works take ambiguous paths. A sense of uncertainty arises…

MY PAINTINGS ARE largely object-based and, while they reference some of the traditions of still-life painting, they have a less decorative and distinctly more contemporary approach. The practice of still-life painting has morphed from the symbol-rich formality of 17th-century memento mori, where objects from skulls to dying candles and fruit and flowers were all stern reminders of mortality, into a contemporary range of subjects and styles where objects are painted largely for their pleasing visual qualities. Although this visual aesthetic is important to me, my work deals more with obsession than decoration. Repeated studies of objects – a particular cut of meat, fine china teacups, a metal food grater, dead birds, cutlery, the pattern in a carpet – all show a compulsion to decipher their structure and fabric, to translate…