Nature Nurture

Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery one
03 February / 10 March 2024

GREG WOOD
Nature Nurture

Greg Wood is a painter of the earthy and ethereal. The observation of atmospheric shifts in landscapes has been central to his practice for the past 25 years. He is attracted to observing the dynamic and subtle states of transformation enhanced by changing conditions, weather, and light.

In a recent residency in the ex-mining town of Queenstown, West coast of Tasmania,

Wood observed and created a series he describes as ‘resurrected landscapes’, images of places altered by human activity and in the process of regeneration. He describes these landscapes as occupying a liminal space between abstraction and realism, reminiscent of his style, that is, the physical abstraction wrought by human intervention and the shifting forces of atmosphere in the environment and the realism of nature’s capacity for remodelling itself as it heals. He describes the act of painting these wounded landscapes as acts of restitution and contrition.

Wood currently resides in one such landscape, the Central Victorian Goldfields, on Dja Dja Wurrung country. Described by local indigenous people as ‘Upside down country’ after the disruptions of the gold rush, this deeply disfigured landscape, marred and churned by mining, is in the process of reconfiguring. This singular landscape, with its saturated coppery hues and shadowy crenulations, impels Wood to create works that hold the unsettled beauty of a place both devastated and re-emerging. It is in this way that his art bears witness to the immense power of nature’s capacity for adaptation and repair.

For Wood, the specifics of place are not as important as the emotional and figural afterimages that endure. He paints places traversed through sensory impression, inviting the viewer to enter the felt sense of place, inciting flares of memory and emotion – landscapes of the familiar and unfamiliar. Wood describes his work as a ‘slow release’ –the nuance of his paintings gradually revealing themselves to the viewer. The art of Melbourne tonalist Clarice Beckett has been a formative influence for him, as revealed in his translucent, gestural layers of muted colour, flattened form, merging tones, and diffuse light.

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KEZ HUGHES

Magali Gentric ·

Heather B. Swann, HeavyHead, Collection Art Gallery of South Australia 2016, 2023, oil on linen, silver finish frame, 51 x 51 cm

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery one
22 July / 27 August 2023

KEZ HUGHES
You Never Got Me Right

In an age where digital images dominate our experience, Kez Hughes’ paintings are lovingly rendered to communicate stillness, and beauty, and provide a new recording of artworks lost to their respective histories and locations.
Through repositioning and recreating paintings from existing documentary images of art, Hughes contemplates ideas of originality, authenticity, and authorship.
You never got me right brings together painted adaptations of works by Australian Artists including Lucina Lane, Heather b Swann, Olah Cohn, and Nat Ryan amongst others.

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GEORGINA PROUD

Magali Gentric ·

Crescent, 2023, stoneware, glaze, sea glass, 18 x 21 x 6.5 cm

Stockroom Kyneton, ceramic space
22 July / 27 August 2023

GEORGINA PROUD
Flux

Flux is an exploration of materiality that investigates the chemical reactions and transformation of materials that occur during the ceramic-making and firing process. These works combine a range of materials and techniques that I have been experimenting with over the past four years including the incorporation of novel materials, such as sea glass, seeds, and perlite, into different clay bodies. The interplay of the introduced materials and the clay creates a unique process of development.

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The decision is emerging

Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery two
10 June / 16 July 2023

ANTHEA KEMP
The decision is emerging

This body of work represents the continuation of Anthea Kemp's fascination of nature and her creative process derived from nature and place. Through these paintings, Anthea captures a holistic approach, allowing her intuition to form a process to balance compositions inspired from visuals found in nature. The decisions that arise are an outcome of her attempts to distil the interplay between light and shadow, the graceful form of a donkey orchid, and the expressive lines found within trees. Simultaneously, she embraces the unpredictable nature of the painting medium.

This exploratory process enables the boundaries between representation and abstraction to shift, resulting in artworks that exist in a state of transition. Working on these paintings concurrently in her studio establishes a connection between them, evident in the shared decisions regarding marks, colours, and motifs. This continuity allows an energetic flow from one painting to the next, highlighting the iterative process she employs to bring each piece to resolution.

Anthea Kemp has been exhibiting since 2015, showcasing her work in solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Regional Victoria, and Sydney. Additionally, her artwork has been included in group exhibitions across various locations, including Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, and regional Victoria. Noteworthy exhibition spaces include Blindside ARI, LON Gallery, Saint Cloche, Benalla Art Gallery, and Wangaratta Art Gallery. Anthea has also been recognized as a finalist in the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize (2016), the Atheneum Club Visual Research Award (2019), and the Len Fox Award at Castlemaine Art Museums (2022). In 2021, she was awarded the Macfarlane Fund Kyneton Residency. Anthea's work can be found in the collection of the Wangaratta Art Gallery, as well as in numerous private collections.

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ΩMNI

Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom, gallery one
29 April / 04 June 2023

HAYLEY ARJONA
ΩMNI

Suspended Potential, 2023, oil on board, 120 x 120 cm

Hayley Arjona lives and paints on a farm in Glenhope near Kyneton. A practicing artist for over 20 years, her creative journey has been unrelentless, non-conforming, and ever-evolving.

Hayley has completed a Master of Art Therapy from La Trobe University Bundoora (2020), a Master of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts (2000), and a Bachelor of Visual Arts with first-class honours from the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia (1998). Hayley’s work has been exhibited throughout Australia, her work is held in public collections, of the Art Gallery of South Australia and Artbank. Hayley is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Victoria.

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Polar Front

Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery two
04 February / 12 March 2023

JARRAD MARTYN
Polar Front

Refuge, 2022, oil on canvas, 89 x 91 cm.

Polar Front explores humanity's relationship with the natural environment through intersecting family and world histories. Martyn's inspiration for this new body of work is through film photographs his Father took whilst working as a helicopter pilot, based at Casey Station in Antarctica during the 1980s.

As Antarctica has experienced some of the most rapid warmings on Earth it has significantly changed since the photographs were taken. Once stable ice shelves are melting faster, the declining habitat of several Penguin species and the human footprint in the region are increasing. In the past, the photographs were personal memories of a far-off alien land but are now foreboding and darker.

Martyn uses the principles of bricolage, something constructed from a diverse range of things, to bring together academic research and imagery. Pictorial forms are assimilated into different contexts and are collaged together to encourage the creation of new conversations and symbolic connections. The works in 'Polar Front' combine archival photographs from Antarctica, with appropriated early-Colonial Australian painting language, climate modeling and weather forecast patterns, and Romantic painting techniques. The dripping of paint, blurring of figuration, and shifts in texture conceive landscapes that are in flux and out-of-this-world. This slippage attempts to occupy the space between the public consciousness of the changing climate and the individual's impact, all whilst confronting the personal and familial significance of memory-making and keeping.

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Unfolding

Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom Kyneton, ceramic space
03 December 2022/ 22 January 2023

ANGELA HAYES
Unfolding

Unfolding is a drama of contradictions. It is darkness against light, a straight edge against a splash and a drip, a surprise at a random turn, a strong, sharp shadow cutting a flash of sunlight. It is the tension between seeking control and giving in to what is natural.

For this exhibition, the artist has crafted a theatre of contrasting dynamics. Of stillness and discipline with forms against expressive and gestural surfaces.

Angela Hayes’ ceramic sculptures originate from the study of the classic pouring vessel many years ago. The lip, the body, the foot, the spout, and the handle have evolved from wheel-thrown vessels to contemporary slab-made architectonic forms. Her work has departed from the functional constraints of the vessel and instead has become a receptacle for her artist’s voice.

Hayes studied Fine Arts - Ceramics at Queensland College of Art and later completed a Bachelor and Master of Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne. Her landscape architecture design practice, research and teaching have developed a distinct style and keen eye for design which is demonstrated in her ceramic work. Angela has received numerous awards for her design work. She has exhibited her ceramic sculptures interstate, in China and at numerous galleries in Melbourne.

Hayes creates ceramic sculptures from her inner-city studio in Melbourne. She finds inspiration in her urban environment through experimentation with traditional ceramics processes and refinement of new technical discoveries.

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Making sense of nonsense

Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery two
22 October / 27 November 2022

LAETITIA OLIVIER-GARGANO
Making sense of nonsense 

Painting 2 (Life felt like mince meat, but I can’t even afford that anymore.), 2022, gouache, epoxy resin, polymer paint on board, framed, 40 x 40 cm

Trying to make sense of the chaotic nature of the last few years, Laetitia depicts her experiences in a cheerfully nihilistic way. Aestheticising hyper-real forms to convey emotions and memories, Making sense of nonsense is almost a painting show, not quite a sculpture show.

Carefully painted ‘hyper-surreal’ resin sculptures are laid out like constructivist paintings among a vivid, energetic blue. Lunch leftovers become abstract collages and detailed sculptures double as whimsical candelabras. Each life-like scene is intently placed as a tactile translation of memory.

Food is the defining feature of this exhibition, as a joyful comfort, as helpful procrastination, and as a reminder of loved ones. Fleshy oysters ooze their ‘bougie’ picnic opulence. An impassive brick of minced meat stresses the appreciation of boredom.

All timely reminders that life is just a bit nonsense.

Laetitia’s practice is driven by a close survey of food, plants and everyday objects, through surreal sculptural reimagining. By blurring the boundaries of complex yet recognisable forms, her work playfully incites both a sense of wonder and unease. These edible and domestic items speak to deeply personal emotions, memories and associations. Her work often engenders bodily responses from viewers due to its intense familiarity, yet complete absurdity. Our stomach turns, and we want to look away, but curiosity stops us. It is this uncanny sensation and the universality of it that her works make us aware of.

Laetitia currently works from her studio in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. She graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Monash University. Her work has been exhibited nationally at institutions such as Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Cement Fondu, Notfair and Firstdraft. Her work has also featured in Broadsheet, Artist Profile and Art + Australia journals. In 2019 Laetitia received the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists, administered by NAVA. She undertook research in Japan, learning how to make their iconic plastic food samples. Laetitia’s practice often involves ‘hyper-surrealistic’ resin cast sculpture, stop-motion animation and works on paper.

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Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom Kyneton, ceramic space
21 May / 26 June 2022

DAVID RAY
Four Treasons

The Industrial Revolution (1750 onwards) was a critical time of change; advances in machine technologies enabled the production of steam from coal, and then electricity which empowered efficient manufacturing processes and global transport.  Our cities became the epicentres for trade, and a melting pot for developing new economic classes and political systems. 

Industrialisation occurred to the detriment of our natural world, which continues today.  Our cultures began to disassociate ourselves from nature, and in its place is a world driven by the economic and political market where profit and loss drive consumerism, and the control of our world’s resources.

The ‘Four Seasons’ concept has been documented throughout many cultures to represent the order of nature, often through mythical stories and art.  The ‘Four Season Figurines’ made in Staffordshire England (pictured) are prime examples of how artists can reimagine nature as fantasy and turn them into a commodity.

“Figurines as cultural artefacts have an important role to playing enhancing awareness and understanding of human activity and its communication among peoples.” (Dr Hanz Syz- National Museum of American History)

Using the ‘Four Seasons’ narrative, I wanted to explore our current socio-political and economic structures as seasons, which led to my work ‘The Four Treasons’ (2020 – 22).  This work consists of four vehicles which are allegorical constructs, representing the four-socio political-economic seasons: Propaganda (Autumn), Destruction (Winter), Rebuild (Spring), Leisure (Summer)

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Zootopia

Magali Gentric ·

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery one
21 May / 26 June 2022

KATE ROHDE
Zootopia

In Zootopia, Kate Rohde presents several new and reworked pieces inspired by the historical Wunderkammer - shells, gems, corals and a menagerie of beasts fused together in a zoomorphic soup. Rohde’s imaginative and fanciful sculptures fuse museological documentation with a Rococo and Baroque aesthetic.

Created from a range of sculptural techniques, within these works are artificial representations of the natural. Here the use of inventive materials conveys an unusual beauty, nature reimagined in resin, plaster and clay, and rendered in a hyper colourful palette. Rohde invites you to enter a realm of fantasy, motivating contemporary discussions regarding ecology, extinction and preservation.

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