Of Monsters and Bottle(d) Botanica, Nov 8th - Dec 14th, 2014.

A joint show by Ben De Nardi and Benedict Ernst.

You can view all the works in the show HERE.

“Of Monsters” is the second exhibition of Ben De Nardi’s collages; and is a continuation of his investigation into desire and the creation of desire within ourselves. In this show De Nardi adds fear, the terrifying, and a sense of the impossibility of escape from our, either internal or external circumstances, into the profiles.

The premise of this investigation is that we are all nothing but lumps of meat driven by electrical impulses, which forms the basis of the psychological profiles that we see in this exhibition.

Whilst we may consider ourselves to be more intelligent and developed than our raw material; De Nardi sees civilisation and the mechanisms of our society using our base desires as a means to achieve unacknowledged ends. De Nardi sees us as manipulating ourselves into wanting things, into creating desire, into consuming.

Using existing and known images De Nardi is creating new and often uncomfortable relationships between the images within each work. These relationships encourage informed engagement with the psychological landscape of media images. Ben De Nardi

Bottle(d) Botanica is an exhibition constructed from photographs taken to document the endeavours of my sculptural practice over the last few years. In this I have been most fortunate in being able to collaborate closely with Nick Kreisler as the photographer. Documenting these works has always been a time consuming and exciting process at the close of any major period of work. The close of the shutter would inevitably reveal something that was not quite a documentation of the work and not quite a work in itself. A true birth of something new seemed to arise effortlessly from these sessions, a rewarding and somehow true re-interpretation of the work. The camera’s eye would inevitably flatten the sculptural piece, but this would also reveal something. Something else. Nick and I always came away from these photography sessions of endless shifting of lights, tripping on cables, and squinting in the dark, enthused and talking of the possibilities of which these images spoke.

In this exhibition I have finally seized that impetus and tried to craft and curate these images into a succinct and meaningful exhibition. Bottle(d) Botanica presents again, for the first time in photographic form, the themes that drive my art practice. These could be stated as investigations into the relationship between the binary idea of The Bottle (noun-thing-subject) and The Bottled (adjective-action-context-environment). Taking note that the bottle is itself a package and hence has been chosen as already referent to a context, space, or environment. Hence a collapsing or critique of the binary is inherent (that's kinda it in a nut shell, or rather a PET bottle). Benedict Ernst

Press Pause, Oct 4th - Nov 2nd, 2014.

A group show from artists Toby Dutton, Bren Luke, and Mia Schoen.

You can view all the works in the Press Pause show HERE.

'Press Pause' is a group show of new works by Toby Dutton, Bren Luke, and Mia Schoen. These three artists respond to moving images/stills from film and television with paintings and drawings.

Description:
The joint exhibition ‘Press Pause’ responds to the ubiquitous screen display gallery experience. New works by artists Toby Dutton, Bren Luke and Mia Schoen seek to oppose the uniform properties of the flat projection one-dimensional screen by creating objects of unique presence and aura, in paint and ink. The subject is interpreted through a personal narrative of TV shows and films which have visually and emotionally influenced each artist.

“The mere sound of the Doctor Who theme tune would cause me to leap behind the couch in sheer terror as a young child. In this ‘Press Pause’ exhibition I have exorcised my early demons to produce a series of paintings which embrace the alien and other universes on screen.”
- Toby Dutton

“I've been using stills from cinema/moving pictures for some time now as a direct source reference as well as an overarching influence on my pen and ink drawings, primarily 1950s Film Noir, the films of Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu, the French Nouvelle Vague of the 1960's and the American New Wave cinema of the late 1970's/ early 80's. The drawings I've chosen to show in 'Press Pause' are an enquiry into the artistic approach, common aesthetics and thematic tropes transferred through the decades by directors and cinematographers.”
- Bren Luke

“Fast painted and glowing like screens I’ve portrayed the set-up exteriors pre-entering the narrative ‘interior’ to where richly built characters live out their struggle. The story content of the TV shows Prisoner and Roseanne is embedded in the 70s/80s gritty production aesthetic.”
-Mia Schoen

Glitch, Sept 11th - Sept 28th, 2014.