SITE: [UNSEEN] CURATED BY LAURA MURRAY CREE

SITE: [UNSEEN] (CURATED BY LAURA MURRAY CREE)

S H E R M A N G A L L E R I E S A T D A N K S S T R E E T

Depot Gallery
2 Danks Street
Waterloo NSW 2017
Exhibition dates: 23 November – 4 December
Opening: 24 November 6–8 pm


The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Einstein (Forum, October 1930)

Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
Einstein (undated handwritten note)

The combination of empathy and rigour in contemporary visual art is enticing and rare. Works that are rich in ideas and associations, that appeal on visual and visceral levels as well as to the demands of ‘process’ – both creative and technical – captivate both the occasional viewer and those more thoroughly immersed in the world of art.

Most intriguingly, at some point in the contemplation and analysis of such works, viewers are confronted by mystery; by the presence of the unknowable; of that which can be felt or imagined but remains unseen. This is the negative space, the anti-matter inherent in image and form that has something in common with the silence between sounds that makes music possible. Experienced in time and space, it is the paradoxical absence that implies infinity: the cloud of unknowing that is the bedrock of our human existence.

site: [unseen] brings together the work of Sherman Galleries’ artists Lauren Berkowitz, Marion Borgelt, Anne Graham, Janet Laurence, Hilarie Mais, Robert Owen and Jennifer Turpin and invited artists Louise Paramor and Mel O’Callaghan.

Most of these artists work primarily (though not exclusively) with sculpture and installation. All have an interest in science, whether this science is of an alchemical kind; or deals in metaphysics; or is grounded in the environment, the physical body or in domesticity; or takes account of the flow of elements and the properties of light. All appreciate the dynamic poetry of form in space.

Exhibited together in a pristine gallery space, the highly individualistic works in site: [unseen] create an exhilarating unity and expansiveness.


THE ARTISTS

LAUREN BERKOWITZ is drawn to an art of place. She makes works from everyday materials, giving them refinement and new life. Her coloured sands encased in Perspex containers echo museum displays and the minimal art of Bridget Riley.

MARION BORGELT has always been fascinated by symbolism and primal forms. Her latest canvases and wall sculptures explore dualities in nature and culture: light and dark, sun and shadow, science and religion, and the natural cycles of the earth, moon and the tides. The works in site: [unseen] refer to the phases of the moon.

ANNE GRAHAM’s work is deeply rooted in people, communities and the transformative power of art. Her soft sculpture of eiderdown, chicken feathers and egg shapes speaks with tantalising levity of life, mortality and the imagination.

JANET LAURENCE works with elemental layers of translucency and reflection, building up veils of memory that create floating spaces. These images from her veiled Amazon Jungle project continue her ecological concerns about our loss and distance from the living environment.

HILARIE MAIS uses the grid as both barrier and doorway to other worlds. Passionately cognitive and deceptively simple, her grids hold secrets in mirrors, shadows and surfaces.

MEL O'CALLAGHAN focuses on form in her video of a parachutist floating to the ocean floor. In doing so, she captures the hidden face of human tragedy. Her delicate sculpture of extruded steel delineates the interior form of the parachute at a particular moment.

ROBERT OWEN, master of matter and metaphysics, creates three works using glass, gilded wood and crystal marbles. Titled Breath, Heart and Silence, they evoke the spirit and practice of Buddhism.

LOUISE PARAMOR makes monumental sculptures from cut paper. She is best known for her sexy, festive, Alice in Wonderland–scale decorations and chandeliers. Her work in site: [unseen] has darker connotations and could be interpreted as an abstracted body suspended in space.

JENNIFER TURPIN loves to play with water, light and movement to create works that surprise with their ingenuity and beauty. Her fog work employs quirky inventiveness and the languid sighs of quotidian release.