Installation view.

November 29 – December 17, 2011

The continuing tradition of monochrome (one colour) painting in western art began in the early 20th century. American curator, critic and writer Barbara Rose describes monochrome painting as:

‘simultaneously fullness and void, a moment of silence in a world of noise. It goes nowhere and everywhere, it is specific and universal, tangible and immaterial. It is the ultimate paradox.’

In ENP2 Monochrome Paintings, this paradox arises from an interaction between eye and mind; between sensation and knowledge. Each work in the exhibition is both full and empty. They are full in the sense that colour occupies the surface of the work. They are empty in that there is no one prescribed meaning assigned to the colour. There is no single focal point on the painting to attract the eye. In these works, viewers are not called to progress from one section of the painting to another, but rather to engage with the totality of the colour. In ENP2 Monochrome Paintings, experiences of colour are based on ‘consuming’ the whole painting at once.

Artists include Louise Blyton, A.D.S. Donaldson, Craig Easton, Robert Jacks, John Nixon, David Sequeira, and David Thomas.
A.D.S. DONALDSON
CRAIG EASTON
ROBERT JACKS
JOHN NIXON
DAVID SEQUEIRA
DAVID THOMAS

Rose Nolan, Tunnel/Tent Work – HARD BUT FAIR/POINT LESS, 2009
Acrylic paint, hessian, and cotton thread
978 x 106 x 39 inches

October 14 – November 12, 2011

Andreas Exner is one of Germany’s most acclaimed contemporary artists and sculptors. Over the course of almost three decades he has constructed a body of work that is both readily familiar and utterly distinctive. Trafficking in the substances of the everyday – the cars, clothes, wardrobes and curtains that furnish our life – Exner literally fills these objects with new colours and components, disrupting their easy recognisability and forcing us to reassess our relationship to them from a new perspective.

Rose Nolan shares Exner’s interest in the stuff of our day-to-day existence, although hers is a more explicitly crafted aesthetic. Beginning with simple colour schemes and basic materials that typified the work of the early Constructivists, she uses quirks of context to drag this visual schema into a rigidly contemporary setting. Playfully positioning the more formal, politically active tendencies of these foundations against the irresistible, banal everyday-ness of it all, Nolan throws into question the value we attribute to labour, culture and, above all, art.

Andreas Exner’s visit to Melbourne is generously supported by SIMPLOT. Rose Nolan’s project is generously supported by the Australia Council. She is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Justin Andrews, Methods Composite Vortex, 2011
Acrylic and enamel on canvas
152.0 x 198.1 cm

October 19 – November 27, 2011

To use abstraction as an agent form is a system.
To use abstraction to present a position is a system.
To use abstraction to reference a context is a system.

Variation in the materiality of an artwork is a system.
Variation in the format, scale and composition of an artwork is a system.
Variation in the generative methodologies of an artwork is a system.

The idea of making artworks as signifiers of art is a system.
The idea of meaning as residing within an artwork is a system.
The idea of works-as-ideas-held-in-states-of-change is a system.

A reference to history within an artwork is a system.
A reference to multi-generational dialogue is a system.
A reference to formalism within an artwork is a system.

The process of re-interpreting (the idea of) representation is a system.
The process of engaging with the monochrome (as a readymade form) is a system.
The process of interpreting an exhibition (as a combination of systems) is a system.

- Justin Andrews, September 2011

Beth Kirkland, Untitled (Incontiguous Series), 2011
Oil on gesso on paper
8 x 7 inches

August 25 – September 17, 2011

Beth Kirkland from Albany WA and Melanie E. Khava from Sydney are presenting individual series of paintings for a collaborative exhibition that addresses distance as the key issue.

Real physical distance separates the artists, therefore dialogue was held via email over a six month period. Ideas and images were shared, developed and refined. In time, conversation fell to the side, and paintings now stand in their stead…

At the opening, Melanie will be present in real time, and Beth will be present via distance on Skype.

Installation view.

In this work Halnan is revisiting concepts and materials she was exploring in the making of quite large scale ephemeral works in the years 1995 – 2001. She defined these works (Books I – III, Dumbbell, Wavelength etc.) as “installed constructions” as they were fabricated within the constraints of certain particular spaces or environments, and relied to a large extent on these environments for their form. To this extent they were site specific in much the same way this present work is dependent on this particular space for its existence. They were also, for the most part, constructed in such a way that the viewer was able to move around or through the work, thereby creating a more intimate relationship with the work than is usual with more formal object sculpture.

The kinetic quality of these works was an essential element in their construction. Disturbance created by shifting relationships between layers made for visual excitement, even irritation, a quality which has also been one of the motivations within Halnan’s painting practice over the past few years. In both two and three dimensional work she uses visual rhythms which interact with one another in much the same way in which harmonics work in musical composition. Dissonance is as important as assonance.

Work by Matthew Johnson.

July 30 – September 1, 2011

Justin Andrews, For Malevich, 2011
Mixed media construction on enamel on MDF

July 20 – August 5, 2011

Roland Orépük, Tiny Cut Paintings, 2011
Acrylic on cardboard, 9 parts
3 x 6 x 1 inches

July 13-23, 2011

The Tiny Cut Paintings follow the Engraved Monochromes resuming the use and implementation of the same principles to hold a more intimate dialogue with the supporting cardboard.

Here, each of the nine triptychs is built on a base made of three yellow over white modules, perfectly identical, cloning, repetition and difference.

Oscar Yanez, Aoyama, 2010
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 inches

June 15 – August 6, 2011

Organised by Giles Ryder, Manifold is a fascinating snapshot of significant contemporary art being done in Australia today.

Featuring the work of Cathy Blanchflower, Scott Chaseling, Helga Groves, Billy Gruner, Jeremy Kibel, Andrew Leslie, Jordan Spedding, Giles Ryder, and Oscar Yanez.

Installation view.

The Australian Center for Concrete Art presents Daniel Göttin: AC4CA Project 18.  This project, part of a series of wall paintings throughout Western Australia by artists from around the world, is located at the Barker Street Carpark in Perth.

Work by Daniel Göttin.

April 2 – May 1, 2011

SNO Contemporary Art Projects presents two exhibitions – Daniel Göttin: Panorama 2, and Gerda Maise: Spots 2011, in Sydney, Australia.

Installation view.

April 16 – May 14, 2011

Tomislav Nikolic’s paintings have always presented centralized fields of colour. In this current series of twelve works the centre is built up by several layers of transparent washes of marble dust and pigment that coalesce into a deep yet luminous colour-field. At the edges of these washes, the colours separate into fine lines, dribbles, strokes, and zips of colour that subtly reveal the underside of the surface layers of paint, and create a margin. The centre and margin are in turn enclosed by a painted frame which at once contains, and forms part of, the total picture. This kind of enclosing or enframing is a major feature of Nikolic’s style. The layered wash and marble dust saturates both frame and canvas.
…
In this current series of paintings Nikolic retains the peripheral margins and frame but with an additional dimension. The new paintings are of childhood memories. The works of art held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria to which the present paintings refer were seen by Nikolic on school-trips to Melbourne organized by his art teacher while he was still a thirteen-year-old boy growing up in the Victorian town of Sale. As an adult he now recalls that first sighting in the Gallery, and the heightened emotional effect these twelve works had on him. Nikolic travels to the past to make the present new. He invokes the original works in the Gallery not through mimicry of their subject matter and composition, but by re-creation of a sensation that persists still in his memory. As products also of his mature artistry, the new works serve also in a complex sense as allegorical autobiographies.
…
Nikolic brings back his childhood states of feeling, experiences, and translates them in the plastic values of absolute abstraction, of pure perception, charting in his layers of paint his feelings then and now.
…
Nikolic’s mapping of his life, his feelings and sensations lie in the margins of his enigmatic colour-fields. For the spectator the eloquence in these works shifts from being statements of pure perception to intriguing allusive works that ‘open up worlds beyond those associated with the work.’ Even if the spectator does not recognize the allusions, if these remain mysteries locked under layers of paint, the works still seduce for their inventiveness in drawing out perceptions and sensations in the mind of the spectator.

Daniel Göttin, Sketch for installation with colored
felt pieces in corners, on edges and doors
12 x 12 cm each

April 21 – May 14, 2011

Since 1990, Daniel Göttin has been examining the interaction between material, space, and visual appearance. He has conceived and developed his space installations according to the information that the given spatial situation offers. His interest is in the equal dialogue between the already existing and a specific intervention. This makes the space and his intervention visible and perceptible as a new temporary unit in time.

For these temporary installations Göttin uses common industrial materials and products. His mode of practice likes to call the attention to the subjective character of perception. The interaction between his specific intervention and the environment allows an experience of a newly defined perception of space.

Sydney Ball, Infinex Lumina #6, 2010
Acrylic on canvas
65 x 102 inches

April 7-24, 2011

The Infinex Series

The works are an orchestration of individual shapes that are related to each other in various combinations in a contemporary context. Infinite is a word I associate as a title with “boundless possibilities, light, means, quality”.

Like my modular / installation works of 1968 these new modular shapes again use the negative background wall space but in a more assertive way. They cut into the shape structure more to become shapes in their own right, For me they are an affirmation of non objective colour painting that looks toward a new pictorial language and one which connects abstract painting to it’s history. My aim in using structure this way was to provide another way of working other than an “image on a ground on a square or rectangular painting hanging on a background wall space”.

The possibilities of working this way are infinite and a means to expand scale more readily. The variations of also working this way give a continual coherent unity of form and colour; synthesizing new ways for a colour abstraction continuum. Like the Structure series these new works rely on architectonic form and again relate to the creative structures of the Architects Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry whose individual forms are related to each other in a variety of combinations.

–Sydney Ball, 2011

Matthew Gerber, Rala Rala, 2007
Oil on canvas
75 x 118 inches

February 12 – June 19, 2011

This exhibition brings together nine paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists to create a colourful, eclectic and texturally diverse display.The idea of the bazaar is loosely invoked to suggest a place of richness and variety, where visual ideas are exchanged.

The works contrast with and complement each other through their formal as well as conceptual qualities and reflect a range of cultural references including: Steiner educational toys, gestural and geometric abstraction, fantastic theatrical costuming, and Post-Minimalism. Includes works by Hany Armanious, ADS Donaldson, Mikala Dwyer, Emily Floyd, Matthys Gerber, Julia Gorman, Rose Nolan, Nike Savvas and Bryan Spier.

Trevor Richards, Big Twister, 2010
Acrylic on canvas
55 x 55 inches

March 3-26, 2011

Trevor Richards lives and works in Fremantle, Western Australia. His practice over the past thirty years has encompassed painting, sculpture, video, photography and installation. In the past decade he has shown work extensively in Europe.

“In Richards’s work, the mixing of abstraction, everyday objects and site-specificity has long addressed the relationship between human experience and place. Historical context is also a factor in his current work. The outward appearance of his latest paintings and sculptures is reminiscent of 1960s hard-edged abstraction. Yet closer consideration of the paintings in particular reveals a systematized approach to composition, contravening the role of formal invention as a guarantee of authenticity in modern art.

The optical illusion of the paintings is replaced by actual space and form in the sculptures, enabling a more straightforward spatial consciousness. Together, the paintings and sculptures explore the role of architecture in creating and informing our experience of the world. The paintings reveal the basis of architectural form in conventions of graphic representation such as isomorphic drawing, highlighting the role of geometry as a reference point for the field.”

Extract from Abstraction, architecture and the everyday in the recent work of Trevor Richards by Dr Carolyn Barnes.

Adrian Clement, Drawing No. 29 from Purple and Green Drawings Volume 1
10 x 8 inches

February 24 – March 19, 2011

The first volume of Purple and Green Drawings were made using an iPad shortly after its release in 2010. The application used for drawing is called C64 and presents a number of restrictions, including a reduced color palette and rectangular as opposed to square pixels, giving the works a vintage video-game quality. Approximately 90 drawings were created on the device in spare time over the course of nearly a year, and 8 selected for this exhibition. From the originals, any additional colors were translated into purple and green (as well as grey, black and white) to create a consistency within the collection. Purple and green were chosen as they are favorite colors of the artist, especially in combination.

For this exhibition the drawings will be projected rather than printed, keeping it closer to the original media they were created with. In 2012, these works will be transformed into sculptural forms in the Factory 49 Showroom.

Margaret Roberts, Sunliner Seat Base (sink-side)
Unprimed canvas
39 x 54 inches

February 24 – March 5, 2011

Live in Your Art 2
The work uses the fixtures of the Sunliner caravan normally parked behind the Factory 49 showroom to make hybrid forms that acknowledge both their space of origin and the art space for which they are made.

The caravan cupboards, bench, seat bases, wardrobe and water-tank are opened-out into the flat shapes typical of art contexts. The shapes are also made life-sized and in unprimed canvas. So as to acknowledge the inhabitable space of their caravan origin, they are also made as double-sided bags, with openings to enable access by small humans or limbs of adults. They are laid out in rows on the floor of the showroom for ease of examination and access.

February  24 – March 19, 2011

Internationally famous Swiss artist Beat Zoderer returns to Australia and together with one of Sydney’s leading artists A.D.S. Donaldson they have installed ‘Working’ at thirtyseven degrees – Contemporary Fine Art Gallery.
Beat Zoderer, who both, radically reworks readymade materials, often transforming everyday objects from a wide range of cultures into startling works of art is at the same time a sensitive and spectacular sculptor in the more formal sense. He has had more that 60 solo exhibitions and has recently been shown at Art Basel, Bonner Kunstverein, ZKM in Karlsruhe just to mention a few.

A.D.S. Donaldson practice embraces both a clear conceptual framework as well as a playful and intuitive approach. He has been unseen in Sydney for some years now but last year he participated in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and held one-person exhibitions in Brisbane, Melbourne, Wellington in New Zealand as well as in Austria and Germany.

Together Zoderer and Donaldson present “Working’ a collaboration at the intersection of painting and sculpture, and in doing so they will have extended the dialogue between Sydney and Zurich.

February 5 – March 12, 2011

MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce the exhibition Kyle Jenkins: Sunken Treasure. This is the Australian artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States and it will feature a new site-specific painting installation.

Working in a wide array of media, including painting, wall painting, works on paper, artist books, photography, film, and sound, Kyle has developed a distinct form of intuitive abstraction that incorporates both hard-edge and organic strategies. Informed by the geometric regularity of the urban environment, the artist’s core concern has been the integration of art and architecture over the past decade.

For Sunken Treasure, Kyle will present a new wall painting, new acrylic paintings on canvas, and a suite of new paintings on paper recently produced during a residency in Denmark. The title of the exhibition stems from an ongoing series of projects planned by the artist in which the architecture of the gallery space and the art works presented within it collapse into each other. About this idea, Kyle states, “Sunken treasure is something that is there and present at the bottom of the ocean, but at the same time, it is hidden from view by its position at the bottom of the sea. The work in this exhibition will function in the same way, with no separation between the paintings, the wall painting, and the gallery space.”

Kyle Jenkins (b. 1975, Dungog, New South Wales, Australia) has exhibited his work internationally for the past 15 years, including in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. Kyle’s work was included in our recent group exhibition MINUS SPACE, curated by Phong Bui, at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York in 2008-2009. His work is included in the collections of Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, Qantas (both Australia), and Esbjerg Museum (Denmark), as well as countless private collections worldwide.

In addition to his artistic work, Kyle is Coordinator of the Visual Art Department and Senior Lecturer in Painting & Art Theory at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia. During his career, he has curated numerous exhibitions about contemporary reductive abstraction throughout Australia. He has also played pivotal roles in the development and leadership of countless artist-run projects in Australia, including CBD Gallery, SPHERE press, Project 11, MOP Projects, Sydney Non-Objective, Non-Objective Toowoomba, i.e. gallery, and Buttons and Zippers.

Kyle is also a member of the rock bands Bloodspots and Suicide Swans. He holds a PhD in Visual Art and Theory from the University of Sydney, Australia.

SUPPORT
This exhibition has been supported by The University of Southern Queensland, Faculty of Arts Research Committee. MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you!