EASTBOUND
CURATED BY DAVE COURT
22.03.24 ~ 07.04.24
Featuring: Kurt Bosecke, Michael Carney, Shane Cook, Dave Court, Matthew Fortrose, Hari Koutlakis, Kate Kurucz, Loren Orsillo, Brianna Speight & Henry Jock Walker.
This exhibition is kind of a follow-up to a show that we put on almost exactly a year ago in Adelaide (Southbound March 2023, in a gallery upstairs at our shared studio). This was a collection of artwork by 21 artists working on Kaurna country in Adelaide, South Australia. This was a fun time, a great party and I think a good snapshot of the sections of South Australia’s visual arts that I’m connected to. For the sequel to this exhibition, I wanted to bring together a tighter and more cohesive collection of artworks. Part of this was also needing to fit all the artworks in the back of my ute to drive them across to the big smoke Naarm/Melbourne.
For this exhibition I’ve selected 10 artists that I think are making exciting and interesting work, aesthetically, conceptually, technically, materially. In putting together the pieces for this show, and in conversations with the artistsas they were making the work, we were thinking about ideas of things in pairs and the qualities that things in pairs can create - balance, tension, harmony, opposition, contrast, metaxis.
I hope that looking at these works through this kind of lens helps to unlock some interesting ways to see, and something extra to think about. There are a lot of different pairings that can be explored in these artworks, within individual artworks, by creating new pairings of work from different artists, by comparing different artist practices holistically. Media and materiality is something that I play with a lot in my work and probably why I’m drawn to the kind of material tension that is present in almost everyone’s work in the show. Plastic/concrete, steel/rubber, 2D/3D, painterly/flat, juicy/sterile, hand drawn/machine made.
Form/Function is part of Henry Jock Walker re-purposing of wetsuits into paintings, and Matt Fortrose using playground soft fall inside of his hard concrete and steel sculptures. Life/death is the big one I guess, touched on in this show by Loren Orsillo and Brianna Speight, sharing some similar ideas but approaching from very different directions - representation/abstraction. Both using photography as well but approaching this medium at different ends of a spectrum of digital/analogue, Loren developing medium format film photos of textural abstraction and Brianna layering up dynamic digital photographs.
Michael Carney, Hari Koutlakis and myself all play with a balance and tension of digital/physical with our work as well. Hari and I worked together to produce some laser cut acrylic versions of his graphic paintings, contrasting his usual approach to painting which is extremely analogue. Michael and my work are using AI generated imagery as a part of our process, him to generate landscape and me to generate abstract imagery based on other abstract objects I created.
Kate Kurucz also plays with figuration/abstraction in her work for the show, creating a narrative of the mysterious twins/strangers enemies/friends in her Bald Man Eclipse - and more abstract exploration of the fleshy viscerality that is possible with oil paint. I can see a tension of 2D/3D in this kind of figurative painting as well, especially with the materials of oil paint on copper that Kate uses to represent depth, light, contour and character on a flat surface.
Shane Cook explores a duality and tension of cultures, existing in two worlds by nature of his identity as a Wullli Wulli and Koa man, living life in contemporary ‘Australia’ while maintaining connection to Country and Culture.
Kurt Bosecke is one of my favourite painters, his practice explores ideas of fantasy/reality, history/fiction, figuration/abstraction, planned/intuitive. In this context I think it’s also worth mentioning his partnership with Henry Jock Walker, they have been working together for almost 10 years, Henry mentoring Kurt since high school and helping him to develop his practice and build relationships with a lot of other artists. I’m sure Henry would say Kurt has had a massive influence on his work and practice as well.
- Dave Court
