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Matt Doust: UNRAVEL VENN GALLERY November 12, 2012

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2012 EXHIBITION

Unravel
16 November – 21 December 2012

Australian artist Matt Doust presents a series of new portraits and video works made in LA during a recent self-directed residency. The exhibition, Unravel, is a reflection upon internal states and features Doust’s highly refined style of oil painting on canvas and archival paper.

The relocation to a new country encouraged the artist to contemplate ideas of disconnection, both physically and personally. A lack of familiarity and sense of isolation led him to further consider internal landscapes and what dictates these as well as examine ideas surrounding faith. Such reflections inspired the development of this latest body of work, with Doust investigating how both spiritual and physical experiences can affect the individual.

Each of the oil paintings, works on paper and videos feature subjects acting as conduits for the artist’s internal meditations. The resulting works emphasise a distinct poignancy through their portrayal of the subjects with their senses and perceptions altered.

Image credit: Matt Doust, If I cannot see, can you see me? 2012, oil on canvas, 183 x 153 cm

Petrina Hicks Exhibition at Venn Gallery Perth March 24, 2012

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 Petrina Hicks has exhibited her work widely through both solo and groups shows in Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, USA, UK, Japan, China, Mexico and Brazil. Recently, her work was selected for the 17th International Videobrasil in Brazil and the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China.

Petrina Hicks works at Venn Gallery in Queen Street are well worth looking at (she is currently also part of  the Hijacked exhibition at Perth institute of Contemporary Art). In his opening address  Bob Hewitt from Foto Freo implied that the artist had been on his radar for some time and he was embarrassed that she wasn’t part of the main program of the Fremantle Photography of Festival.

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He needn’t have worried. The Venn Gallery space has done her work justice and it is an exhibition that needs patronage.

 

Petrina’s works belong to various public and private collections including: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, Tweed River City Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria. She has been awarded various notable prizes and residencies including the Josephine Ulrick Photography Award for Portraiture, ABN Emerging Artist Award (2008), La Cité, Paris Residency, through Art Gallery of New South Wales and an eight month Fellowship with Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany.

 Petrina Hicks’ website here

Artist Statement

Petrina Hicks’ Beautiful Creatures appeals to our senses. Immediately alluring, the large-scale, hyper-real photographs, are all rendered so clearly and with such control they are reminiscent of advertisements. But with a series of little ruptures, within images and between them, Hicks disrupts our usually beguiled response to such artistry. For her, photography’s capability to both create and corrupt the process of seduction and consumption is of endless interest.

Hicks loads her images with history and associations but denies us a clear message. Along with the ambiguity, there is a visceral quality in these new works; her depiction of flesh, hair and veins stops the viewer short of being lulled into consumption. Hicks engages a playful yet confronting approach to confound our expectations. PH 2 600

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Petrina Hicks and Bob Hewitt Foto Freo at Venn Gallery
Petrina Hicks and Bob Hewitt Foto Freo at Venn Gallery

Coney Island Malibu Beach September 20, 2011

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THE VENN GALLERY LAUNCH

Coney Island Malibu Beach
by Jackson Eaton, Benjamin Acree, Robert S. Johnson.

This book gathers together a series of photographs taken by Benjamin Acree, Jackson Eaton and Robert S. Johnson, as they collectively passed through the United States in 2009.  What is initially striking in these images is the very absence of the cultivated, dominant images, we all, as everyday consumers of imagery and photography, have as archetypes of Malibu Beach: there are no glimmering building facades, no sun-baked, oil-glistening skin, no lines of palm trees in crepuscular light. It is this absence that defines the collection; an absence which does not attempt to signify the sanctity of the condition, but provides, determinedly, its own portrait of the Real …. The photographers never presume the unfamiliar, they reveal it, they have passed through the catastrophe, have borne witness to violence of everyday life and have amassed it before us. They have given this to us, through their experiences, through their habit of seeing, they have experienced it and have laid out their attendant figures in this book.  – Matthew Hall

Coney Island Malibu Beach Book Cover
Coney Island Malibu Beach Book Cover

Coney Island Malibu Beach
Coney Island Malibu Beach

Coney Island Malibu Beach
Coney Island Malibu Beach

Published by Big City Press
Limited Edition: 500 copies
Format: 29.7x21cm, 64 pages, Softcover, Colour offset.

Comp

Australia’s Greatest Hits Joel Wynn Rees VENN GALLERY 16 Queen St Perth June 14, 2011

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Photo Joel Wynn Rees

JOEL WYNN REES
Australia’s Greatest Hits

16 June – 15 July 2011

Venn Gallery presents Australia’s Greatest Hits, a solo exhibition by Australian photographer Joel Wynn Rees containing a series of works taken on a recent journey through the North-West of the country.

Originally from Broome, Rees returned to re-connect with landscapes and people that continue to inspire his practice. The photographs explore representations of Australian identity and seek to uncover a unique vision of the characters and life found in the isolated terrain of the outback. The resulting artworks aim to provide an authentic account of their environs, whilst also probing often stereotypical concepts about the ‘Australian experience.’

Image: Joel Wynn Rees, Untitled 2010, photographic print, 100 x 100 cm
Courtesy of the artist