Artists wanted for charity exhibition 6th 7th September 2014 in Brisbane

Art Exhibition 6th 7th September 2014

I am on a subcommittee for a local Brisbane charity, TOS, (non-denominational) and this year one of our major fund raisers will be an art exhibition entitiled Mobility for Life. The funds raised will help one of our ongoing projects, a mobility aid project in Assam, India. The monies will buy crutches, wheel chairs and tricycles for many disabled and poverty stricken people in this region, enabling them to gain some level of independence and even employment in some cases. Moreover, the devices themselves are made in the local area thus providing much needed work.

The Mobility for Life art exhibition will be held at the Brisbane Theosophical Society in Wickham street, Brisbane on Saturday 6th and Sunday  7th September.

We had great success with our initial art exhibition in 2012. Water for Life,  thanks to all the wonderful artists who contributed their works for display. That year we were able to finalize payment for a water bore in a drought ridden village in Kitui province in Kenya...that village is now thriving.

So once again we invite artists to display their works at our exhibition. To download an entry form please go to facebook.com/mobilityforlife . Please like us in order to spread the word about the event.  If you do not use facebook but would like to know more about the exhibition you can contact me at karen.cipressi@gmail.com

Look forward to hearing from you.

The gorgeous heritage listed building in Wickham tce which will be the venue for the exhibition.

 

Harvest with Joachim Froese

This week, Goma opened its free winter exhibition, Harvest.... a celebration of all things food.

Joachim Froese is a participating artist who, on the opening day,  had a public conversation with assistant curator Sally Foster.  Froese is a photographer whose broad body of still life work is steeped in the tradition of Dutch still life, and  hence my interest in his work despite the fact that I am a painter and he a photographer. Froese maintains that photography is as much about construction as painting is, and one of his great inspirations is Vermeer. Interestingly, he believes that Vermeer, along with many of the Dutch masters, probably constructed much of their work with the aid of a camera obscura, and  would have been digital artists if living today...a very reasonable statement considering how inventive and innovative the Ducth were at that time in the field of optical science.

Froese's  work is not separate from art history and theory, and for him the creative process begins with his reading. From his reading come his ideas,  followed by visual responses..more ideas follow, interspersed with more reading and so it goes. The results are meticulously staged and beautifully crafted photographs that gently reverberate with the loaded symbolism of the vanitas theme.  The flesh of the figs falls away; the two papayas have been photographed sequencially with the fallen seeds subtly moved between shots so as to infer a passage of time. Beautiful work.





The three works in the Harvest exhibition are from Froese's second Rhapography series and were direcly influenced by the Spanish still life artist, Juan Sanchez Cotan.. Cotan's paintings exhibit an almost monastic simplicity and austerity but are amazing in the seeming modernity of their compositions (of course I realize contemporary art rests on an historical basis and I suppose that is what Froese is highlighting). Below are a couple of Cotan's works...the momento mori theme without the extravagance of the Dutch still lifes.

 


I was utterley stunned when I first came across  Cotan's work, and no wonder he has had innumerable artists  pay tribute to him through their own art.

I love going places where there is an ongoing experience long after the event..on hand of Froese's talk I have ordered a book by the art critic Norman Bryson, "Looking at the Overlooked"...great title for a series of essays on the still life genre. This book is in transit at present making its way to my door..love buying online...like sending pressies to oneself. They arrive on a day when one least expects and it's Christmas all over again.

Have a great day, and enjoy your own creative endeavours, whatever they may be!