Places, spaces, cultures and continents are the fundamental connections that bring together artists Guillermo Cardenas-Fischer (Colombia), Paola Gaviria (Colombia-Ecuador) and Rolande Souliere (Canada). Moving between countries and settling into new cultural domains, have enabled them to better comprehend their own culture whilst absorbing new insights into their artistic domain.
Guillermo Cárdenas’ work deals with the fragmentation and restructuring of time and space through painting. Influenced by personal and political aspects of his homeland, Colombia – where he was almost killed by a detonating bomb in 1989 – Cárdenas’ paintings look as if they have been blown apart while being simultaneously pulled back together. Cárdenas has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited in the USA, Colombia, Mexico, Europe and Australia. Currently, Cardenas is a PhD candidate in Painting at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.
Paola Gaviria’s black and white drawings appropriate the objects that surround her. In these carefully rendered images featuring everything from shoes to scissors, she addresses themes of self-portraiture, property, mass production and utility. Paola Gaviria has exhibited widely throughout Colombia , Australia and Europe in venues including Firstdraft, Miss China (Paris) and Intershop (Karlsruhe, Germany) and Galleria 1000 Eventi (Milan). In 2006 Gaviria moved to Sydney after a two-year stay in the prestigious Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.
Rolande Souliere explores the relationship forged between a North American Indigenous upbringing in Canada and her experience of living in Australia for the past decade. Her practice juxtaposes the Anishinabek (First Nation affiliation) culture and contemporary life in a global environment. Traditional Anishinabek processes such as weaving and knotting are central to her practice, as are references to performance and traditional Anishinabek mythology. In 2007 Rolande Souliere completed a Masters of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts and is a finalist in this year’s Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship. Early 2008, Souliere will have her first International solo exhibition in Canada.
“Lend yourself to others but give yourself to yourself” Michel de Montaigne (French, 1533-1592)
In Warhol Re-Incarnated the Self is both a constant and a mutable place that can be influenced and enriched by the ‘other’/another such as a, celebrated artist. I perform as Andy Warhol in digital photos and videos to highlight moments of pleasure, encouraged by my attraction to and identification with him. In a sense, the camera mirrors a ‘reincarnated’ Warhol back to my self and viewers alike - to encourage audiences to reflect on artists who mirror their own aspirations. The photos are filled with larger than life faces (me as Warhol) that exist in an atmosphere of contemplation, loss, and a silver otherworld to recall Warhol’s 1960s factory that was wallpapered in aluminium foil. To illuminate the ‘role of the artist’, as a contributor to society, the New York art scene in the 1960s which Warhol emerged from, is recalled. ‘Celebrity’ status at its best can free the Self to reflect and connect with more people (the infamous ‘other’). Given that Andy Warhol was a celebrity his influence and legacy widened his impact on art history and culture.
Warhol Re-Incarnated, comprises 3 large-scale digital lambda archival photographs on metallic paper, 92 X 112cm each approximately, and 3 single channel digital videos shown on monitors. A single monitor sits on the floor beneath each of the digital photographs.
Installation view, Kim Connerton
Installation view, Kim Connerton
Installation view, Kim Connerton
GALLERY WALL
Designs For Earthlings Judith Duquemin
"I consider the properties of flat colour, geometric shape and simple line peculiar to types of Modernist Design as being symbolic for the articulation of memory. Using hardedge technique, colour fields of muted colour, and schema (often digitally assisted), I express tacit experience through abstract geometric painting. Minimal and design-like my paintings contain hybrid references to technology, materiality, process, psychology, humour, emotion, nostalgia, feminine expression and heightened perception".
‘Designs for Earthlings’ is a retrospective take on the influence of Modernist Design on subjectivity as Painting. Medium to large acrylic paintings comprise sections of curvilinear grids using palettes of gloss and matt tertiary colours.
Biography
Judith Duquemin was born in Brisbane, Queensland in 1953. Of Channel Island descent, she grew up north of the city of Brisbane in the rural cane farming community of Bundaberg. Duquemin has been a resident of Sydney since the early 1980’s. She has completed a PhD in the Visual Arts, and has exhibited in leading public galleries and museums, nationally and internationally, since 1994. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards in particular the 2004 Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Travelling Artist Scholarship to France and the United States; the Moya Dyring Studio AGNSW Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2004); an Australian Post Graduate Award (2001), and an Australia Council Development Grant (1996).
Image above, Judith Duquemin, Design for an Intelligent Life-Form.
