Kartika Laili Ahmad: BRUTALIST

by Waldemar | May 26, 2022

JUNE 2022

Kartika Laili Ahmad is an emerging lighting designer based in Perth who blurs boundaries between commercial design and art installation.

Ahmad explores the use of neon and argon in her works and how it affects all of our senses – directly and indirectly.

“My work is influenced by my interest in how lighting can be used as a tool to stimulate and enhance the experiential quality in the interior environment.”

Designed and manufactured locally Ahmad controls the entire process to exacting engineering and finishes.

kartikalailiahmad.com
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Image supplied by artist.

Matthew McVeigh: SHADOW SELF

Start date: 24 Mar 2023

End date: 26 Mar 2023

OPENS FRI 24 MAR 2023: 6 – 8PM

VIEW SAT 25 MAR + SUN 26 MAR: 10 – 4PM

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

Shadow Self explores both positive and negative aspects of our colonialism as a persuasive psychological influence, as that between an adolescent and their parent. Matthew McVeigh sets up our relationship to country and Nation as both intimate and uneasy, exploring the Australian psyche from the cultural cringe – romantic and gothic, and grounded in tradition ruled by National influences that draw their life from the accretive traditions which have alone created them.

This exhibition is a study of stereotypes, colloquialisms and popular culture, as umbilical connection but also incident to our colonial situation of emigrants nostalgically trying to sing their own songs in a strange land.

The works appropriate imagery and then layer psychological inkblots reflecting shadows of personality that the conscious ego does and doesn’t identify with, coming to terms with its dark history and ultimately reflecting a Nation very much still birthing and becoming.

Matthew McVeigh is an interdisciplinary artist who graduated from WAAPA. His practice is predominantly interested in how identities, histories and institutions can be consumed and subsumed into homogenized narratives. McVeigh’s works have been acquired by the Holmes à Court Collection and the Art Gallery of WA.

www.mattmcveigh.com.au

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Image: Blotch, 2022. Digital print, archival. 120 x 150cm

Robyn Bernadt: GLORY BOX

Start date: 10 Feb 2023

End date: 12 Feb 2023

OPENS FRI 10 FEB 2023: 6 – 8PM

VIEW SAT 11 FEB + SUN 12 FEB: 10 – 4PM

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

Robyn Bernadt is a paper installation artist who works with reclaimed paper materials as an environmental response to art making. Her practice elevates these materials; altering their perceived value and challenging people’s perceptions about the materials they usually throw away. The works take on a value-added life of their own, and the viewer can be forgiven for considering the made and presented objects are of precious materials, given the jewel-like crafting that Bernadt employs.

Glory Box is an installation of five series of paper sculptures and delicate cut-paper works exploring feminist themes and subverting traditional craft practices by juxtaposing material and imagery. Bernadt challenges traditional notions of the domestic sphere and questions problematic stereotypes of the homemaker and sex object.

Bernadt lives and works in Boorloo (Perth), and graduated from Edith Cowan University with a Bachelor of Visual Art in 1999. This is her first exhibition at KolbuszSpace.

robynbernadt.com
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Image: X-Stitch Ladies I, 2022. Vintage Women’s Weekly and Arches paper, 36 x 51cm

G R O U P: Summer 2022

Start date: 09 Dec 2022

End date: 11 Dec 2022

OPENS Fri 9 Dec: 6-8PM

VIEW Sat 10 Dec and Sun 11 Dec: 10-4PM

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE **

Kartika Laili AHMAD

Robyn BERNADT

Georgia BISLEY

John EDEN

Austin HONOUR

Beverley ILES

Gaye JURISICH

Luke KOLBUSZ

Ryan NAZZARI

Matvey NECHAEV

Joana PARTYKA

Matthew McAlpine: ANTHEM

Start date: 25 Nov 2022

End date: 27 Nov 2022

NOV 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

Anthem, Matthew McAlpine’s first solo exhibition with Kolbusz Space, is a collection of recent abstract paintings that prods at the intersection of landscape, nationalism, and environmental degradation in contemporary Australia. Rendered with a selective palette with a gritty impasto surface achieved through the addition of builder’s sand in acrylic paint, the artworks poetically allude to colours and textures of charred landscapes.

Interested in the power of language and using the Australian National Anthem as a departure point, McAlpine has manipulated, removed, or added words to lines from the anthem. The text sits embedded in the paintings, applied with stencils, a process that metaphorically reckons with the construction of history, nationhood, and landscape. The idea of construction is further explored by using builder’s sand and fragments of a cast acrylic ornate frame in several works. The fragmented frames draw upon the continued presence of colonial legacies in contemporary Australia.

Matthew McAlpine is an artist predominantly working in painting and sculpture and currently living and working in Boorloo/Perth. McAlpine graduated from Curtin University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and has been exhibiting regularly ever since. His practice aims to explore the complexities and problems that arise from celebrating colonial legacies. While McAlpine draws upon a range of disciplines to interrogate these ideas, his practice is brought together by its poetic and material sensibilities.

This exhibition has been supported by a Creative Development Grant from the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, Western Australia.

matthewmcalpine.com
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Image by @saltydavenport

Ryan Nazzari: INSIDE

Start date: 05 Nov 2022

End date: 07 Nov 2022

Online only – opens Fri 7 OCT, 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

“If you only have you – make work about you.”

Nazzari is a prolific Perth artist with an obsessive social media presence which belies their introverted and quiet nature. Working with a combination of drawing, painting, screen technology and collage, they constantly work and rework.

This new exhibition of watercolours are exquisite in their detail and generous with their insights on how we interact with our own inner selves and with others. These stream-of-consciousness paintings jostle a dedicated automation to their practice with a deeply sensitive and humanistic process, ultimately showing a beautiful tension teetering between confidence and fragility.

I am a huge fan of Nazzari and of artists who can through their work, tap into a deep questioning of what makes us who we are, and why we do what we do. However, few are able to match Nazzari’s sense of clarity – or else a willingness to discover it, and all with such masterly and painterly ease.

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Image: Harlequin 2, 2022. Watercolour on Arches paper, 42 x 30CM.

Caroline Cassel: BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF

Start date: 28 Oct 2022

End date: 30 Oct 2022

Caroline Cassel. EGG 80 x 80 cm Acrylic on canvas 2022

OCT 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

‘Entre chien et loup’ (Between dog and wolf) is an expression that means at dusk or nightfall, the time of day when it is too dark to see the difference between a dog from a wolf. The dog symbolises the day and the protective light, while the wolf represents the night with fears and anxieties. In between there is the doubt and uncertainty of twilight… between dog and wolf.

In this exhibition Cassel is challenging what we think we are seeing. Purposefully concealing a clarity by manipulating scale and context of the everyday objects she paints, she presents works which defy any immediate identifications or conclusions. As in between dog and wolf, where neither is recognisable, these works sit resolutely in that uncertain in between – where Cassel presents for us opportunities for exploration and discovery.

Cassel says of her paintings: “I work by analogy, by link, using cutting and collage to elaborate unique constructions. My paintings are inspired by elements of reality that have been transformed, mistreated, disembodied in order to be reborn by extraction, by change of scale, within a new context. These multiple possibilities or combinations allow for suggestive and surprising encounters.”

Caroline Cassel lives and works in Paris, where she graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. Cassel was then awarded a residency at the Crypt d’Orsay in Paris and also the Colin Lefranc Scholarship at Curtin University in Perth.

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Image: L’oeuf (The Egg). 2022. Oil on linen, 80 x 80CM

Waldemar Kolbusz: FOTOAUTOMATICA

Start date: 23 Sep 2022

End date: 25 Sep 2022

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SEPT 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

In 2018 I came across an old Fotoautomatica booth on the corner of via del’Agnolo and via Giuseppe Verdi which I later painted for my exhibition Near You in Sydney 2020.

I have continued to think about the booth’s automatic pull of nostalgia in the face of contemporary irrelevancy – and the danger of this in terms of my paintings.

While a selfie’s purpose may not be self-examination or an investigation into the moment, this avoidance has become a contemporary addiction. The paintings in this exhibition are about pulling back from an automation of fast images, fast feelings, manufactured moments and more carefully positing into a real experience.

I recently learned that the 1969 Fotoautomatica in Florence was not original but rescued from the Soviet Union, restored to its original form, and installed by set designer Matteo Sani in 2011.

kolbusz.com.au
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Image: Tanline. 2022, oil on linen, 153 x 122CM.

Imogen Kotsoglo: MATTER

Start date: 12 Aug 2022

End date: 14 Aug 2022

MATTER 2 4 2022 (Thistle) – Ink and Charcoal on Arches Aquarelle – 76x56cm copy

AUGUST 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

Kotsoglo’s intricate drawings seek to explore the capacity of visual art to represent and examine the wider implications of a perceived distinction between humans and the natural world.

Kotsoglo’s rejection of anthropocentrism does not render her work political in the usual sense, instead providing space for reflection rather than rhetoric.

Kotsoglo will also be showing concurrently at PICA.

imogenkotsoglo.com
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Image: MATTER 2 4 2022 (Thistle) – Ink and Charcoal on Arches Aquarelle 300gsm – 76×56cm

Olivia Colja: RETURN TO THE HOOK

Start date: 22 Jul 2022

End date: 24 Jul 2022

JULY 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

“A sharp two-stanza poem by Margaret Atwood ends with the lines “a fish hook / an open eye”. It offers an uncomfortable positioning of being both inside and outside the boundaries of control within individual relationships. Navigating such an in-betweenness of chaos and composure especially drives Olivia Colja’s art and her exhibition Return to the Hook.

Yet it’s difficult questions around intimacy that propel Colja’s latest work. ‘Competitive love is dangerous and Returning to the Hook is a line between knowing what’s moral and what’s socially taboo, but still behaving in a harmful way towards yourself and others. It can be subtle and unconscious or aggressive and explosive’, explains Colja.”

Excerpt from essay by Autumn Royal, ART GUIDE AUSTRALIA

oliviacolja.com
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Image: Youth, 2022. Oil on canvas 122 x 122cm

Christophe Canato: ANIMA

Start date: 11 Jun 2022

End date: 14 Jun 2022

Online only: May 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

Christophe Canato is a French-Australian photo-media artist who was accepted to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at 17 and relocated to Perth in 2005.

Canato’s impeccably crafted and moving works explore social issues including politics and religion, physical identities and sexual orientations.

KolbuszSpace is proud to offer a studio-direct, limited release of his Anima series which examines male roles and identities in our contemporary western contexts.
This exhibition is a remarkable achievement. Each image is carefully wrought, a technical tour de force by a master of his craft. As Jean Cocteau explained “Art is a lie that always speaks the truth” and in this group of works Christophe Canato presents us with a series of elegantly constructed truths that are impossible to ignore.” TED SNELL, AM CitWA

christophecanato.com
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Image: Anima #4. Archival inkjet print, edition of 5. 110 x 110cm.

Aileen Corbett: BRUTALIST

Start date: 10 Jun 2022

End date: 12 Jun 2022

JUNE 2022

** SOLD OUT **

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

Aileen Corbett’s sculptural ceramic forms oscillate between art and architecture, figurative and minimal abstraction. Whilst employing a lively arrangement of clean lines and sharp angles, her work is largely inspired by the physical environment and the utilitarian architecture of lesser seen cities.

Maintaining a minimal aesthetic, Corbett is interested in the principles of order, balance and harmony whilst imbuing some of her works with a whimsical personality.

Corbett studied at the School of Clay and Art in Melbourne under Shane Kent. This is her first exhibition at KolbuszSpace.

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Image by Pier Carthew.

Diane Scott: BRUTALIST

Start date: 10 Jun 2022

End date: 12 Jun 2022

The Clearing, 2022. Acrylic, graphite. Synthetic Paper. 1520 x 1020 mm

JUNE 2022

VIEW CATALOGUE HERE

Diane Scott is a New Zealand artist who has a Master of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) from Elam School of Fine Arts University of Auckland. She is featured broadly through arts publications and her work is in corporate and private collections in NZ, USA and France.

Scott explores the tensions that exist between image and object and questions the hierarchies of the elements that comprise painting through the jumping of the image to the material, and from surface to void. She examines how an abstract painting can function as an object you see, but also in what that object makes visible through process, materiality and sensation.

Scott is interested in producing work that simultaneously questions and withholds, and how this resistance to translation is a vital part of an artwork’s enigma.

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Image: The Clearing, 2022. Acrylic and graphite on synthetic paper, sealed and mounted on aluminium, 151 x 102cm