Robyn Bernadt
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OPENS FRI 24 MAR 2023: 6 – 8PM
VIEW SAT 25 MAR + SUN 26 MAR: 10 – 4PM
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.
Image: Blotch, 2022. Digital print, archival. 120 x 150cm
OPENS FRI 10 FEB 2023: 6 – 8PM
VIEW SAT 11 FEB + SUN 12 FEB: 10 – 4PM
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.
Image: X-Stitch Ladies I, 2022. Vintage Women’s Weekly and Arches paper, 36 x 51cm
OPENS Fri 9 Dec: 6-8PM
VIEW Sat 10 Dec and Sun 11 Dec: 10-4PM
Kartika Laili AHMAD
Robyn BERNADT
Georgia BISLEY
John EDEN
Austin HONOUR
Beverley ILES
Gaye JURISICH
Luke KOLBUSZ
Ryan NAZZARI
Matvey NECHAEV
Joana PARTYKA
NOV 2022
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.
Image by @saltydavenport
Online only – opens Fri 7 OCT, 2022
“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.
Image: Harlequin 2, 2022. Watercolour on Arches paper, 42 x 30CM.
OCT 2022
‘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.
Image: L’oeuf (The Egg). 2022. Oil on linen, 80 x 80CM
SEPT 2022
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.
Image: Tanline. 2022, oil on linen, 153 x 122CM.
AUGUST 2022
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.
Image: MATTER 2 4 2022 (Thistle) – Ink and Charcoal on Arches Aquarelle 300gsm – 76×56cm
JULY 2022
“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
Image: Youth, 2022. Oil on canvas 122 x 122cm
Online only: May 2022
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
Image: Anima #4. Archival inkjet print, edition of 5. 110 x 110cm.
JUNE 2022
** SOLD OUT **
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.
Image by Pier Carthew.
JUNE 2022
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.
Image: The Clearing, 2022. Acrylic and graphite on synthetic paper, sealed and mounted on aluminium, 151 x 102cm
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
instagram
Image supplied by artist.
MAY 2022
Austin Honour is a British/Australian multidisciplinary artist who’s work collages conventions of painting, sculpture and tattooing. Previously located in Berlin, Honour is now based in Perth, Australia.
Obsessed with context and cultural concepts, Honour explores the fascination we all share with extraterrestrials and the overlap it forces between imagination and reality, both in this work and as a metaphor for his broader practice.
Honour was awarded a BA (Hons) Fine Arts from Central St Martins in London in 2014.
Stills. Oil on linen 160 x 120cm
MAY 2022 Gallerysmith MELBOURNE
LOVE IS BACK by Waldemar Kolbusz presents in a climate of emotional maximalism, in which romance and joy are oversaturated and oversold to the extent that whatever original sensations might have existed, are now replaced. Relationships are mined for their honeymoon periods, then thrown away. The sensation of enjoyment begins to feel more of an appeal: I am in love. If you have ever had relatively meaningless sex with someone you appeared to be obsessed with only recently, you should recognise the husk of attachment I’m talking about. The exhibition isolates these tensions, considering which impressions might be truly our own.
Essay exerpt by Harry Sanderson
Happen, 2022. Oil on linen 183 x 183CM
APRIL 2022
Cult together with KolbuszSpace present an industry only event bringing together Australian design and art, with special guests Adam Goodrum and featured artists: Sam Bloor, Olivia Colja, Christophe Canato, Austin Honour, Waldemar Kolbusz, Imogen Kotsoglo, Matthew McVeigh, Matthew McAlpine and Joana Partyka.
View significant KolbuszSpace stockroom works alongside a collection showcase of furniture by Adam Goodrum for Australian design brand nau.
MARCH 2022
The filtering of gaze and desire through the CIS white heterosexual male perspective is still the dominant lens in which we view and understand body, and is a lens Gladden and Pace aim to shift and subvert through these collaborative new drawings and ceramics.
Together both artists have produced work that investigates the body as fluid, transformative and capable of existing outside of the rigid and prescribed confines of heteronormative desire, while also analysing the intersections of their queer lenses.
These new works sit together to be sometimes sweet, sometimes vulgar but mostly offering a hot, sweaty, hairy and dripping alternative approach to desire.
Dan Gladden (b. 1983) is a WA artist who has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally since completion of his Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) in 2006, including Hatched 06 at PICA. His figurative paintings and drawings explore ideals of the masculine form, and analyse the construction of archetypal male identities.
Kimberley Pace (b. 1984) is a WA artist who has completed a Master of Arts from ECU and has exhibited regularly since 2009 both nationally and internationally. Kimberley’s practice investigates the fluidness of the corporeal body explored through a multidisciplinary studio approach involving garment, object, ceramics, drawing, performance, video and sound.
Dan Gladden and Kimberley Pace, Pickle Peel, 2021. Pencil on paper, 38 x 18 cm.
Online only Feb 2022
New works at KolbuszSpace to celebrate Sam Bloor’s significant Perth Festival exhibition UNDERTOW, where he will produce new works both on-site and beyond the walls of Fremantle Arts Centre which explore our coastline and the oceans beyond as a site of asylum and safe passage, interrogating Australian nationalism and border politics. The works challenge audiences to consider the necessity for generosity and compassion at a moment in time when our borders have never been so ferociously defended.
Since his sold out solo show at KolbuszSpace in Sept 2020, Bloor’s work has been acquired for the AGWA collection and he has shown and been collected internationally.
Image: UNDERTOW for Perth Festival, sponsored by FAC. Site specific work, Tourist Wheel Fremantle WA.
FEB 2022
Olivia Jones’ visceral and evocative oil paintings deal with history and mental health. Starting with richly coloured foundations and adding crushed rocks from her family bush block in Toodyay, Jones learns that no amount of white paint can conceal or erase the colour and texture beneath. By submitting to this futility and working within these realities, Jones adds acceptance and depth to these striking works and to the experiences which have shaped her. These works are a confident and quiet triumph.
Olivia Jones is an early career artist working in Fremantle, Western Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Curtin University and has exhibited at The Other Art Fair (Melbourne, 2017). This is her first major solo exhibition and was possible with funding awarded through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries for creative development.
Studio, photograph by Tasha Faye. 2021.
DECEMBER 2021
(Catalogue essay excerpt by Harry Sanderson)
In early 2021 Luke Kolbusz rented a studio in Perth and began painting full time. This period of sustained concentration came after a few years of more fragmented practice following his graduation from UWA (BA Fine Art), which culminated in his first solo show, BIG WORLD. Ironically, it was only on the success of that first exhibition that Kolbusz’s scope truly expanded: he began working on larger canvases, increased the volume of his output, and made painting his primary vocation.
The muddy forms which had appeared in the BIG WORLD work also came into sharper focus. Those early paintings had consisted of vague figures and abstract shapes, which tended to fade through the canvas like fish in dark water. The new work was bright and lucid: the lines were clear and firm, and bolder blocks of colour began to appear against the washed-out out backgrounds. Kolbusz was developing into an artist who, if not necessarily more confident, was willing to be more upfront about his uncertainty.
This will be Luke Kolbusz’s second solo exhibition since graduation from Fine Arts (UWA) and after his sell-out first exhibition called Big World in 2020.
Sayer, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 168 x 153cm
NOVEMBER 2021
Austin Honour is a British/Australian multidisciplinary artist who’s work collages conventions of painting, sculpture and tattooing. Previously located in Berlin, Honour is now based in Perth, Australia.
Interested in ideologies of history, material and value, Honour works within a holistic studio practice which aims to connect media, concept and form. Honour’s recent paintings stem from an engagement with found imagery often depicting objects of history and nature. Harking back as a pastiche of Picasso’s blue period and Yves Klein, Honour’s work tethers itself through colour as if being viewed through a veil of blue.
Honour was awarded a BA (Hons) Fine Arts from Central St Martins in London in 2014.
The Mask, 2020. Oil on canvas, 140 x 105cm
NOVEMBER 2021
At Home represents the conclusion of a two year research project by curator Leah Robbie into the history of Perth’s domestic exhibition spaces. Materialised into an immersive installation at Kolbusz Space, you will be invited to explore a piece of Perth’s art history through the use of vintage furniture and featuring available works of early career artists:
Beverley ILES, Emma HORVÁT & Ómra CAOIMHE, Eveline RUYS, Georgia BISLEY, Hannah BECSI, Jane GRIERSON, Jane ZIEMONS, Joana PARTYKA, Laura SIKES, Marina VAN LEEUWEN, Rae WALTER, Sophie LA MAITRE
Image: Terry Vinci, California Design 1930-65: Living in a Modern Way exhibition. 2014, Digital image.
OCTOBER 2021
Jordy Hewitt is an emerging Australian artist and painter. Born in Perth in 1985, she was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Curtin University in 2014. She has exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions and prizes including The Hutchins Art Prize (Tas), Whyalla Art Prize (SA), The Agendo Art Prize (VIC) and The Mandorla Art Award (WA). In 2016 she was awarded a Commercial Development Grant through the Department of Culture and the Arts, which helped her exhibit at The Other Art Fair in Sydney, where she won the People’s Choice Prize and her work promptly started garnering serious attention.
Hewitt’s new work shows a shedding away from what she has known to evolve deeper and find a new cycle and beginning, and challenge her mode d’emploi. Deliberately corrupting beautiful and blended colour fields into new muddy, dirty and unpredictable paintings, Hewitt takes them to an edge of mess through slapping, scraping and scratching. This new work shows bravery and confidence for an artist pushing themselves into uncharted realms and has resulted in hugely exciting new paintings.
Wellspring X, 2021. Oil and wax on canvas, 220 x 170 cm
SEPTEMBER 2021
New installation work questioning Harry’s own personal biases, in the way he observes the world and processes information.
“This work relates to broader cultural biases in how we all observe, respond to and care for the land we live in. That’s from an individual’s response, through to the cultural systems we take for granted. There are many questions to ask about the true value of relating to and analysing the world in tiny, systemized parts. In the other extreme; what practical value is overlooked when processing information through a more expansive and “feeling” interaction when relating to objects and the space around us?”
Oyster Quadrat Version 2 – Settlers Beach. Oil & alkyd medium on aluminium plate 995 x 995mm
AUGUST 2021
Hynynen is a collectible and award winning Finnish-Australian artist who captures a humanity which connects people with art through his bold and thought provoking works.
Hynynen’s practice moves seamlessly between painting, video and sculpture. His two-tone palettes invite a meditative contemplation on the dichotomies in society, providing a counterpoint between ‘man-made’ modernity, consumerism and expectation against the value and potential of simplicity in the natural world.
Nothing In Between will feature new abstract, sculptural Canvascape works which are enquiries into form and material, ebb and flow. These will be contrasted with new figurative paintings revealed in their essential elements of light and dark.
Bystander. 2021, oil on canvas 150 x 150cm
JULY 2021
Gaye Jurisich lives and works in Hamilton, New Zealand and is the first international artist to exhibit at Kolbusz Space. Hugely accomplished, Jurisich is an extensively respected and reviewed multi-disciplinary artist. This exhibition will be the first time Jurisich will show paintings in Australia and will also include some smaller sculptural works.
Secrets and Exposures are new works which interpret landscape as both narrative and energy, looking past the obvious to the artist’s interpretation of time, scale, space, spirit and combines this with her memories, desires, passions and fears.
When The Gates Close. 2020, mixed media on board 40 x 48cm
JUNE 2021
Studio Direct at Kolbusz Space presents a curated selection of Anna Sabadini’s recognisable investigations that include palettes and references to Old Master paintings. Each work moves beyond traditional edges by including an expanded context of materiality and inspiration from art history. The visibility of this context allows the viewer to appreciate the importance of relationships between paint, painting, painter and painting history.
After receiving a Doctor of Creative Arts from Curtin University, Sabadini taught there for many years. She has exhibited nationally and her work has won numerous awards and is in significant collections.
Studio Direct exhibitions provide collectors with a significant opportunity to invest in affordable and collectible works as a once-off opportunity. These exhibitions specifically support artists through periods of growth and flux in order to allow space and funds for further development of their artistic practices and promote sustainability of important artistic careers.
Palette and Ideas. Ink and paper and oil on board 60 x 60cm
MAY 2021
New works concerning experiences we may all share, or want to share in contemporary everydayness, with consideration of the increasingly blurred difference between what we actually experience and what we convince ourselves (and others) we think should be the case.
These works have forced a slowing down in both process and a practical sense in the hope to reclaim our feelings and experiences as truthfully our own.
Continues at Aptos Cruz galleries ADELAIDE
Honey Boy. 2021, oil on linen 153 x 183cm
APRIL 2021
In April 2020, the former president of the United States suggested injecting light and disinfectant into people’s bodies as a treatment for coronavirus. This is a thing that happened.
Suppose You Brought the Light Inside of the Body is an exploration of the meandering sorrow and absurdity of 2020. In this unique series of ceramic works, Partyka attempts to both make sense of and comment on the bewildering state of contemporary life and politics – the bush fires, the global pandemic, the social upheaval, the activism, the bumbling and bad politicians.
Fuelled by rage and grief, the work seeks to push the viewer to reflect on their own experience of the year, as well as offer hope and beauty from its ashes.
Partyka is a ceramicist, illustrator and political staffer based in Boorloo (Perth) and this is her first solo exhibition.
Abolition. 2020, white stoneware, glaze, gold lustre, height 18cm.
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FEBRUARY 2021
Rorschach is a digital print series inspired by the amorphous ink blots while also playing homage to Andy Warhol’s 1984 series by the same name.
Developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in the early 20th century, the Rorschach test consists of ten standardized blots for a patient to decipher.
In these works made during isolation in 2020, McVeigh has collated media images on a range of social, political, economic and environmental issues that have both played on his psyche and saturated the media.
These layered and mirrored works invite the viewer to themselves decipher and contemplate the visual language of manipulated media imagery. Through these ten works, the same number as original blots, McVeigh has captured the veracity of where humanity has been in this era of post truth and anthropocene.
Military 2020 digital print 150 x 120cm
DECEMBER 2020
selected artists – studio direct
Selected artists are encouraged to submit studio stock and experimental works, to invite collectors to start investigating their practice with a view to further investment. These art marts are designed for discounted work to sell, for introductions to be started, and grow confidence for new collectors.
OCTOBER 2020
Near You is a new body of work about the interplay between chance and identity – the similarities in experiences we may share and the disconnect in others, the randomness of that, and how it shapes who we become.
Continued at .M Contemporary in SYDNEY Nov 2020
Lobby 2020 oil on linen 122 x 91cm
SEPTEMBER 2020
Sam Bloor presents The Birth and Death Of a Mountain. An exhibition of new textile and print works exploring Bloor’s upbringing in cult-like surroundings as the son of a preacher. Notions of eternity and agency collide, presenting new reflections upon the ways we find solace in the ever expanding and collapsing void that is our universe.
MAY 2020
Continued at GallerySmith MELBOURNE June / July 2020
With a practice that alternates between abstract and more figurative painting, Waldemar Kolbusz’ works come naturally charged with a high energy. His large brightly coloured canvases pulsate and move, allowing a rich engagement with the works. He has always worked in a fluid way, and whilst a significant shift in thinking is required for different genres, his cerebral approach allows him to do both. It informs and nourishes the work; allowing freedom in the figurative works and giving shape to the abstract.
Lift 2020 oil on linen 152x122cm
