DAVID THOMAS (AUS) Photopaintings - Reflection Paintings - Composites OPENING SATURDAY 3 November 2007 4 - 6 pm EXHIBITION DATES 3 November - 20 December
David Thomas will be present at the opening A catalogue will be available with essays by Max Delany and David Thomas
We are very proud to announce the parallel running show at the Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche in Osnabrueck 'Licht - Glas - Transparenz' ('Light - Glass - Transparency') showing until 28 November 2007. A large installation by David Thomas is shown among artists like Dan Graham and Dan Flavin. A hard cover catalogue has been published for this exhibition.
David Thomas lives and works in Melbourne where he currently lectures as an Associate professor in painting at RMIT. In his practice which includes painting, photopainting and installations, Thomas engages with the monochrome in an at once speculative and reflexive, reverential yet unorthodox way. He employs monochrome in conjunction with other elements - painting and photography - situating them 'in the world', as intervals in the fabric of everyday life. Thomas refers to his works as 'composites' enabling things, which are different, to be reconciled over the time of viewing as they reveal shifts in perception and reading. By situating the monochrome in relationship to other codes, the artist allows apparently contradictory impulses to coexist: material and metaphysical, pictorial and spatial issues are brought into a relational context, capable of being read and understood over time.
Thomas' reflection paintings are a screen or surface on which to stage the play of light, the drama of space, and the experience of looking. His recent series of 'photopaintings' encourage temporal readings and convey a sense of ambiguous space, of figuration and abstraction, and of complex space/time relationships embedded with a single image: ordinary photographs of public sites are obscured in part by geometric fields of monochrome paint, which evenly rest like a reflective skin on the surface of the work and interrupt the illusion of deep space forcing the viewer to glimpse around corners, to augment the image from memory. Thomas' works sit between categories and provoke consideration of the idea of spectatorship and photography.
David Thomas curated an exhibition recently at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne called Composites realities Amid Time and Space: Recent Art and Photography. Contemporary artists from Australia, France, Germany, New Zealand and South Korea were presented. Among them from Australia were John Nixon, Rose Nolan and David Thomas.
A parallel running show to the Sydney exhibition is a large installation by David Thomas showing at the Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche in Osnabrueck, Germany, called 'Licht-Glas-Trasparenz' [Light- Glass-Transparency] with Dan Graham, Dan Flavin and others. The exhibition runs until 28 November.
MULTIPLE BOX SYDNEY
LACHLAN WARNER (AUS) Photography
OPENING SATURDAY 3 November 2007 4 - 6 pm EXHIBITION DATES 3 November - 5 December
Lachlan Warner will be present at the opening The catalogue 'Smile of the Buddha' will be available
Lachlan Warner was a finalist in the last four Blake Prize for Religious Art Awards including this year and was the winner in 2001. The Blake Prize, first awarded in 1951, is one of Australia's most respected visual art awards and explores the subject of religious awareness and spirituality. The Prize is managed by the Blake Society, which is currently developing a Foundation to ensure the ongoing viability of the Prize. The finalists were exhibited at the National Art School Gallery, Sydney, September 2007.
Further he is currently showing at The Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, in 'Smile of the Buddha' until 16 December 2007.
Lachlan Warner works are inspired by the Buddhist meditation practice and the political and social implications of its imagery. Buddhism uses strong visual metaphors which Warner analyzes from a western point of view and then elaborates in his work. Questions his work raise are, for example, about the meaning of Buddhist idols when looked at from a different religious perspective and about what they represent from a pure ornamental and design perspective. Warner looks at various media in his practice ranging from plaster to compost. In his mirrored Buddha forms, he analyses a primary metaphor in Buddhism, where mirrors stand for a way of seeing directly and clearly. The material he uses, foil, is ephemeral, delicate and evanescent and has cross-cultural references to commercialization and Eastern tradition. It also relates to many facets of Buddhist teachings like impermanence, change and flux.
This exhibition shows a selection of works he made over the last three years. The photographs printed on fine art paper are looking at imagery primarily around Buddhism and the West, but also include other works that look at Christianity like "Pool Diptych", taken in the Cabarita pool in Sydney which deals with the phenomenon of Homology in religious imagery. Warner took these images during his extensive traveling and the Buddhist shots in particular are taken in The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Musee Guimet in Paris.
Lachlan Warner was a finalist in the last four Blake Prize for Religious Art Awards including this years'. He was the winner of the Blake Prize in 2001. The Blake Prize, first awarded in 1951, is one of Australia's most respected visual art awards and is managed by the Blake Society.
