Elements
8 February - 5 March 2023
Armando Chant, Erased Landscape 1, 2023
The exhibition's conceptual rationale is seen through the lens of ''elements'' both the fundamental building blocks of matter such as metals and minerals that compose geological land and water formations and ''the elements'' in terms of ever-changing powerful weather systems and cycles. The artists within this exhibition engage with the interaction between transient, mercurial, and ethereal elements of nature, with a focus on water, atmosphere, or land. Primary metals, pigments and chemical processes are utilised and through alchemy change appearance to become liminal, sitting between one form or another.
By bringing these three artists together, the exhibition explores the inherent sense of change and transformation within the natural environment, where memories embedded within water, land and atmosphere are bought to light, not represented by specific places but by an intangible memory of place and space. In this way, the work calls on us to consider and understand how it is possible to reconnect with the world through different perspectives and mindful acts of care, recognising that we have an intrinsic connection to place through personal experience and veiled moments in time.
Armando Chant is a Sydney-based artist working on Gadigal land whose work explores relationships that sit 'in-between' photographic images and material surface, unifying the abstract and figurative. The work is created through the lens of the atmospheric, neither here nor there but an indeterminate veil that sits in-between existence and dissolution, a nascent state of emergence and becoming that oscillates in-between active and still. In particular, the practice explores our memories of both place and space, where through techniques of erasure and negation, the specific becomes general, yet still retaining a sense of powerful resonance that connects to universal themes of landscape, the Sublime and the connection between hand and mind. Armando is in his final year of studying a Master of Fine Art (Drawing) at the National Art School.
Justine Roche is a Sydney-based artist, working on Gadigal and Gamia-Dharrawal land, whose practice explores how memory, culture, personal experience and photography influence the way we perceive the world. Her work investigates the material and elusive elements of a wetland and the possibilities of representation via photographic practices. Utilising both analogue and digital photographic practices, Justine engages with subjective experience, diverse cultural perspectives, and mechanical methodologies, to present a contemporary interpretation of place. She is particularly drawn to the 19th-century wet collodion process of exposing images directly on metal plates for their haunting, timeless qualities, and the imperfect traces left by the maker.
Fiona Currey-Billyard is a Sydney based artist who works in a variety of media, matching the medium and concept to present her works in the most expressive manner for the viewer. Recent works have included sculpture, photography, light installations, drawing, and painting. Not easily categorised by genre, Fiona’s work is layered and transformational combining the discipline of archaeological training underpinned by social justice and environmental issues to represent social and scientific data and materials in a meaningful and accessible manner. Fiona is currently finishing her Master of Fine Art (Drawing) at the National Art School.