That time of year rolls around again, when art lovers and makers unite over the richness of our local and international creative scene. Here, our list of the must-see works from this year’s program, launching tonight and open to the public from September 13 -15.
Laura Jones
@ OLSEN Gallery, Sydney
Painter Laura Jones is particularly fascinated with botanica and its emotive elements in her oil works. Her latest collection for Sydney Contemporary contains a new-found flamboyance and coming-of age sensibility with florals as an emotional marker.
Jonny Neische
@ Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney
Jonny Niesche plays with our perception through dye prints and metallic sculpture. His treatment of dreamy neon gradients and metallic forms bring consciousness to our senses, and are equally foreboding as they are exciting. A definite eye-catcher from the Sarah Cottier collection.
Clara Adolphs
@ Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane
Faceless yet familiar, Clara Adolphs depicts memories that aren’t hers, but rather those of strangers from photographs she has found. Her distance to reality renders as melancholy, and her thick impasto strokes bring a powerful emotional depth. With a deliberate haze to her painting, her ruminations on human memory are both fleeting and beautiful.
Evi O
@ Saint Cloche Gallery, Sydney
Evi O’s debut solo exhibition, Fantasia, feels exactly as it should, with an excess of electric colour-blocking to satisfy for eternity. Here, shapes and abstract functions are made fabulous and personal with her unique painting style that draws on a defined sense of design and self. We’ll take the lot.
Oliver King
@ PAULNACHE, Gisborne
Renowned for his use of mixed media and social commentaries, Oliver King has a conversation about self and success in his latest collection of digital prints. Here, self-indulgence is playfully assembled with textiles, LV monograms and an pervading sense of Camp.
Joan Ross
@ Bett Gallery, Hobart
Joan Ross once again brings us a reflective depiction of colonisation in Australia for her collection of prints in this year’s fair. Her insertion of the psychedelic and bizarre into a landscape of iconic Australiana images recolours our past and, in doing so, satirises its irregularities.
Hannah Quinlivan
@ Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
Sculptured metallic explosions abstract our concept of time and direction in Hannah Quinlivan's multi-dimensional works. Creating primarily with steel and aluminium, Quinlan moulds a lyrical exploration of life’s course, particularly its fragmentation and crumple. You won’t miss this one.
Jamie Priesz
@ Jerico Contemporary, Sydney
Jamie Preisz’s works are instantly recognisable for their humorous and electric demeanour. For his latest body of work random objects are flung into contrast and subsequent redefinition against beautiful blues and pinks, worthy of any mood board. In giving life to objects like fake flowers and lucky cats, Preisz allows our identities to become reimagined.
Owen Leong
@ Artereal Gallery, Sydney
In a new series for this year’s fair, sculptor Owen Leong explores the construction and demolition of self over time through the structural form. Leong’s own face takes shape amongst rose quartz, carved rocks and concrete to reference ancient Chinese commemorative monuments.
Pierre Mukeba
@ GAGPROJECTS, Kent Town
Pierre Mukeba refines his ideas of manhood, love and attachment in his latest works. In the same way he has assembled his own experience of culture in navigating a refugee upbringing, his work assembles drawings and fabrics even more romantically against an incomplete backdrop.
Nell
@ STATION Gallery, Melbourne
This year’s STATION Gallery offering from Nell is as vibrant and sarcastic as we could hope. A multi-dimensional installation of print, sculpture and assembled objects offers new commentary on mortality through a fusion of images both religious and punk-rock (with an ample amount of ghosts too).
Gregory Hodge
@ Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney
Gregory Hodge’s signature mélange style proves ever-dynamic and engaging as he sets focus on materials and their ability to abstract. Coloured paper and masking tape are rendered to mimic dramatic brush strokes with kaleidoscopic flair. By playing with colour, light and texture, he calls us to reflect on reality and its dimensions.
