Friday, July 23, 2010

Yvette Coppersmith "Loft Suite" 2010 Chalk Horse Virtual Tour




Yvette Coppersmith is an outstanding female painter whose work is joyous, exuberant and evocative. She has won a string of awards including the inaugural Metro Art Award and has been an Archibald finalist on numerous occasions most recently with her portrait of John Safran (now returned home at Chalk Horse post tour).
This new body of work she has imagined is a series of portraits, not of people, but of the habitat as an articulation of personal culture and self.
Loft Suite has been constructed over an evening known as The Lock In where in a dodgy St Kilda avenue laden with street workers, above a butcher shop lies a creative oasis where some of Melbourne’s last bohemians come together. In the apartment lives a PHD candidate in architecture and a multimedia artist and the two have created a richly textured and culturally dynamic space. Coppersmith captures this with aplomb encapsulating a kind of prophetic nostalgia at the freedom of youth and artistic engagement at its most wonderful: the art of conversation and sharing.
Somehow the absence of figures make the scenes not so much isolating or alienating, but rather there is a sense of putting yourself into these scenes; Coppersmith spreads this sense of the artistic community through to the viewer and warmly invites you to contemplate the culinary offerings of the pots and pans as well as the sounds emitted from the turntables.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

TRIPLICATED Opening 8 July 2010


Diana Palmer, Oliver Watts and Guest

Doris Mai and Suzan Liu

The crowd at Chalk Horse during a performance by Oliver Watts and Tim Gregory for TRIPLICATED

Tim Gregory, Giles Thackway, Chrysi Lionis and Laura Naimo

Triplicated is an exploratory exhibition on the nexus of art and law. Tim Gregory, Janet Chan, and Oliver Watts all lecture, study and research, in one way or another at the University of New South Wales. On realising their shared interest in visual culture and the law they decided to mount this exhibition. As part of this collegiate spirit Gregory and Watts reprised their roles as co-lecturers to expand on the exhibition at the opening through a lecture/performance/opening statement.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Chalk Horse artists in Metro Art Award 2010

Chalk Horse is pleased to announce Dane Lovett and Julian Meagher are finalists in the Metro Art Award 2010 to be exhibited from July 25- August 15 and will be on at the same time as we're down for the Melbourne Art Fair!

Dane Lovett "Last Days"2010  152cm x 152cm Acrylic on Canvas

Julian Meagher "Born To Breed" 2010 120cm x 120cm Acrylic on Canvas

The Metro Art Award is a painting prize and has been running since 2003 with the inaugural winner being another Chalk Horse represented artist Yvette Coppersmith. Now in its 8th year, the Metro Art Award is one of Australia's richest art awards for emerging artists and has helped launch the careers of many past winners and finalists alike. Chalk Horse artist Fergus Binns notably won the award in 2008 receiving great critical response for his work and airtime on the abc. His recent show with us in February was a breakout entitles "Toy Paintings". Binns has a really interesting take on painting as a medium; "Natural elements won't decay the painting/materials over a short time with the conservation of artwork making them last perhaps thousands of years beyond myself, which I have trouble accepting. So, I have incorporated that as a kind of acknowledgment of my own mortality and that of the painting, and by killing or mummifying the image I find it easier to accept that, I’m getting older, decaying and one day I’ll die and fuck you painting, I’ll kill you before you kill me, but I'm glad you will live on."
Fergus Binns "Artist Canvas" 2009 mixed media in canvas 50 x 50 cm

For this year's award, the former Victorian Premier Jeffrey Kennett will head the judging panel and three other judges have been brought in to decide upon the winning entries. 27 finalists have been selected for 2010 and are to be exhibited to a nation wide audience for three weeks at Metro Gallery. 

2003 winner Yvette Coppersmith has a forthcoming exhibition at Chalk Horse to be onpened on July 22 entitled "Loft Suite" with a sneak preview below.

Yvette Coppersmith "Lock in II" 2010 Oil on Linen

Metro Art Award winner from 2009 Jackson Slattery will be shown in the 2010 MCA Primavera exhibition and recently previewed this piece at Chalk Horse show "The Nothing" curated by Kelly Fliedner of West Space.