Chalk Horse has a new home!

We are now located at
 8 Lacey Street in Surry Hills

The next exhibition is:
Jasper Knight 'Sydney Boat Show'
Opening Thursday 5th May 2011


Chalk Horse Directors and staff are pleased to announce our new address. The gallery is currently in the final stages of construction and will be ready to unveil in tandem with a powerful new body of work by Jasper Knight featuring a stunning selection of water vessels in their built-for roles cruising some of Australia's greatest harbours. 

We look forward to seeing you there to share in celebrating our new premises.

Chalk Horse is MOVING! Re-opening 05 May 2011

WE ARE MOVING TO NEW PREMISES
FOR MAY 2011

Chalk Horse is excited to announce that we will be moving to new premises this May 2011 and will re-open with a feature exhibition by Jasper Knight entitled Sydney Boat Show. 

JASPER KNIGHT
Sydney Boat Show
05 May - 16 June 2011
Opening Thursday 5th May 2011 6-8pm

This new body of work for Knight will feature a great selection of water vessels depicted in their built-for roles cruising around one of the best harbour cities in the world, Sydney.

For the period of our move we will be closed from Tuesday April 5th through until May 5th.

IMAGE:
Jasper Knight
Port Albert, 2011
Enamel, masonite, perspex and spray paint on board
200 x 150 cm

Free Fall at Oxford Art Factory curated by John A Douglas

 

Free Fall is a three month program of live performances by Sydney based contemporary and intermedia artists scheduled to begin every Friday and Saturday night at the Oxford Art Factory cube from April 15.The program has been curated by Sydney video and photomedia artist John A Douglas in partnership with Chalk Horse gallery. Many of the artists selected for the program have been successfully exhibiting both locally and internationally for the last few years and the Oxford Art factory cube offers an opportunity to present live performances of their latest works. 

Free Fall is a term used to describe the moment when parachuting from a plane before opening the parachute when you think is this going to work as you free fall through the atmosphere. Free Fall is about artists taking risks outside of the white cube of the gallery and landing in the glass cube of the Oxford Art Factory to deliver contemporary art to an audience in the environment of a bar/nightclub/music venue reaching new audiences and creating new modes of practice.

Liam Benson, Windswept

Each of the Free Fall artists have their own unique aesthetic style and yet a commom thread is to push beyond the boundaries and expectations of what art is and can be. Each weekend the Oxford Art Factory cube will be transformed  into a performance installation and will explore endurance, art history, action, painting, costume, gender shifting, characterizations and pop culture all with a sense of fun and experimentation.

Artists involved are:

Naomi Oliver 15-16 April
Jodie Whalen 23-24 April
Gregory & Watts 29-30 April
Motel Sisters 06-07 MAy
Liam Benson 13-14 May
Bridie Connell 20-21 May

Friday nights 8pm till late

Chalk Horse's Tim Gregory & Oliver Watts proclaim:

“We will turn the glass cube into a place from which two critics view and judge the scene below. We will be dressed in lounge suits and identically – the colour scheme will be muted. Part scientists, part metaphor of superego guilt, our constant unheard chatter will unsettle the viewers. What do they think? Did we dress well? Are we enjoying ourselves enough? Am I all that? On white boards in the room our scribble will give the audience some idea of our (il)logical response. On the second night we will allow the audience to hear a pre-prepared summary of the night before, we will set parameters of what should follow on this Saturday night, what we expect. The audience will be encouraged to take photographs of the white boards and we will have a printer on call to print off white board grabs. Secretaries and administrative staff will help at various times.”

(A taste of what's to come...)

Free Fall has been curated by Chalk Horse represented photomedia artist John A Douglas.

For further details and artist profiles hit up the Oxford Art Factory site and click the ART tab.

You can also find Free Fall on Facebook

Julian Meagher on Art Nation Sunday April 10th ABC1 at 5pm

Julian Meagher will be interviewed this Sunday April 10th by Fenella Kernebone airing at 5pm. The show will be repeated on ABC2 at 9.30pm, but failing both of those you can catch the ep post-date by clicking this link

Meagher famously put down his stethoscope and stepped away from practicing medicine to pursue practicing art so it will make for great television...

Tune in for the full scoop.

Image:

Julian Meagher

Self portrait at 15,000 feet 2011

70 x 60 cm

oil on linen

Social Sculpture at Anna Schwartz feat. Sannè Mestrom and Kate Mitchell

Chalk Horse artists Kate Mitchell and Sannè Mestrom are currently exhibiting bodies of work as a part of an exhibition called Social Sculpture at Anna Schwartz curated by Charlotte Day. The exhibition runs from 02 April through until 18 June and is thoroughly worthwhile checking out as it has been heralded "the most dynamic use of the space ever" through our own eavesdropping on the evening of the opening. Check out the details below...

Turning the gallery inside out was the starting point for Social Sculpture, to open up the gallery to a range of temporal and process-oriented practices. This emptying out provided the opportunity to think about the gallery’s physical space in particular ways. It allowed a consideration of its literal and metaphorical weight, how artworks are situated within it, the space between the works and the pedestals and supports for works, and the way in which artists and visitors inhabit and interact in such spaces.



Social sculpture is a loaded term with its historical connection to the work of the German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys. He wanted to describe the expansion of art beyond previously existing definitions and its capacity as an agent of change in the world. In the contemporary context, Social sculpture is less politically idealistic but the term remains, importantly, an heroic endeavour. Social sculpture relates the expanded field of sculpture – here incorporating installation, video, and actions – to people, and people to sculpture. It is about the embodied art experience – both the artist/performer’s and the viewer’s.



…




Invisible forces are the focus of SANNÉ MESTROM sculptural installations – in this instance, the bare weight of the gallery space.  Mestrom’s group of sculptures, made from found, constructed and cast elements, each weighs 6.5 kilograms, and is equivalent to the weight of air in the space it occupies in the gallery. Although the individual assemblages are therefore related in this fundamental way, they vary substantially in scale and substance. Mestrom draws attention to the inherent properties of materials (such as bronze, marble and wool) as well as to the processes of fabrication that bring an object into being; she mixes up original with casts and copies, and solid and transparent forms with those veneered. There is a playfulness at work in the activity of measuring up. To achieve the correct weight, a portion of a face is removed from a mannequin, small counterweights of copper and lead are added to another, and drawers are removed from furniture. In Compression Chamber (2011), the immaterial cultural and philosophical weightiness of objects and an understanding of the specificity of their context, is also made manifest: an archive box of PhD research files reminds us of the embedded research; a warm jumper is wrapped protectively around a garden-variety gargoyle, usually exposed to the elements; and preciousness is reinstated by casting in bronze a $2 shop Buddha.

…

 


For KATE MITCHELL, the idea of art as work and the artist as both manager and worker is fundamental. In a series of video re-enactments of classic comic situations she has been making since 2006, Mitchell dons standard work clothes and boots (much like Beuys) to perform planned actions that often involve a degree of precariousness, risk and danger. In A Situation (2011) shows her poised on a plank protruding from a dairy shed in an idyllic country setting. Mitchell proceeds to saw through the plank and after a protracted period of time, but actually only a six-minute single-take, the anticipated and unavoidable happens. As she falls to the ground, she rolls over, gets up and calmly walks away. The work is funny but unsettling, in the manner of Funniest Home Videos. We laugh guiltily.



In Lost A Bet (2011) Mitchell offers to piggyback a businessman from his home to his office in her bid to provide a tangible service. The more awkward and difficult the task becomes the more aware we are of her commitment to the action and her unfailing work ethic. One of her most significant endurance works, she describes it as a covert justification for conceptual art: ‘Hey, I lost the Bet!’. This is an understatement that nonetheless is consistent with the humorous and often self-effacing nature of Mitchell’s work, but the effort to prove herself brave, strong, capable and hard working is genuine. Every new work is an additional test of her abilities and attempt to legitimise her art work, nowhere more evident than in the heavy log Mitchell has dragged across Sydney and left as a calling card in the gallery, its underside worn away by the impact of the extraordinary journey.



- Charlotte Day, 2011

Works:

SOCIAL SCULPTURE


SANNÉ MESTROM


Compression Chamber, 2011
mixed media
5m³



SOCIAL SCULPTURE


KATE MITCHELL


Lost a bet, 2011

&

In A Situation, 2011

Images courtesy the artists, Anna Scwartz Gallery and Chalk Horse Gallery

click here to see full exhibition

Julian Meagher at Lindberg (Melbourne, VIC) and Gallery Ecosse (Exeter, NSW) April 2011

 

 

Julian Meagher From where you'd rather be (2011) 150 x 180 cm Oil on linen

Julian Meagher Nanjing peasant produces Black Label to celebrate the good news
(2011) 60 x 60cm Oil on linen

Julian Meagher Only real men wear pink (2011) 120 x 120 cm Oil on linen

Julian Meagher Strong Men Also Cry (2011) 150 x 180 cm Oil on linen

The son of a father who insists that "only real men wear pink", Julian Meagher's latest body of work is an extension of his ongoing investigation into modern-day masculinity; it's rituals, it's boundaries, it's icons. The work in this exhibition presents us with a marriage of interests, every element is balanced by its counterpart. Where there is masculine, there is feminine, where there is blue, there is pink, and where there are elements of the foreign and exotic, there are bold trophies of Australiana.

In Western culture, the practice of gender-dimorphic colour coding in pink/blue for female/male is actually an inverse of its original assignment. From the late 19th Century through until the 1940's it was deemed more appropriate to dress girls in blue because of its daintiness and its connotations to the robe of the Virgin Mary. Pink was deemed better suited to boys because of its' proximity to red; the colour of passion, blood and fire.

An attraction to Oriental design has led Meagher to continue to return to Japanese tattoos and Chinese Ming vases for subject matter within his paintings, and his clinical presentation allows us to appreciate the form of each object as it's own entity, as well as in terms of its contribution to a broader composition.

Taking the archetypal domestic and picnic scenes that adorn these vases, Meagher articulates them within an Australian framework through the playful inclusion of the iconic Victoria Bitter and Johnny Walker. The slab of beer as well as the bottle of scotch takes centre focus amongst small groupings of people, presenting it as an object of almost religious significance.

Meagher's titles and his colour balance within his work toys with notions of what is masculine, and how we perceive it. The figures that occupy the show disclose a gamut of examples of masculinity; the binary nature of the components of Strong Men Also Cry presents paintings that embody a synthesis of density of content and layers of meaning, which Meagher balances with a thoughtful and clinical presentation. These paintings oscillate between presence and absence. What is left is a porthole through which we may glimpse instances of cultural reckoning in both intimate, personal chronicles and broader historical contexts.

- Kat Sapera, 2011 (full article available as catalogue essay)
 

Julian Meagher You can get it milking a cow (2011) 120 x 80 cm Oil on linen

Julian Meagher is a 32 year old Sydney-based artist, working from his studio in Surry Hills. Four years ago he left work as medical doctor to pursue painting full-time. He currently shows at Chalk Horse Gallery in Sydney (of which he is also a director), Lindberg Gallery in Melbourne, Gallery Ecosse in Exeter, Edwina Corlette Gallery in Brisbane and Cat Street Gallery in Hong Kong.

Lindberg Gallery (Melbourne, VIC) 01- 30 April 2011
www.lindbergcontemporary.com.au

Gallery Ecosse (Exeter, NSW) 09 April – 07 May 2011

www.galleryecosse.com.au

Hothouses of talent give galleries a run for the money, Joyce Morgan March 12, 2011

Making the transition ... the manager of Chalkhorse Gallery, Clementine Blackman, is overseeing the evolution of the art space from a collective into a gallery. Photo: Tamara Dean

SOME are in old warehouses and factories, others have no fixed address. They may last a year or two but at least one has survived for 25 years.At a time when debate rages about whether Sydney has lost its arts mojo, the number of artist-run spaces suggests that a shortage of creative ideas is not the problem.On the city fringes, especially in Redfern, Surry Hills and Marrickville, the number of small galleries/studios and performance spaces is growing.They are hothouses of talent, says Tamara Winikoff, the executive of the National Association for the Visual Arts.
Non-profit co-operatives are not new but they began to register on the radar of mainstream art lovers about five years ago.''They are now much more where you would go if you were an astute collector or writer or critic to find out what's going on in the field of contemporary arts practice. That's where it's all at,'' said Winikoff. ''The real energy in terms of contemporary practice is located very often in these ARIs [artist-run initiatives].''There are at least three dozen in the city, from Gaffa, in a heritage building behind the Queen Victoria Building, to First Draft in Chalmers Street, Surry Hills, which is believed to be the city's longest-running space.
Winikoff believed the growing awareness of such places is in part because art buyers are changing. ''Instead of the well-established, wealthy people around Paddington, Woollahra and the better-heeled suburbs, you are getting young people who just want to own contemporary art and be part of the contemporary art scene.''
The growing appeal of artist-run spaces has prompted the association to organise a national symposium on them later this year. ''We want to establish a national network and keep track of what is going, how they are evolving.''
In Surry Hills, Chalk Horse began as an artists' collective five years ago but is in the process of morphing into a commercial gallery. So far, it is the only such space in Sydney to do so. The transition began last year, its manager, Clementine Blackman, said. ''It was a natural progression for us. But it is much more common for ARIs to close down than become commercial galleries.''The gallery has built a stable of artists aged under 35 whose works are priced under $20,000. It continues to present pop-up fringe events - this month a man will spend a week in a coffin.It has retained its co-operative feel. ''Some of our artists will come in and help us hang a show or build a door,'' Blackman said. ''You wouldn't find that kind of love happening for a strictly commercial dealership.''

Full SMH article click here

SHUNDABA by David Capra

21-27 March 2011
Launching Tuesday 22 March, 6-8pm with a performance by the artist.
Depot II Gallery 2 Danks Street, Waterloo NSW

Shundaba continues David Capra’s investigation into what is deemed ‘prophetic art’; work inspired by divine encounters and ecstatic notions that surpass the rational.  His new work will survey phonetic expressions of speaking-in-tongues and accounts of sudden manifestations of gemstones and gold dust.

This exhibition was generously donated by Leo Christie in association with Art Month Sydney’s first Artist Speed Dating Project.

On the evening of the opening, Capra will be performing what he calls “prophetic and intercessory dance” 


There will also be an Artist Talk titled Artist as Mystic: In conversation with David Capra on Saturday 26 March, 2-4pm, Depot II Gallery

Yinjaa Barni on Aboriginal Art News

When the world was soft

That's a phrase that's come into my life twice recently. 
Reviewing a mighty tome on the Burrup Peninsular's extraordinary petroglyphs, I was introduced to that phrase as the words of the Yaburara people who'd created that extraordinary ancient rock gallery used to describe their Dreaming. As the Yaburara are almost certainly extinct following 19th Century massacres, it had a sad resonance.

Now it turns up more cheerfully at the Chalk Horse Gallery in Sydney. There it's the translation of Ngurra Nyujunggamu, linking the Yaburara's still very extant neighbours, the Yindjibarndi back to a time whenMarrga spirits named and shaped the country, then its birds and animals, and finally the Yindjibarndi themselves – before disappearing into its rocky rivers and gullies.

So it's the title for the second Chalk Horse showing of paintings by the Yinjaa Barni artists of Roebourne on the edge of the Pilbara – a group that only came together to paint in 2006. In 2007, they started winning prizes at the local Cossack Art Awards, and the local Shire (with miner Rio Tinto's help) gave them a fine potential studio in a heritage-listed house. Involved in the reconstruction of that studio was Jasper Knight's father-in-law – and Jasper is an artist on the board of Chalk Horse....

Read more by Jeremy Eccles on Aboriginal Art News

Maudie Jerrold Yiliway (Rainbow)
2010 Acrylic on Canvas 140 x 88cm

Wendy Derby Red Dust
2010 Acrylic on Canvas 153 x 91 cm

Wendy Derby Country II
2010 76 x 122 cm Acrylic on Canvas

Marlene Harold Early Morning Mist
Acrylic on Canvas 2011 76 x 122 cm

Clifton Mack Jarman Island Sunset III
2011 Acrylic on Canvas 122.5 x 76 cm

Aileen Sandy Jiirda (Increasing Site)
2010 Acrylic on Canvas 140 x 80 cm

Clifton Mack Colours of the Rocks
2010 Acrylic on Canvas 170 x 65 cm

Yvette Coppersmith- Incu Art Windows

Incu Art Windows have curated an epic curated spread featuring a stunning 6 panel work by Yvette Coppersmith entitled Forever in Blue Jeans. Her model and muse is Melbourne based curator Mark Feary. Feary is presented here as a kind of specimen or even spectacle in a glass box for the world to inspect and dissect. Coppersmith refers to the work as a kind of homage to the power of desire at work between artist and muse, as an element of sublimation. 

Yvette Coppersmith is an incredibly accomplished young painter whose work has won a number of prizes including the inaugural Metro Art Award and has been a finalist in a number of major competitions including the Archibald Prize (finalist with portraits of Paul Capsis and John Safran), Stan and Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize, Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and more.  For more information about Yvette Coppersmith please click here

Yvette Coppersmith studied painting at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001 and has since presented seven solo shows in Sydney and Melbourne. She is represented by Chalk Horse, Sydney.

Yvette Coppersmith
Forever in Blue Jeans, 2009
Oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist and Chalk Horse, Sydney in association with Incu