Skill, style and flair on display
A GROUP exhibition, that pursues a theme to obliquely reference sharing and participation, and a solo show, that mines lived experience to capture moments of memory, offer viewers opportunities to make personal connections through visual encounters.
PARKSIDE CERAMICS
the gallery space at the Darling Downs Potters’ Club, 145 West Street, is hosting Table for Two, a members and friends exhibition.
Participants were invited to create a table setting for two that would complement a meal, as well as showcase their skills, styles, and individual flair.
The resulting presentations range from the elegant to the quirky.
They are still-life tableaux with implied stories and contexts.
Breakfast is catered for with cheerful rooster plates, mugs, and bowls by Janet Geisel and robust bowls, vase, and a juice jug by Yvette Wylde.
The finesse in settings by Kris Lyon and Judy McCaw subscribe to a restrained Japanese inspired minimalism.
Wesley Denic, too, salutes Japanese philosophy in his Dare to Dine group of vessels which honours the tradition of “wabi-sabi”, the recognition of beauty seen in imperfection and transience.
Denic’s other intimate installation makes impressive use of hand crushed local clay.
The earthy tapas bowls and platters by Gail Dawson carry echoes of the Flamenco, while the bowls by Kumiyo Shimmaki reflect a personal ethos of heart centred art.
Lyn Crichton’s memories of her mother’s crocheted doilies and table centres have informed the patterns in her lace-like, hand-built plates.
THE CROWS NEST REGIONAL ART GALLERY
is featuring Deep Within, an exhibition of paintings by Chinchilla artist Helen Dennis.
The works include bold and confident riots of colour with an unafraid juxtaposition of pattern against pattern.
The busy, invented and simulated textures recall the Pattern and Decoration movement popular in America in the 1970s in which the appropriation of a pastiche of cross cultural decorative patterning sought to link aspects of applied art, craft, design, and fine art.
In Dennis’ paintings the dense surfaces form a patterned grid in which the imagery seems to cling to the surface of the canvas blurring the transition from foreground to background and foiling the illusion of deep space.
In some works the notion of a particular focal point disappears as the whole picture plane becomes the area of focus.
The individual labels clarify the artist’s statement of intention and help to explain the paintings whose ornamentation and surface embellishment tend to overwhelm the imagery instead of acting as the vehicle of support in shaping a visual narrative steeped in memory, association, and recollection.
However, the overall visual impact of the show is dynamic with three joyful still-life paintings leading to the rakish perspective in the landscape works such as Crossing the Abyss and Country Roads.
The exhibition is one to learn from as well as enjoy.