MORSEL Emma Bingham, Hannah Blackmore, Jack Braudis, Lucinda Bresnehan, Katherine Cooper, Antoinette Ellis, Phillip England, Katelyn Geard, Jane Hodgetts, Melissa Kenihan, Jamin Kluss, Kwony Kwon, Julie Payne, Julien Scheffer, Emily Snadden, Julie Stonema
Some artists are just reliable. A new show from them is likely at least to be good art, and it could be more than that. Ian Parry is one of those artists for me; I have followed his career and output for some years now, and his work has always been of great fascination to me. Parry has a special aspect to his work, at least for me: he’s got a genuine investigation that he’s pursued for his whole career, which is getting on for four decades or so. He keeps asking questions and testing and changing what he does.
Parry spent years at sea, and the sea is a subject he returns to and has yet to run out of images to create around the water, his view of it, his memories of it and his knowledge. That all folds in; underlined by a great technical understanding of how paint works. Parry has learned a trick or two about his craft in his time: he can really paint well. If you’re someone who just wants to see that, see excellent application of skill, knowledge and craft, Parry’s new show might be one of the best you will see this year. He’s really on top form here; the works are fresh and vital. His views out over the bay he lives near are luminous works that exude a drama and joy at being and seeing; Parry finds so much here and his genuine thrill is communicated superbly by his strong ability.
Anthea Boden is no slouch either. Her art is just as distinctive as Parry’s and it’s great to see this much output from her; Boden is a restless investigator who is exploring her own world: a jagged connection that takes us from intimate, domestic spaces to more open exterior sites. She uses certain forms in an expanded personal vernacular that could be a ceramic mug or could be a cluster of wooden boats sitting at mooring. It’s the vessel shape, large or small, that Boden returns to; here she does much with it as a formal starting point, but it’s also notable that she really lets the paint itself act; there’s a dialogue occurring where Boden follows what the forms want, allowing for experiment that gives the work a muscular, lively feeling: there’s a lot of focused excitement here, and it’s coming, like it is with Parry, from the artist’s confidence with her medium. She knows what it can do, and just does it, seeing what happens, allowing the energy to flow. Everything is vibrant and alive here, large and small.
Boden sits incredibly well with Parry – both are making maps that are at once interior and exterior. Boden’s rich art allows an interior exploration to be recorded in the work we see, while Parry mixes his views and memories of waterscapes and coastline with maps that work to be expansively mental. The visions are different, but the skill is engagingly parallel.
The Salamanca Arts Centre has long been a centre for the nipaluna/Hobart arts community, housing studios and exhibition spaces for some decades now. It has produced and housed some excellent artists and shows, and is a good location to simply check out – there are multiple shows on at any given time.
Morsel is one such offering among many, but is of more than usual interest because it takes the temperature of studio-residing artists of SAC. Morsel is like a taster menu of art, with small offerings on display; with the feeling that we’re seeing possible experiments, new directions, steps to the side and fresh ideas all being shared.
There’s fine abstracted landscape work from the ever evolving Hannah Blackmore, a trio of surrealisminflected collages by Antionette Ellis all of which utilise vintage images of spoons. Julie Stoneman’s potent Quartzite Bloom stands out – this is an intense image that combines tight line structures and moody ink wash.
There’s also work from the great Richard Wastell, which is instantly recognisable, and material from Emma Bingham who has recently been selected as a National Works on Paper finalist.
Morsel serves up an excellent and engaging sampling, and is well worth a visit.