EVERYTHING OPENS ON WEDNESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER

Extending an invitation to see new work by Shane Forrest
“FLOAT”
opening Wednesday 8 November from 6pm
8-25 November
A-Space on Cleveland
420 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills 2010
9698 5156
10am – 5.30pm
Wednesday to Saturday



The title of this latest exhibition by Shane Forrest, FLOAT, is in part a reference to the erotic`floating world' of Japanese woodblock prints. Shane Forrest in his non-artist life teaches Japanese. In many of these dissected observations of very ordinary suburban houses, so typical of Forrest's home suburb of Leichhardt, floats a couple having sex amongst a kaleidoscope of interior wall papers, rugs, tiles, curtains and other patterned furnishings that is a reflection of the everyday banality of our lives.

Amusingly his titles allude to the advertising phrases and quips that real estate agents love to use to sell houses. For example `Cosy Cottage Feel' and `Delightful Brick Veneer'.

However in these collaged, painted and often three dimensional works, Forrest celebrates the individual and his `castle' despite or even because of its kitsch wonderfulness. Rooves bristle with equipment to trap floating transmissions, breezes and sunlight. The flayed interiors reveal dizzying patterned surfaces where couples play out their lives, seemingly unobserved, be it in the glare of a television set or in the jumble of their kitchen. In fractured, pop-up compostions Forrest gives a nod to Persian miniature painting with its vertical perspective and patterning.

This catalogue of suburban architecture with its erotic undertones is both highly amusing and an insightful observation into what makes Sydney more than the bland landscape that it sometimes seems.

Previous exhibitions at A - SPACE on Cleveland and in the Sydney Opera House foyer have been very popular and this collection of new works is sure to be just as rewarding.

The exhibition runs from Wed 8 to Sat 25 November 2006.

The opening of the exhibition will be on Wednesday 8 November from 6 to 8 pm

The gallery is open from Wednesday to Saturday 10 am to 5.30 pm

Media Inquiries: Pam Blondel Telephone/Fax: 9698 5156 Mobile: 0418 239 244

Gallery Hours: 10am - 5.30 pm Wednesday to Saturday


Just*ice? Antarctica is melting
Paintings by Lisa Roberts

Opening night Wednesday 8th of October 6pm-8pm
show runs to - 3rd December, 2006

M.A.D (make a difference), Sustainable Art and Design Centre, 55 Enmore Rd, Newtown, 2042,
Ph:(02)95573411, Fax:(02)95573021, Email: pr@reversegarbage.org.au
www.maddesigns.org.au


Opening Hours- Tues: 11-5.30pm, Wed: 11-5.30pm, Thurs: 11-7pm, Fri: 11-5.30pm, Sat: 10-6pm, Sun: 11-4pm (or by appointment)

M.A.D is proudly a Reverse Garbage Project
Reverse Garbage Co-Op
8/142 Addison Rd, Marrickville, 2204, Ph:(02) 95693132, Fax: (02)95609765
www.reversegarbage.org.au




Lightspeed
An exhibition by

Claire Conroy

MORI GALLERY
168 DAY STREET SYDNEY
Opening Wednesday 8 November 2006 6-8pm
Exhibition 8 November – 2 December 2006
Wednesday – Saturday
11-6 or by appointment +612 92832903


‘Nepean River’ 3m x 1m pin-hole photograph by Claire Conroy

Lightspeed: a journey across Sydney in a pin-hole camera

“The biggest piece of domestic machinery, which is an extension of our homes and our own private space, is the motorcar. When people drive they have the possibility of death at their own fingertips. And then, people are aware of a whole range of emotions that can't express when they're in their office, dealing with other people, that they can express alone in a car. You can't swear at your secretary for making a spelling mistake but you can swear at another driver behind your windshield” JG Ballard.

Lightspeed: a journey across Sydney in a pin-hole camera is an ambitious solo exhibition by Claire Conroy which opens at Mori Gallery on November 8. Conroy has transformed a 2 tonne truck into a pin-hole camera and taken a road trip across Sydney from Berry Island reserve in Sydney Harbour west towards the Blue Mountains. With a small hole drilled in the side of the truck Conroy stopped at various points along the way using the power of natural sunlight to document her journey. The results are a virtuoso series of 3 meter photographic paper negative prints of the view from the road – toll gates, motorways, bridges, roads, car parks and roadside scenery.

While the truck-stop has been a recurring source of artistic inspiration, perhaps most memorably captured in Ed Ruscha's photographs of gas stations from California to Oklahoma, Conroy's use of the pin-hole camera allows the viewer to return to the roadside image in a startlingly new way. The long exposure times - Conroy spent hours holed up inside an often sweltering truck waiting for the image to expose – has the curious affect of capturing the solid infrastructure of the road whilst deleting the moving elements of the cars. This coupled with the negative quality of pinhole prints makes Conroy's images extremely dark, brooding and ominous. The black skies, ghostly white trees, and completely empty roads imbues Lightspeed with a post-apocalyptic feeling of life after the crash of civilisation.

Conroy explains that one of her inspirations for this work was David Cronenburg’s film adaptation of the 1973 novel by JG Ballard Crash. Ballard's controversial book uses the metaphor of the car crash to explore aspects of contemporary psychology. It tells the story, through the author's own voice, of a man who, after surviving a car crash, gets involved with a group of people sexually obsessed with celebrity, death and car crashes.

At a crucial moment in the film one of the characters tell the hero “that’s the future Ballard and your already part of it, there is a benevolent psycho-pathology that beckons towards us… the car crash [is a] fertilising rather than destructive event.” Conroy pursues this metaphor in her work by opening it up to a new layer of meaning. What if the crash were not the specific experience of tragedy on the motorway, fuelled by psycho-sexual addiction to cars, but the crash of motorway culture itself?

In each of Conroy’s prints she carefully counter poses organic and natural elements alongside the empty infrastructure of roads. These subtle and gentle juxtapositions remind the viewer of the environmental consequences of a society obsessed with cars. As Conroy explains “in using an old mode of photography such as pin hole photography I have attempted to in some way slow the world down.” Conroy’s work thus situates the viewer between the autopia and the autogeddon, a strange world where the structure of the landscape if dominated by the car and yet the car itself has all but vanished from the picture.

Of course this exit is not entirely complete. Central to Conroy’s work is the understanding that the images you are looking at were taken through the medium of a truck, which was driven west out of Sydney on the motorway. And attached to several images are a series of soundscapes composed by Kelly Sturgiss (Flat Products Division), Naomi Radom (Coda), Jarrah Kidd (BumbleBeez81), Kate Carr, Toni Buck (The Necks), David Haines and Joyce Hinterding (Sun Valley), Giovanna Picoi (The Lunettes) and Sam Johnson (Swinging and Tasty Bag). Each of these artists has worked with found sound at the sites of the photographic exposures, incorporating the hum of the road into a sound piece which matches the time Conroy took to expose each image. These traces of road culture allow Conroy to explore the themes of this exhibition from an ambiguous position situated somewhere between a sci fi vision of the future and the well worn path of a road trip.

Gabrielle Van De Laak and Reggy Gunn
New paintings by two celebrated Dutch artists who have been resident in Sydney for the past year.

opening Noon to 5pm Sunday 12 November
exhibition continues until 26 november 2006

special performance by Melbourne trio 'Vardos' recently back from touring Scotland, Switzerland, Hungary and New Calendonia will be playing their traditional gypsy music with verve, drama and panache from 2-4 pm.


Addison road Gallery
142 Addison road Marrickville NSW 2204 Australia
t: 61 2 9518 3709 f: 61 2 9569 1642 m: 0412 590 779
e: terrycutcliffe@aol.com
Gallery hours, 11 - 5 wednesday to sunday