Upcoming exhibitions
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f i r s t d r a f t
116-118 Chalmers St.
Surry Hills NSW 2010
t: +61 (0)2 9698 3665

mail(at)firstdraftgallery.com

open hours:
Wednesday to Saturday
12-6pm
 

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"Patience. This is a means and not the end."
Kate Scardifield

Scardifield explores the similitude between past histories and the questionable autonomy of ones own body in contemporary times. Drawing on anatomical illustration from the 17th and 18th centuries, she is continuing to develop a methodology that centres around the cut and the act of cutting in her art making. A sense of nostalgia exists in this poetic demise. She produces works that are uncanny in appearance and subversive in their message, with intertwining references to 17th century open theatres, illustrative medical engravings and the practices of modern day surgery.

Working extensively with fabric as a substitute for the physical body- from used furnishings to second-hand clothing, these materials culminate in life-size silhouette works adhered directly onto the gallery wall. Found objects such as ladders and chairs can come into play, extending the work out into the space of the viewer and enticing them to engage in rich visual narratives.

Through the Firstdraft Emerging Artist Studio Residency, Scardifield aims to produce new work and continue to develop the methodology of cutting that her practice draws on. Having never been one that relies on digital technology, her works are created by hand, from conception to execution. Beginning with drawings and small paper cut pieces, these gradually evolve into patterns used for the drafting of fabric- cut silhouettes that mirror the size of ones own body, in assemblages of theatrical abundance.

"Continent of Curiosity"
Troy Emery

Continents of Curiosity is the first solo exhibition in Sydney by Troy Emery. The artist has long held an obsession with animals that continues unabated. In the past, his animal objects have occasionally been sewn or stitched from scratch(1). Continents, however, exhibits works exclusively assembled, almost like hobby kit projects, from disparate, readymade parts.

The works can be enjoyed simply for their sensationalism, yet they contain other contexts that hint at opening up a critical-historical reflection on art-object-animal complexes within culture. For centuries, animals have been stuck in a language of taxidermy and a discourse of realism, even while the other arts were being radically transformed by modernists. Continents presents taxidermy animals with ‘wronged’ surfaces, designed to reanimate animals within the realm of visual pleasure, wonder and surprise(2).
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(1) Emery’s exhibition Pod presented three soft sculpture whales made from scratch out of cotton fabric and polyester wadding, suspended from the ceiling at Entrepot Gallery in Hobart in 2005.
(2) There is a postwar tradition here that links back to Robert
Rauschenberg’s ‘combines’ in the 1950s, especially Rauschenberg’s Monogram (1959), a taxidermy goat ringed with a found tyre.

"Nothing But Something"
Frances Hansen and Louise Stevenson

Packaging material is the resource developed and expanded for this joint exhibition. It is the nothing material from which something becomes. The process exploits and examines a slimness of means. This is a project about dissolution and re-materializations.

The safe transportation of products is a typical limited function of these materials. A package is the secure container, the carrier for an item. Packaging material seals, sanitizes and encapsulates, at the same time maintaining an intrinsic simplicity and baseness. Lacking its product, only certain clues about the item remain. Relieving and removing the packaging of it’s duties, allows an unfolding and expanding, losing information and revealing a new perspective.
Manipulated, these materials are imbued with a presence of their own and become more interesting than the products they once contained. The strangely familiar becomes intriguing. Forms and shapes either retain or lose the suggestiveness of the absent product. The cardboard and plastic sustain knocks, dents, rips and tears that are evident. It is as if only in the absence or lack of a central object that the outer, the edge, the peripheral covering itself can begin to become something, begin to be valued.

Collected, installed, colliding and colluding, these materials, intercepted before reaching recycling bins, are given a reprieve before ultimately becoming landfill. Works are individually and collaboratively organized through engagement and interaction. Random interference becomes a welcome intrusion. Subtle transformations and a playful approach emerge to highlight the formal and intrinsic simplicity of the raw materials.

Overlooked, everyday banal items are often a source, linking into the straightforwardness of commonplace materials. Image making involves conscious awareness of the visual possibilities inherent in ordinary objects. Making something from nothing is a rewarding venture.

opens Wednesday 10 September, 6-8pm
exhibition continues to 27 September 2008

Artists Talks
Saturday 27 September, 4.30pm

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Later
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"Field Trip USA" Anna John
A collection of drawing, object and installation works in reaction to obvservation, difference and translation of the USA everyday culture experience and the phenomenon of being a tourist. Anna John is a Sydney based born, bred and taught artist - focussing on sculpture, installation and video in her work. Outside of art she dabbles in music and radio broadcasting also. She recently completed her undergraduate in Fine Art at COFA and will endevour to complete her honours year in2009.

Anna John is Firstdraft's 6th studio resident for 2008. The Emerging Artist Studio Program is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its
arts funding and advisory body.

"My metaphorical arsehole & other drawings"
Pia de Bruyn

My metaphorical arsehole is the attempt at the attainment of metaphorical males and allegorical genders. It encompasses the fetishization of masculine accoutrements as a means to transmit gender as it pertains to maleness; by manifesting
hyper-masculinity and hyper-realism through the personal participation of masculinity.

My metaphorical arsehole is concerned with desire; the desire to attain and befit the harbinger of masculine embodiment, a mirroring of maleness, a Trans-itional practice. The very nature of this is epitomized through the lyrics of a Smiths song, in which Morrissey inquires, “Will nature make a man of me yet?”

The kaleidoscopic drawings, cheese-in-a-can tattoos and anchor video are all interactive sensory drawings, designed to induce senses and tease the drawing process. Skulls, sailors, bikers, boys, roses, hearts and heroes rule.

"Doodles" Fran Barrett

The king is missing from underneath his crown. Frenzied bears snarl and spit towards the deadened horizon. Baby Jesus attaches his lips to my third nipple watching as an empty banner falls behind my head. Androgynes, forgotten deities and bearded women suckle and orgasm and pray in front of obsolete crucifixes and dead roaches. They are all suspended within an amniotic dream; colliding, transforming and cursing. They rue the day I rendered them in ink.

Doodles is a series of gouache and ink drawings on paper depicting a fragmented allegory of indeterminate beings. Inspired by the story of Saint Wilgefortis – the martyr saint who grew a beard in one night to deter the man she was promised to marry – the series contains imagery and stories of the hermaphrodite, transformation and death.
The series will be accompanied by two Doodles zines.

opens Wednesday 1 October, 6-8pm
exhibition continues to 18 October 2008

Artists Talks
Saturday 18 October, 4.30pm

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FIRSTDRAFT CLOSED FOR REFURBISHMENT
22 October to 8 November

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Launch and Fundraiser - Post In Your Poster

opens Wednesday 10 October, 6-8pm
exhibition continues to 15 November 2008

Artists Talks
Saturday 15 November, 4.30pm

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"Treat (or Trick)" Zanny Begg

In September 2007 I was involved in a collaborative project with the Russian artist Dmitry Vilensky - The Electification of Consumer Brains - for an exhibition at the Motorenhalle, in Dresden, Germany.
For this project we developed a performance outside the local shopping centre exploring commodity fetishisation specifically as it was analysed by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle. I was given the task of developing a series of illustrations and animation for a series of quotes from this book such as "consumerism must constantly expand as it never ceases to include privation" or "the real consumer
has become a consumer of illusions" and so forth. I choose the metaphor of tricks and illusions as a theme for the work as a whole. The result was an 8min film which combined documentation of the performance and a series of 5 short animations which was shown in Dresden and also at the WUK museum in Vienna.

The work has not been shown in Sydney, however, as it is in German, without proper subtitles, and would not translate so easily into the Australian context (being a documentation of a specific performance in a specific location in the former East Germany). For an upcoming exhibition at Firstdraft Gallery, November 2008, I have taken the animations and the lose theme of the work to create a new project
Treat (or Trick). The new work will combine animations, drawings in an installation which explores some of the allures and dangers of commodity fetishism.

The work will use humour and estrangement techniques such as applause and canned laughter to encourage the viewer to re-engage with a very old and well worn, and yet still important critique of commodifcation. Commodifcation is not just about possessing things, but how those things in turn possess and consume us. As Guy Debord, echoing Marx, argued: the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing."

Rachel Fuller

"Stop doing what you are doing" Kenzie Larsen

opens Wednesday 19 November, 6-8pm
exhibition continues to 6 December 2008

Artists Talks
Saturday 6 December, 4.30pm

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Tully Arnot and Amy Craig

Nicola Hardy and Phil Schöde

opens Wednesday 10 December, 6-8pm
exhibition continues to 27 December 2008