Description:
The Dance, based on Matisse's infamous painting of the same name, consists of a series of stainless-stell figure-based abstraction that appeara march or dance through the site. With reference to international modernist art history, the 'figure' embodies the lingering remainder of their original pictorial counterpart. The artistic innovation of this work lies in the inversion of icons of modernism into feminised, functional and contemporary form, through the use of insightful and witty subversions. The aim of The Dance is to question the authority of the art museum as an institution of established historical fact - inviting art history itself to leave the gallery behind and enter the hinterlands of the Otways, where it shares a social space with the living heartbeat of its people.
Description:
The Dance, based on Matisse's infamous painting of the same name, consists of a series of stainless-stell figure-based abstraction that appeara march or dance through the site. With reference to international modernist art history, the 'figure' embodies the lingering remainder of their original pictorial counterpart. The artistic innovation of this work lies in the inversion of icons of modernism into feminised, functional and contemporary form, through the use of insightful and witty subversions. The aim of The Dance is to question the authority of the art museum as an institution of established historical fact - inviting art history itself to leave the gallery behind and enter the hinterlands of the Otways, where it shares a social space with the living heartbeat of its people.
Description:
We are pleased to be showing Sanné Mestrom’s new exhibition The Reclining Nude. This body of work was produced at her recent residency at Gertrude Street Gallery over the last two years and was shown in exhibition at Gertrude Street. This body of work is an extension and more mature reification of ideas that Mestrom began in her PhD work at Monash; Chalk Horse exhibited this body of work in 2009 at the old space and we have continued to support Mestrom since then. The Nothing Show, curated by Westspace’s Kelly Fliedner, was another serious outing within a group show, at the gallery for Mestrom’s work. Sanné Mestrom won the Kath Fries Art Prize last year having been shown as a finalist the year before. She was also shown in Social Sculpture, Anna Schwartz Gallery, curated wonderfully by Charlotte Day. What characterises Mestrom’s work is a fusion of different approaches to sculpture and conceptual installation through the twentieth century. She is an adept archivist who conflates and juxtaposes different methodologies to poetic ends. For example on one hand her work seems to recall Arte Povera or the object found by chance seen in the surrealist object, this aspect of her work was focused on in Social Sculpture. But then Mestrom recombines this poor, or industrial material or refuse with the aims of high modernism: Picasso, Matisse and Henry Moore (surrealist?). Is there a humour in the contrasts or does it create a more serious rupture? It is the sense of breadth and confusion that in the end creates the power in her work. Perhaps like Aby Warburg or more anthropological approaches to art, Mestrom seems to tap into more primal feelings towards the object and towards art’s materiality. In her eloquent visual essay, which we ask you to take away with you, Mestrom has moved from ancient votives to high modernism. What is it about the sculptural object, installed in a sacred space (the altar, the white cube) that makes us believe in things we share: beauty, love and other absolutes. -Oliver Watts, 2012
Description:
We are pleased to be showing Sanné Mestrom’s new exhibition The Reclining Nude. This body of work was produced at her recent residency at Gertrude Street Gallery over the last two years and was shown in exhibition at Gertrude Street. This body of work is an extension and more mature reification of ideas that Mestrom began in her PhD work at Monash; Chalk Horse exhibited this body of work in 2009 at the old space and we have continued to support Mestrom since then. The Nothing Show, curated by Westspace’s Kelly Fliedner, was another serious outing within a group show, at the gallery for Mestrom’s work. Sanné Mestrom won the Kath Fries Art Prize last year having been shown as a finalist the year before. She was also shown in Social Sculpture, Anna Schwartz Gallery, curated wonderfully by Charlotte Day. What characterises Mestrom’s work is a fusion of different approaches to sculpture and conceptual installation through the twentieth century. She is an adept archivist who conflates and juxtaposes different methodologies to poetic ends. For example on one hand her work seems to recall Arte Povera or the object found by chance seen in the surrealist object, this aspect of her work was focused on in Social Sculpture. But then Mestrom recombines this poor, or industrial material or refuse with the aims of high modernism: Picasso, Matisse and Henry Moore (surrealist?). Is there a humour in the contrasts or does it create a more serious rupture? It is the sense of breadth and confusion that in the end creates the power in her work. Perhaps like Aby Warburg or more anthropological approaches to art, Mestrom seems to tap into more primal feelings towards the object and towards art’s materiality. In her eloquent visual essay, which we ask you to take away with you, Mestrom has moved from ancient votives to high modernism. What is it about the sculptural object, installed in a sacred space (the altar, the white cube) that makes us believe in things we share: beauty, love and other absolutes. -Oliver Watts, 2012
Description:
Viscopy is pleased to announce Sanné Mestrom the winner of the John Fries Memorial Prize 2011 for emerging visual artists. Mestrom received the $10,000 prize at the opening of the exhibition of the fifteen finalists last night at Blackfriars off Broadway, Viscopy’s contemporary art space in Chippendale. The prize was awarded by acclaimed Sydney artist, Lindy Lee. Mestrom's winning Visual art work, Thinking Props features in the exhibition with the other fourteen finalists: Cyrus Tang, Erica Molesworth, Eva Hampel, Heath Franco, Jennifer O'Brien, Karl Khoe & Tessa Zettel, Keiko Matsui, Kristel Britcher, Kurt Sorensen, Nathan Taylor, Pauletta Kerinauia, Susie Nelson, Wade Marynowsky and Walter Brecely. The winning entry was selected by an auspicious panel of judges including Anna Davis, media artist and Museum of Contemporary Art curator, Hannah Bertram the 2010 John Fries Memorial Prize winner, Danie Mellor contemporary Indigenous artist and 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award winner and Kath Fries, artist and Viscopy Board member. Mestrom's sculptural installation Thinking Props plays with the idea of a physical prop designed to promote cerebral and psychological contemplation. Made from everyday found objects, the work consists of three components: a table, a cluster of door handles and a “joy prop”. Her table is tailored to one assuming the classic position of Auguste Rodin's The Thinker, with elbow placed on table enclave and chin on cupped hand. It is a physical prop that encourages cerebral revelation. A grid of door handles below the table suggests opening doors, that endless possibilities and zones of discovery are just a simple action away. In front of the table sits a “joy prop” constructed of a cast bronze mould hypothetically designed to be fitted into the mouth to force a smile. Danie Mellor says of the Mestrom’s Visual art work: “In her winning entry for the 2011 John Fries Memorial Prize, Mestrom engages with the everyday and what she terms ‘psychological props’. Through her interest in human intimacy and this field of research and play in her practice, she presents playful and thought provoking arrangements of objects that recall Modernist engagements with the readymade. The difference with her work by comparison though, is that an intimacy is invoked that allows a bodily interaction with form, if only through the viewers’ realisation that in fact ‘this is what you (can and are supposed to) do’ with the objects. They are both familiar and out of reach as fragile objects in a gallery space, a temptation for the curious. The complexity of the potential interaction that the installation suggests, and its resolution as an intricate and multi-layered object, lends this work its intrigue and place as a well deserving winner.” The exhibition, curated by Venita Poblocki, runs until 30 September and is open between 1pm and 5pm from Wednesday to Friday. The John Fries Memorial Prize for emerging visual artists is an annual prize donated by the Fries family in memory of former Viscopy director and honorary treasurer, John Fries, who made a remarkable contribution to the life and success of Viscopy. The competition is open to emerging Australian and New Zealand artists of all ages and disciplines who are not represented in a regional, state, territory or national public art collection.