2020
5th - 22nd March
Gallery One: Amaya Iturri – Tira del Hilo / Pull the Thread
Opening Mar 5th from 6pm.
Fashion is embedded in our social and political world, implicating us all in issues of identity and ethical practice.
I take fashion's aesthetics and lexicon to comment on a range of subjects that are of my concern: fast fashion, mass production, impact of fashion on environment, ethical issues concerning human resources and animal treatment.
The Canning Room: Samantha Clark - Obscene Anthology
Opening Mar 5th from 6pm.
The penultimate chapter in her series ‘Performing Fetishism’, Samantha Clark presents a series of objects and garments that explore the inherently tactile expressions of material fetishes. Fishnet knits, patent leather and glittering latex are all reimagined in craft-centric textiles and techniques. The artist utilizes the audience’s common experiences and familiarity with craft to engage in conversations with them about the societal taboos surrounding fetishes. Taken away from the sparseness of a traditional gallery setting, this exhibition is a cheeky take on a BSDM closet tucked away in the apartment of the modern fetishist and through this is a meditation on post-fetish design and the disintegration of subcultural style markers.
Presented as part of the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival's Arts Program
26th March - 12th April
Gallery One: Doug Kirwan – Pattern and Ornament
Opening March 26th from 6pm.
This body of work consists of large paintings which show how natural forms have been transformed into the stylized motifs often found in lace. I have a forest of captive images from which I make a work. It may be from Chantilly lacework or the design from a suburban tablecloth or even a strange insect or exotic plant that sparks a series of transformative possibilities. I place these on a back ground, sometimes a web-like grid similar to a metaphor of an insect caught in a web which in turn becomes a matrix.
However I never leave the idea of creating a fabric design, its origins are to be plainly seen; it is always a decorative motive transformed into a new identity. The genre of pattern and decoration is a world between abstraction and representation and offers many possibilities to do this.
The Canning Room: Hope Lumsden-Barry - LOOM
Opening Mar 26th from 6pm.
LOOM is an ongoing series of 'weavings' created using python and photoshop. Presented as prints, LOOM explores the demateralisation of making; the historical relationship between programmable looms and computer science; and the design approaches of the Bauhaus weaving workshop. Drawing upon these lineages, LOOM positions the computer not only as a tool but as a site for making: as a communal workshop or personal studio, in and of itself.
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue of contextual writing by designer Rida Abbasi, activist and artist Tilde Joy, design researcher Ryley Lawson and the programmer of LOOM's python code, Bobby Ly.
16th April - 3rd May
Gallery One: Geoff Hogg, Nick Blackmore, Alasdair McKinnon and Paul Candy - Two Lines and Three Blocks
Opening April 16th from 6pm.
Beginning in Cuba, around the famous Hershey train line, this exhibition focuses on Melbourne’s Upfield Line and asks: How can the character of the railway line, its communities and the experience of the journey help us understand and contribute to expanded sites of social engagement, dialogue, and creativity?
Image: Geoff Hogg
The Canning Room: Adam Boyd – An Endless Succession of Monsters
Opening April 16th from 6pm.
An Endless Succession of Monsters is a set of drawings that take their impetus from the moment of realisation when a system or language allows its own inner working to embrace the inevitable flaws created by itself; or not.