The Art Exhibition Commemorating our Launch
12.05.2024 Miica Balint and Kate Middeleer
Two weeks ago we introduced this project to you by inviting a group of artists to hang some of their art. We figured there is no more apt a launch to a collaborative magazine than by way of a group art exhibition. Kate and I started this magazine over a mutual inclination to share other people’s stories. Here we explore that notion with the artists that exhibited.
Jacob Boylan
I try to make everything from images that I find.I think I properly started drawing without instruction in early high school. I got this tattoo flashbook from the skate shop in Cronulla Lowdown and started copying all the tattoo flash from there, and then a friend’s dad had a printing shop in the city and I started making some t-shirts and trying to sell them in school and on Facebook. I was still only about fourteen years old at this stage. By the end of high school I’d say I was a bit of an art nerd, and I have been making art and showing it pretty consistently since ever then. I studied at COFA (College of Fine Arts), and I found that being provided with this foundation to understand art history has been helpful in my exploration of my practice. It means you don’t have to start art from scratch, you already know what other artists have done. I try to make everything from images that I find, part of that is because of how saturated we are with imagery already, and also because I like to give them new life. There’s some really heavy stuff that you find in older Australian books, that were pretty blasé and popular opinion at the time, and I feel like it’s not really spoken about enough.
Jacob showcased one piece, drawing from a person in Australian rugby history. “Never been in a riot” was inscribed in pencil on the top left hand corner. Jacob also designed and screenprinted the posters for our launch, the ones that you quite possibly saw postered in collective droves around town the week of our exhibition.
Karlee Mackie
Expression through symbolism and colour
A painter whose art expression plays out as bold colourful strokes and symbolism on canvas. She was “ born with crayons in her hands” as she says. As a professional surfer and artist she started to paint her fellow athletes' surfboards on the world qualifying tour, which led to collaborating with international brands such as Rusty, Globe, and Electric. She has had the opportunity to assist the extremely talented Angus McDonald– an Australian contemporary visual artist, refugee advocate, columnist, and documentary filmmaker.
The two artworks that she exhibited with us at the launch were the largest in the space. Beside her art, her bio read;
“I’m searching for nothing, a colour nomad
wandering through tones of love (left)
Take me to your dealer. I have a dick and balls
but no one wants to see that! (right)”
Photos by Montana Cooper
Josh Gooley
Add a bit of light and the piece I am working on can come to life, or show its real flaws.
A short stint of loneliness got me toying with art. A YouTube video later and I was trying to imitate the American painter Bruce Riley. The imitation was trash and I found something in that. Add a bit of light and the piece I am working on can come to life, or show its real flaws. Either way there is truth in it. I want people to enjoy it, to be sucked in by the lights, even spend a minute gazing at their own reflection. Vanity ain’t all bad.
Artist Bernie Gooley exhibited a light box in blue hues, and a screen-printed fabric piece. Both beautiful as standalone pieces and most impactful as a pair. His artist bio read “I love instant gratification. Give me a hug. I’m hungry.”
Liv Enquist
Colours, threads and words
Often with a focus on embroidery, her pieces are composed of tapestries, dresses and textiles. Poetry propels a lot of her work. “Poetry, it is like a key into someone else’s mind,” she says in her video produced by Arts Northern Rivers, filmed by Dom Sullivan. “I love taking my art out in nature, because nature has these elements that are unpredictable. Embroidery especially is very traditional […] so I like taking that out in nature”. Alongside hand embroidery, she also has helped to style still-life sets. Her works have travelled to exhibitions around Australia, the UK, Italy, and Sweden.
For the exhibition, Liv hung a large green tapestry from the ceiling which read, “May I be protected from distraction”. She also exhibited two dresses, within the pockets of which were a range of hidden treasures, like a hand-embroidered note that said, “I dreamt life was beauty” and many print-outs from her favourite writers.
Marley Alvarez
Having lots of fun.
I think once I was ruminating on what I really wanted to do, you know, what I actually love that I could put all my time and energy into. I’ve always painted. There is this photo of me standing in front of an easel with little ringlets, I would not have been more than four years old. There is just this one photo of me that I can picture. So I was like ‘oh I paint. Maybe that’s what I should do’. Over the years I’ve realised that I can think I have inspiration, and maybe that helps with the colour palette I am choosing, or the fluidity of the work, but I actually don’t know what the artwork is about until after I’ve painted it. As in a few weeks, or months later.
Marley exhibited two works, neither of which were named when she came to the studio to hang them. Kate and I learnt after-the-fact that we had both separately made a comment about a piece each– both of which Marley based her piece titles on. The artworks were On the Way to the Circus, and Diamonds in the Rough. This made us both thrilled.
Joel Benguigui
I would like to invite you to take a moment to pause, to contemplate what nature in its purest form tells us, teaches us.
Joel’s deep respect and careful observation of his environment is painted in the pixels of his photographs, be it the reflection of leaves on water, or the expression in a human face. He often works in the black-and-white realm, but he explains that his pieces are “not a rejection of colour, but a process of distilling essential experience”.
The works exhibited were a sequence of eight analogue photographs, paying homage to the land he calls home, Bundjalung Country. “A land that inspires me to sit, observe, listen, smell, and feel.” Miica and I first met Joel at the beach by Broken Head. He had a wicked 1920 something Polaroid camera and was taking large format photographs of the rocks leading to the sea. Miica climbed over to get a better look at his setup and introduce herself, while I was a bit too shy and went for a swim. An artist turned nrip contributor and good friend.
Dear friends that you may have been welcomed at the door by, bought raffles from, or grooved because of.
Jake Readman
Colours and shapes, I just do that red person mostly.
Art for me was music. I made an EP of seven songs when I was living in Alice Springs titled Camel Turkey. I eventually got sick of the six chords I knew how to play and started filling pages with colour pastels. I think having a creative outlet really supports how I feel being in the world. I do such serious work as my day job so the space to express myself outside of work feels important.
Jake exhibited eight artworks ranging in size, the smallest being a set of three drink coasters. Accidentally dubbed by us as Jake Breadman on his artist bio, we really were thrilled to witness his art be adored at his first exhibition. Jake found our mistake classic enough to request to pocket the bio.
Sam Griffith
Joinery, furniture, structure. I love making things with a sense of purpose.
My work has always been place focused. Where I am, who I am surrounded by and what materials are nearby. I’ve been really fortunate to be around people who make and design meaningful things. From sourcing timber from an eighty-two year old who has sourced, felled, milled, and dried his own Australian timber for sixty years, to working with amazing architect builders who are involved in the entire creative process.
Sam was game enough to push to make seven stools for the exhibition from scratch in the week or two leading up to our exhibition. The stools came to us still slightly wet, our tushies enjoyed the them nonetheless. The seven pieces of art are an iteration of forms using twenty-one identical pieces, all from a single sheet of spotted gum plywood.
Selena and Bob of Immortal Soil
The Earth is our Church.
Photos by Joel Benguigui
Mother Nature is our world’s primary artist, and Selena and Bob’s work is a glorious testament to that. It is comprised mainly of organic matter that blooms, wilts, and decomposes before your eyes, woven with man-made materials. These botanical sculptures combine both the tangible and the fantastical, making Immortal Soil’s creations a blessed trip down Alice’s rabbit hole.
Immortal Soil exhibited a piece that dangled from the ceiling by a thick metal chain, consisting of various pine thickets, rosellas, balloons, and black streamers. The flowers were still shut tight to the world when the piece was hung, but by the time Selena and Bob returned to take the work down, the petals had begun to poke through.
Alex Hansen
Winter Winners 3, the movie.
The third instalment of a series of memories of surfing with friends. I hope to continue surfing, travelling, and capturing these moments on video far into old age. A lot of the footage from this comes from Morocco. How good is surfing with friends.
After a week of persistent rain, sunshine was not anticipated for the launch. With the afternoon came the sun, and the light that warmed up our studio space was an oversight to our projector set up. There was Alex, not many moments before opening the doors of our exhibition space to the public, up a ladder, installing a projector with ratchet straps to the beams on the roof, and creatively making a necessary yellow extension cord into part of the art. The cord and cable tie border that framed the movie was crafty and playful, aptly representing Henno.
Jemma Metcalfe
Shadows, perspective, shapes
I have a vivid memory playing around with a camera in the garden on a really lovely sunny afternoon. I was immediately really interested in the way light makes things look. Film came to me early on in taking photos and it’s now the only thing I shoot with. I find the process so fascinating, especially with the unknown element. It is authentic in truly capturing a moment, which is so special.
Jem displayed five prints that covered the range of photography phases that she has gone through; travel, fashion, light and shadows, and body movement.
Dave Aldous
Handmade, created in the forest from which it came from.
The steps toward creation for Dave are born from hikes and explorations of forests all over the world. At the heart of each work is the individual stories each tree has to tell. “Like a portrait staring back at you, we can find connection through this gaze,” he says. Many of these trees have fallen or been cut down. Dave recuts the tree, and planes, sands, burns and brushes its growth rings, to form a wood block of its life. He then uses traditional printmakers’ ink on the tree’s stump to make his prints. Only a limited number of prints are created. Says Dave, “Ten are created from each tree to represent the scarcity and rarity of Mother Nature’s beauty, and to instil the need to protect it”.
He exhibited a print from a fallen tree in Queenstown, NZ, which he had found on a morning hike, cut down by local council. He proceeded to spend the next five days with it, and to create this piece.
Queenstown NZ 45 01 33.5 S 168 40 07.5 E
Jack Suthers
There is something special in noticing the seemingly insignificant.
I was around fourteen when I got my first camera. At that time in my life, I had fallen in love with skating so the camera was a birthday request so I could take photos of my friends skating. I am usually taking photos on 35mm film alongside some digital. I set up a little dark room in my home in Valencia, which meant I could develop black and white. Now back at home in Aus and without a dark room I am finding myself using more colour film stocks, I guess it suits the environment here better too. The photos I have taken are mostly just as an observer, I don’t interact too much with people. There is something special in noticing the seemingly insignificant, and taking photos allows me to slow down and walk around cities aimlessly.
Lani– a dear friend, partner of Jack, and the maker of the chimichurri that was lathered onto the sausage sambos at the exhibition– hand delivered Jack’s prints from Sydney. Unfortunately Jack couldn’t make it up so he printed a collection of photos to choose from and our trusted Aolani curated them. Six beautiful black and white photos were exhibited capturing moments of European urbanscapes.
Kate and I had a small table with a computer monitor and mouse, a director’s chair and a little website that went live. Our small interactive piece-- symbolising something much bigger-- sat in between Karlee’s large expressive art, and Marley’s bright and emotive pieces.
The start of something. We’re glad you’re here.