We are delighted to announce that FLG is showing the work of Bronwyn Hill, Jacob Leary and Richard Blackwell as part of Sydney Contemporary 2024.FLG STAND J07GET YOUR TICKETS HERE
DOWNLOAD PDF CATALOGUESBronwyn Hill
Jacob Leary
Richard Blackwell
ART FAIR EVENTS
The Living ArtworkBrendan de la Hay X Jacob Leary Thursday 5 September ART NIGHT PARTY FLG stand J07 & roving performance Witness “The Living Artwork” as it flies off the gallery wall, flees the stage, and lands among the people!
In a collaborative wearable explosion, embodied by notorious party crasher and cabaret star - Brendan de la Hay, “The Living Artwork” explores the space between and combination of visual, performance and wearable art.
Created in collaboration with multi-disciplinary artist Jacob Leary, whose work on exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery provided not only the aesthetic lens for “The Living Artwork”, but also highlighted Jacob and Brendan’s mutual interest and artistic study of “excess” and their commitment to reuse and found objects as a feature of both their practices.
On Robots in the Studio A Q & A with Richard Blackwell and Dr Belinda Dunstan 11.30am Saturday 7 September FLG Stand J07 Join us for a discussion and Q&A session with artist Richard Blackwell, hosted and moderated by Dr. Belinda J. Dunstan, Senior Lecturer and Principal Lead of UNSW's Creative Robotics Lab. Topics will include Richard's processes, the intersection of art and robotics, and the cultural implications of human-machine interaction in art making.
RICHARD BLACKWELL Richard Blackwell’s interdisciplinary practice navigates the realms of potentiality, traversal, and illusion, as he explores the mutable nature of materials, space, and perception. His work frequently juxtaposes the physical and the virtual, revealing the complex relationship between reality and digitality. As Phe Luxford (2022) notes, Blackwell’s abstract images exhibit an intrinsic tension between physical forms and their algorithmic and technological implications, prompting viewers to reconsider their interaction with the increasingly digital world.
Elli Walsh (2020) expands on Blackwell’s practice by discussing his labyrinthine reliefs on film-faced plywood. These works delve into modularity and the intersection of individual experience with architectural space, blurring the lines between physical and digital realms. Blackwell’s parametric designs reflect his experiences in urban environments, specifically his time in Doha, where the city’s private spaces are connected through virtual and physical highways. The labyrinthine panels evoke a sense of loneliness and disconnection, presenting abstract topographies that mirror the artist’s solitary observations from high-rise apartments.
His work explores the evolving interfaces between artist and machine. Blackwell considers how human limitations can be transcended through systems of production that supplant manual labor, reflecting on the broader societal shift towards technological mediation. His works, informed by his roots as a printmaker, translate the relationship between the matrix, the machine, and the moment, embodying notions of the post-hand and the post-human.
Through his interdisciplinary practice, Richard Blackwell invites us to engage with the intermediate nature of perception, highlighting the continuous interplay between the corporeal and the digital. His works challenge our understanding of space, materiality, and reality, urging us to reconsider our interactions within an increasingly technological world. As Luxford aptly summarizes, Blackwell’s art proposes that any experience of the world is subject to a limitless stream of variable inputs and cognitive judgments, making us aware of the challenges and choices we face in our contemporary existence.Phe Luxford ‘Climbing the Plane’ catalogue essay 2022 Elli Walsh ‘Labyrinth’ catalogue essay 2020
JACOB LEARY Jacob Leary’s artistic practice, encompassing painting, drawing, print-making, and assemblage, reveals a fascination with the complex systems of organization in both physical and digital realms. His works, characterized by a maximalist approach, engage deeply with themes of excess, transformation, and the interplay of digital and material realities. Leary’s art provocatively interrogates the nature of beauty and the boundaries of perception, creating immersive visual experiences that challenge viewers’ understanding of the world.
In "Beauty in things, things in beauty," Andrew Gaynor highlights Leary’s use of brightly colored disposable plastics, which evoke both delight and discomfort. Leary’s works are described as "exemplars of the practice of ‘maximalism,’ an approach which celebrates richness and excess through work-intensive (often obsessive) artworks, characterized by over-decoration, luxury, and sensuality" . These pieces, which often incorporate illusionary fakes like rhinestones and gold-plate, reflect a deliberate focus on aesthetic surfaces and the concept of excess.
Andrew Harper, in "Futurescapes," explores the speculative dimensions of Leary’s work, likening it to the literary worlds of JG Ballard and Jeff VanderMeer. Harper describes Leary’s art as an "archive of possible futures, all informing one another," where disaster and transformation coexist. Leary’s creations are intuitive and suggestive, maps of imagined spaces that reflect a "psychic, more fluid take on Google Earth’s mediated vision of reality" . This sense of potential and the interplay between light and materiality imbue Leary’s works with a sense of mystery and open-ended interpretation, drawing viewers into a world of "terrible, gleaming wonder".
Owen Craven’s essay "Something Terrain" delves into Leary’s process of creating sculptural assemblages through a combination of digital drawing and hand-crafted techniques. These works, reminiscent of topographic land masses, are built from layers of geometric forms and vibrant colors. Craven notes that Leary’s art is driven by a fascination with "different systems of organization; processes of organization and how we understand it". By merging algorithmic processes with an organic artistic approach, Leary’s sculptures emerge as intricate, hyper-ordered landscapes that challenge perceptions of chaos and order. These "absurd collections of maps" are not navigational tools but visual investigations of space, translating digital languages into physical forms.
Jacob Leary’s art challenges viewers to reconsider the nature of beauty, order, and reality. Through his maximalist approach and philosophical inquiries, Leary creates immersive visual experiences that transform mundane materials into provocative, richly layered works. His exploration of complex systems and digital processes reflects a deep engagement with contemporary themes, inviting viewers to navigate the intricate terrains of his imagination.
BRONWYN HILL Bronwyn Hill is an early career Brisbane-based artist. Hill’s practice explores themes of emotional fragility, societal anxiety and environmental disconnect, often through the use of highly detailed self-portraiture. Drawn from her own personal narratives, her paintings articulate deep and often complex psychological states that require her to embrace feelings of vulnerability and exposure. Whilst profoundly subjective and private in their origin, her images succeed in tapping into shared experiences of mental health and physicality, embodying recognisably human experiences of doubt, longing and rumination.
Insects and plants also feature in Hill’s work. They can be observed tucked within the folds of sheets, crawling across tabletops, or forming across the body. These small, glistening inclusions symbolise various thoughts, emotions and events – the interaction between subject and insect representing the artist’s own responses to stressors taking place in her life. These small intrusions also trigger impulsive, instinctual reactions ultimately questioning ideas of the ‘outside’ and ‘other’. In this new suite of works for Sydney Contemporary, Bronwyn Hill explores themes of compassion fatigue, apathy, and escapism through vivid and symbolic imagery. One painting juxtaposes a scene of domestic duties with self-destructive tendencies, symbolised by the hose and water, and a dragonfly that captures the figure’s fleeting attention.
Another work reflects on the concept of self-imposed isolation. The figure in the painting, accompanied by a spider weaving a web between open hands, embodies the artist's tendency to withdraw into creative solitude, turning negative thoughts into productive energy.
A third painting illustrates dissociation with a figure absentmindedly overwatering a plant, highlighting a sense of internal disconnection. The final piece embraces chaos with vibrant colours and a condensed composition drawing viewers into a hypnotic, immersive experience.
With striking technical skill and absolute clarity, Hill’s oil paintings bring together an enduring interest in the human condition alongside a deep reverence for the natural world beyond us.
