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The
Artist Abroad
28
March - 27 April,
2003
Tue - Sun: 11.00am - 6.00pm
Galleries One, Two and Foyer
"Journeys, like artists, are born not made. A
thousand different circumstances contribute to
them." Lawrence Durrell
The artists showing in these three interlocking
exhibitions have very different practices but share
one thing in common - they all made their work
whilst on an overseas residency. Joachim Froese won
an Australia Council bursary to spent two months
last year in Barcelona developing the next phase of
his still-life series. Entitled Rhopography
these immaculately constructed images employ
art-historical aesthetics to elevate the forgotten
trifles of the everyday. In contrast, Lynne
Roberts-Goodwin's colour images present the falcons
and falconers of the Arabian Desert on a grand
scale. This University supported residency was
arranged by the artist through the cooperation of
the Environmental Research Wildlife Development
Agency in the UAE, Sheikh Zaid bi Sultan al
Nahayyan, ruler of the United Arab Emirates and the
Australian Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Finally, the
artistic duo Rose Farrell & George Parkin,
having won a travel bursary in the form of a Deacon
Graham and James/Arts 21 Award, headed for Beijing
to find out more about the history and contemporary
practices of medicine in China.
Three different artistic practices, three diverse
forms of financial support, three different
continents, but one common aim: to be artists
abroad.
Joachim
Froese
Rhopography,
2002-03
Joachim Froese's extended body of work features
carefully arranged still-life images composed
across several photographic frames. The early part
of the series made in Queensland feature beetles
and bugs playing out what appear to be epic dramas
of life, conflict and death. Painstakingly
constructed these images suggested a grand
animation which belied their humble origins and
time-consuming construction. Borrowing the archaic
word for a still life he called the series
Rhopography (from rhopos: small wares,
little objects, trifles).
Joachim won an Australia Council bursary and from
April 2002 spent three months in Barcelona. Here he
influenced by the work of the seventeenth century
Spanish still-life painters and especially Juan
Sanchez Cotán (1561-1627). Cotán's
paintings are a cogent mix of precise composition
and naturalism to which Joachim was attracted.
These images made as a result of his residency in
Barcelona exchange the oversized insect life of
Queensland for the overripe fruits and picked-clan
sardines of Catalunya.
"In a sense what you see on the wall is a Spanish
meal gone badly wrong. The idea was there in
Australia, but it took shape in Spain in a very
distinctly Spanish way. I realise this even more as
I continue this body of work here in Australia. The
work made here already has a different feel to
it…"
Lynne
Roberts-Goodwin
Azure,
2003
Lynne Robert-Goodwin's falconry project grew
out of artistic explorations of the trade and
export of animals undertaken with the Australian
Quarantine Inspection Service (AQUIS). Set in the
Arabian Peninsula, azure presents the
falcons and falconers of Sheikh Zaid bi Sultan al
Nahayyan, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates
(UAE). The falcons are symbols of both contemporary
power and ancient tradition - "the present as
existed in the past," as the artists puts
it.
These images were made earlier in 2003 while Lynne
was on an intense residency in UEA as the guest of
the Environmental Research Wildlife Development
Agency (ERWDA). The residency was funded by the
University of News South Wales and the Australian
Research Council. Working deep in the desert with
four royal falconers and a cook, they "enacted,
one could say, a Bedouin nomadic trail … at
times crossing the ancient Frankincense Trail of
700BC." The works in this exhibition seek to
find, as the artist puts it, "a broader and
more expansive interpretation of portraiture and
cultural representation which resists the
historical notions of the exotic."
Lynne has been invited back to UAE to travel with
Sheikh Zaid bi Sultan al Nahayyan's falconers and
80 of his falcons to Turkmenistan to witness the
great Falcon Release. This event is currently
delayed as result of the war in Iraq.
Rose
Farrell & George
Parkin
Shao
Qi Exercises, 2000
Beijing TV Dentist, 2002
Rose Farrell & George Parkin have established
international reputations for their offbeat
fine-art images exploring ancient medical
treatments and equipment - pulleys, bandages,
splints and all the paraphernalia of early western
medicine. In 1999 they won the Deacon Graham and
James/Arts 21 Award for a proposal to undertake a
four-month residency in Beijing to explore ancient
Chinese medicine. Such a visit proved almost
impossible for private citizens working on their
own, but they found out through AsiaLink in
Melbourne that attempts were being made to
establish an international residency program at the
Beijing Academy. Their project provided the impetus
to see the residency realised, through the hard
work and persistence of the Redgate Gallery and its
director Brian Wallace, who now runs the program
with the Academy.
Whilst in China, Rose and George prepared a number
of pieces of work, one of which, A Thousand
Golden Remedies, was shown recently at the
Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the
Meridian exhibition. In the work for this
exhibition they present a set of twelve prints
depicting the traditional Qi Gong exercises, which
date back many thousands of years. They are
performed by Shao Qi, who lends his name to the
title of the work. The figures are small within a
larger, elongated area of black suggesting a
precious Chinese scroll.
Opposite the grid is a DVD projection of footage
shot from a Chinese television screen. It depicts
the unlikely and somewhat gruesome info-tainment of
the Beijing TV Dentist.
Image Credits:
• Joachim Froese, Rhopography
#25, 2002
• Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, yashen +
sheikhs saqqar, 2003
• Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, arabian
desert al qanas #1, 2003
• Rose Farrell & George Parkin,
Curing Conjunctive Congestion,
2002
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