Past Exhibitions...
"Frequency "
Ry David Bradley
Ed Wakeham
Stephanie May Eather
Opening Thursday 21 April from 6pm
Michael Koro Galleries
invites you to Frequency, three Melbourne-based artists pursue the elusive technical and ideological boundaries of art-making on paper and digital print.
Ry David Bradley: is a digital master of the virtual mark. In this technology-driven age, Bradley has aligned himself with the machine made print, but this relationship is not without some irony. Bradley subverts the notion of the hand made and adds some warmth to the general electric chill. His pioneering practice of digital print and installation is beautifully executed to a world that has become so accustomed to computer-generated graphics.
Ed Wakeham: The illustrated kinetics of local Multiculturalism. Wakeham is the local thinking global and his latest work Mix 2011 is a gargantuan exploration into the last few decades of Melbourne’s post-war multiculturalism. Can this artist blast the migrant tale into the present from its exploding past once and for all?
Stephanie May Eather: Chaos ordered on to paper. The repeated stroke continues to drive the obsessiveness of the hand escaping the perception of the eye. The imagery is derived from one motif; an old typewriter spun round and round till your eyes see the vibrations operate in the thousands of graphite marks.
Phil Edwards and Tess McKenzie
11 March - 27 March 2011
Opening night: Friday 11 March 6pm
Phil Edwards + Tess McKenzie is Michael Koro’s debut show for 2011. Together these artists represent the boundaries of Melbourne’s art world. Both artists work across media and technique, both artists could be confined in a post painterly description and both use technology like it is primitive building equipment. But Phil Edwards is a senior lecturer at RMIT and Tess McKenzie is a recent graduate of VCA.
The artists approach painting, sculpture and new media like they are parts of one assemblage. The hastiness of their approach is what gives their work an impulsive, raw authenticity. Both artists are communicating directly to the viewer by a number of means and the effect is powerful slap in the face, full of texture, ambiguity and irreverence.
Michael Koro is proud to be opening our first show for 2011 with such convincing and authoritative artists. Phil Edwards + Tess McKenzie opens on Friday the 11th of March and continues to Sunday 27th of March .
This Friday will also be the launch of this years program on the Melbourne Propaganda Windows.
'Blender Studios Christmas Exhibition 2010'
Adi |
Geoffrey Carran |
Ed Den Lim |
Adrian Doyle |
Stephanie May Eather |
Drew Funk |
Joseph Flynn |
Joel Gailer |
Georg |
Heesco |
Rachel Jessie-Ra |
Kristin McIver |
Michael Meneghetti |
Michael Peck |
Tim Sterling |
Regan Tamanui |
Keith Wong |
|
Michael Koro Galleries' final show of the year is a three day only event showcasing the infamous artists of the Blender Studios. This will be a highlight on your Christmas calendar, the cross section of artists working in the Blender includes everything from installation to street art. with some of Melbourne's most intriguing and obtuse artists exposing their studio labours in the gallery which fronts their creative workshop.
This is a must see and for three days only! You will have to be quick but the reward will be well worth it!
Michael Koro Galleries is proud to host the Blender Studios crew, we hope to see you there on Friday 17th of December at 6pm for the opening of this annual event.
Clockwise from top:
Tim Sterling, Eye Beam (detail), 2010
Paperclips, cable ties
Tim Sterling, Wall, 220x150 (detail), 2010
Marker on paper
Tim Sterling, Eye Beam, 2010
Paperclips and cable ties
Tim Sterling received the Anne and Gordon Samstag scholarship in 2004 enabling him to be awarded a Master’s of Fine Arts from Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. He has been a recipient of two Australia Council Studio residencies in Milan 2008 and Tokyo 2010. Tim’s work has been exhibited in various places across Australia and around the world such as hatched (WA), Primavera (NSW), Roslyn Oxley 9 (NSW), AEAF (SA), The Physics Room (NZ) and Consortium (Netherlands). He also participated in Model Mania a workshop presented by The Domus Academy with Olafur Eliasson in Venice, Italy 2005.
Tim’s exhibition ‘metamaterials’ explores his interest in how perceptions of our environment are built. Architecture and weaving are used as analogies for perceptions built from social, institutional and media influences. Large drawings made from repetitive mark making represent architecturalstructures and building materials. The hand drawn quality of these drawings transforms and undermines associations of repetition with stability and control. Similarly the 3-dimensional objects present symbols of control. The hand made and repetitive textural surfaces work as both structural support and as a shifting surface.
This exhibition will open at Michael Koro Galleries, 110 Franklin st, on Friday 19th of November, 6-9pm, and will run until Sunday 12th of December.
Tim Sterling
Electric Chair, 2010
Paperclips and cable ties
Tim Sterling
Wall, 2010
220x150cm
Marker on paper
Michael Koro Galleries Present
'P astel
O il
P rint'
Edward McKinlay
Stephen Giblett
Dan Sibley
Blender Projekt Space: Georgia Smith
Opening Night Friday
Edward McKinlay
Attainment, 2010
Pastel and gouache on paper
100 x 140 cm\
The forthcoming show at Michael Koro presents three young artists working with traditional means to present the most immediate and pressing aesthetic concerns.
Dan Sibley returns to his printmaking foundations to produce a suite of woodcuts in unlimited editions. Pursuing a democratic approach Sibley’s prints will be accessible both financially and visually. Far from being an attempt to encourage sales Sibley’s approach reflects printmaking’s origins as a mass produced tool for change, always a political satirist Sibley is reflecting Noel Counihans unlimited edition of coal miners which were produced to fulfil what he saw as a need to infuse art into the lives of the general populace.
Stephen Giblett’s highly polished hype real oil paintings at first seem to be executed in the style of the Edwardian still life, but with some consideration we can see they are charged with contemporary ideas of the of the loss of tradition and the discarded antique. While this may sound like an oxymoron, concepts of tradition, its relevance or lack thereof are at the forefront of contemporary thinking. As a secular and open society we are struggling to define ourselves without the foundations of tradition. In this Giblett is aligning himself with the Dutch Vanita, while depicting opulence he reveals its menacing undercurrents.
Edward McKinlay’s pastels look to the pop artist Richard Hamilton for their shattered surfaces and interspersing images. Figures fade into interior scenes and still lifes merge with ocean-scapes. Lovingly crafted McKinlays pastels again look to the fractured self and isolated figure in a busy world of man made attractions and constant distraction. McKinlay’s works evoke these ideas through his sense of surface and mastery of his medium.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
'Forum'
Benedict Ernst
Bonnie Lane
Lisa O'Flynn & Herman Fluit
Nikki Lam
Blender Projekct Space: Fiona McKerrell
Opening Night Friday
Five artists present their strikingly divergent views of the contemporary world, from the
disturbing and dangerous sculptures of Benedict Ernst to playful fields of poppies sculptured
from playground toys in the collaboration of Lisa O’Flynn and Herman Fluit. Bonnie Lane and
Nikki Lam render their ideas through the lens of the camera and digital video, looking at the
macro view of domesticity in Nikki Lam's images and a vast skyline in Berlin as a hot air balloon
hovers past in the video work of Bonnie Lane.
Michael Koro is proud to host this group of young and versatile artists, opening at 6pm on
Friday the 17th of September continuing to Sunday the 17th of October.
Nikki Lam
Primarily a photo media artist Nikki Lam is early career, having first exhibited in 2008 at the
MADCube Artspace in Monash University. Since then her career has expanded internationally to Hong
Kong and Italy, notably a recipient of the Monash fine art studio residency in Prato Italy. Lam has
received some notable awards in her short career including the Alliance Francaise Prize. For Michael
Koro she continues her intriguing investigation into domestic relationships, the strange tension between
a man and women in the home environment.
Benedict Ernst
Is an artist of immense technical and conceptual skill, a winner of the Japan Foundation Visual Arts Award and a recipient of a NAVA visual arts and crafts grant. He has held successful exhibitions at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts and Kings ARI. His work for Michael Koro takes his Arte Povera aesthetic to a grungier and more violent extreme with sculptures adorned with nails and detritus reminiscent of post-contact Polynesian weapons.
Lisa O’Flynn + Herman Fluit
This is O’Flynn and Fluit’s first foray into the art world as a collaborative duo, while O’Flynn has a background in art and many career highlights under her belt, being short listed for the coveted SIEMANS-RMIT Scholarship and a recipient of the Tammura Colours Visual Arts Scholarship, Fluit has a background as an aeronautical engineer. Both artists bring entirely necessary skills to their partnership, between them they create strange yet innocent sculptures that emerge out of the gallery like fields of flowers, yet on closer inspection the flower buds are the common playground toy, cats eye marbles.
Bonnie Lane
Currently completing her honours year in Fine Arts at Monash University Lane has a list of prizes
behind her including winner of the Ephemeral sculpture category for the Moreland sculpture prize,
a Fringe festival visual art award and two residencies in Europe. Having just returned from Berlin,
Lane has exhibited nationally and internationally her ideas are in tune with the zeitgeist and her
work for Michael Koro is bound to express the most central themes in the international arena.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
'A Sweeter System of Donation (Apple Flavour)'
Keith Wong
Opening Night Friday
Michael Koro presents two potentially scandalous exhibitions for the August show, Keith Wong's A Sweeter System of Donation (Apple flavour) and Robin Healing who represents himself as subject, performance and artist as the one entity.
Both artists are leaping from the barely formulated platform of relational aesthetics. They engage with
the art gallery as both a stage and a prop and invite attendees to be part of their self-prescribed
psychosis through interactive performance or begging the viewer to donate, by a philanthropic gesture,
thus incorporating the viewer and complete the work…
Michael Koro Galleries: Proudly presenting Keith Wong:
“In support of the artist, a system of donation has been devised. A system that will only accept coins at the point of insertion.
To give, the artist would ask that you add to the works value by adding to its weight.
The measurement of which also incorporates a consideration of apples.
An essential ingredient that holds the whole system in place, as the artist sets the gift in motion, to achieve in this work, the exploits of giving.”
Melbourne Propaganda Windows and Blender Projeckt Space:
Proudly presenting Robin Healing, a unique individual who possesses a divinely magnificent gift that defies scientific understanding and human comprehension. Are we ready as a species to accept this gift that spans beyond our conventionally accepted normality? Are we ready to open our hearts without the boundaries our minds so easily impose to become childlike again in our ability to receive nourishment divinely offered as our birthright? Find out for yourselves in a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet Healing in the flesh as he makes 2 weekly appearances over the duration of his tenure with us.
Dates:
Friday 6th August 7.30pm (special opening event)
Thursday 12th August 6.30pm
Saturday 14th August 2pm
Thursday 19th August 6.30pm
Saturday 21st August 2pm
Thursday 26th August 6.30pm
Saturday 28th August 2pm (final session)
Michael Koro Galleries Present
'Tomorrow'
Kristen McIver
Ry David Bradley
Valentina Palonen
Opening Night Friday
Three artists from glaringly different practices present alternate standpoints in the upcoming July Michael Koro exhibition.
Tomorrow is an exploration into 21 century consumerism, animism and post painterly abstraction. The artists combine installation, print, painting and new media in strange and fantastic assemblages.
Please join the artists for the opening on 2 July from 6pm. Tomorrow runs until 1 August at Michael Koro Galleries.
Introducing
Kristen McIver utilises materials such as neon, acrylic and hyper-gloss paint to explore the themes of desire, aspiration and consumerism in the 21st century. A VCA graduate, McIver’s work has been selected as finalist in a number of awards including the Montalto Sculpture Prize and City of Whyalla Art Prize. In 2009, McIver’s work Room To Breathe II was the recipient of the Elliot Family Ten Year Collection Award. McIver’s work is held in private collections in Victoria and New South Wales.
Ry David Bradley bends visual and photographic samples through a combination of programs and software to produce his prints onto silk, cotton and Plexiglas. He is most recently a finalist in the Metro Gallery Art Award and was selected for the director curated annual exhibition Exploration 9 at Flinders Lane Gallery. Bradley completed digital media production at Four Corners in London in 2001 and continued with a Visual Arts-New Media degree at Swinburne University of Technology in 2003. Bradley’s work is held in private collections in Australia and Europe.
Valentina Palonen draws on motifs of inter-species transmogrification as a means of exploring the recent revival of animism in the Western world. Palonen employs a combination of conspicuously artificial materials and various visual techniques to sculpturally manipulate the idea of metamorphosis. She has completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Southern Cross University and is currently undertaking an additional Fine Arts Honours year program at VCA. Palonen's work has featured in various exhibitions both locally and nationally.
Michael Koro Galleries has hosted a series of sell-out exhibitions since its 2008 inception, featuring artists ranging from infamous street stencil artists to classic Australian painters. The gallery is attached to the influential Blender Studios, a research and studio complex founded by local artist Adrian Doyle in 2001, that has served as a base for many of Melbourne’s most seminal and successful emerging artists.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
'New Australian Landscapes'
Adrian Doyle
Opening Night Friday 21 May 2010
Contemporary artist Adrian Doyle presents New Australian Landscapes, exhibiting from the 21st May until 27th June. This year’s collection of twelve paintings is further evidence of Doyle’s suburban ideology and his sympathetic view of the Australian suburb.
Employing a combination of mediums, Doyle’s paintings converse with the viewer through an elaborate optical language of bold geometric shapes, iconic symbols and a variegated colour scheme. Portraying the home as a universal entity New Australian Landscapes highlights the absence of uniformity in a space popularly defined by its lack of originality, suburbia. In Doyle’s new work the realities of ordinary life dissolve on the canvas into a decadent abstract, colour-field.
Having completed a Master in Fine Arts by Research in 2002 at Victorian College of the Arts, Doyle has since exhibited internationally, from group shows in Dublin, Budapest and New York to a series of successful residencies in Pakistan, China and Thailand. Doyle’s upcoming residency in France will enable him to further his investigation of the relationships between Baroque architecture and rural French landscapes. Doyle’s artwork is widely collected and included in many public and private collections, both nationally and internationally. The artist is proudly a recipient of the Pratt Family Scholarship as well as the Martin Bequest Traveling Art Scholarship. And later this year Doyle’s early stencil works will be exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia.
The founder of Blender Studios Project Space: a gallery for emerging artists, Doyle has also wielded Michael Koro Galleries into its third year. Whilst managing Melbourne Street Art Tours, Doyle is the drive behind the Napier Crew in association with an inner city council. The Napier Crew is a project that aims to form a harmonious relationship between the City of Yarra and local street artists. Doyle collaborates with both groups to promote legal graffiti space, making him a key player in helping to recognize Melbourne as a global centre of street art.
New Australian Landscapes will coincide with an installation that Doyle created specifically for the exhibition. At the back of the studio, black curtains will form the entrance into a mirrored room of dismembered bicycles. Again in this work Doyle is challenging notions of mediocrity in everyday life through the visual celebration of a common object.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
'New Print'
Joel Gailer
Opening Night Friday
4 panel form
commercial offset lithograph
30 x 42 cm
Rodeo
haybale text sculpture
300 x 300 x 1500cm
America in art
commercial signwriting
600 x 200 cm
Former country Queensland man, Joel Gailer’s upcoming exhibition, which opens
Friday April 9 in Michael Koro Galleries at 110 Franklin St Melbourne, will
undoubtedly cause a stir in Melbourne’s print community.
Winning the 2008 Fremantle Print Award, for his now infamous work
Hot process, Gailer has a reputation for challenging preconceptions of
printmaking. Hot process used the commercial process of offset
lithography, and famously put the winning work in the viewers’ hands
for just four dollars. His upcoming exhibition continues to explore his
publication-based processes, but pushes the boundaries of print further still.
Gailer’s New Print work is an example of printmaking
infused with wit, irreverence and ideas – questioning the
concept of copyright, authorship, uniqueness and
distribution. In stark black and white using text and basic
forms, Gailer reinterprets print as mass production, the
unique object and the unlimited edition.
Trained as a traditional printmaker, Gailer sees print as arguably the most relevant
visual art medium, as it bridges both the contemporary visual world through print
media but is also steeped in the history of art making. Gailer’s work explores the idea
that the current visual age of mass production has its roots
in the centuries old medium of print.
Gailer’s New Print exhibition at Michael Koro Galleries
runs from April 8 – May 16. Join the artist for opening
drinks to view the works and share his ideas between 6 and
9pm on Friday the April 9.
Sponsored by
Michael Koro Galleries Present
Ash Keating
Daniel du Bern
Andrew Hutson
Marcin wojcik
Brie Trenerry
Opening night Friday
Michael Koro Galleries Present
'Surface'
Stephen Giblett
Frederick Fowler
Dan Sibley
Opening night Friday
From Friday 27th November – Sunday 20th December, three locals will present their varied visions: Dan Sibley’s pointillist Australiana, sleek and subtle oil portraits by Stephen Giblett and the infamously intricate line drawings of Frederick Fowler (NUROC).
Through his extremely refined, ‘print-by-hand’ technique, Dan Sibley explores the associations between visual syntax and culture, and plays with the ability of pointillism to create certain expectations and assumptions in an Australian context. Contemporary icons of Australian culture are unexpectedly appropriated: Ken Done postcards, twee tourist snaps, or, in this case, the confronting imagery of flame-engulfed cars.
In stark opposition to the searing oranges of Siblett’s paintings, the portraits presented by Stephen Giblett are cool and grey, almost clinical in their hyper-realistic precision. Though best known for jewel-bright beach scenes and heavenly bodies, here Giblett renders himself and his uncle with a gentleness and reality removed from his earlier fantastic landscapes. Tiny, mundane details are delicately included, right down to the minuscule paint flecks on the uncle’s shirt.
Melbourne-based artist Fred Fowler, a.k.a. NUROC, has a long and esteemed history in Melbourne's graffiti culture. Since the tender age of sixteen, Fred has created over two hundred pieces of public art, both legal and illegal, and over fifty commissioned works. His work has been collected by the National Gallery of Australia, Multiplex, the City of Melbourne, and private collections across the globe.
Impossible to pigeonhole, Fowler’s dynamic work is full of unexpected contrasts. He juxtaposes line and pattern-based experimentation, influenced by Indigenous art from around the world, with 20th century iconography and logos. Violent, warlike imagery sits beside calm images of personal contact, sleeping women and small children.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
We Only Ever Meet On The Astral Plane
Michael Georgetti
Ross Coulter
Opening night
A long pipe emerges from the ceiling and dives into a sea of tennis balls. A makeshift trap balances precariously, perpetually waiting for a victim in an environment devoid of wildlife. A pump in a paddle pool quietly creates a painting in the corner. Everything is tense with potential movement...
Duet exhibition We Only Ever Meet On The Astral Plane, created collaboratively by Michael Georgetti and Ross Coulter, explores interactions, relationships and tensions. The dualities of space and matter, the real and the pictorial, and stillness and movement are juggled and juxtaposed in a series of large-scale installations.
[The ways in which things move, the ways in which boundaries are traversed, and the ways in which things affect one another.]
Michael Georgetti’s [large-scale installations] employ a broad range of unexpected materials, from wood, rope and tape to water features, remote-control cars and microwaves. His practice is based in painting, installation, film and sculpture, drawing on all four disciplines to create dynamic, intermediary art linked to its environment. He has exhibited extensively in a variety of venues, including recent shows at local galleries Kings Artist’s Run Initiative and Westspace.
Melbourne-based artist Ross Coulter uses photography, video and installation to explore the tensions between the interior and exterior human worlds and the influence of technology on the human condition. Since his recent graduation from the Victorian College of the Arts, he has already exhibited locally and internationally and has been recognised with several awards. His recent performance in Lucy Guerin’s Untrained at the Sydney Opera House reflects his cross-disciplinary approach.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
Lighter than air
Jason Waterhouse
Opening night Friday
“Stuck in traffic during peak hour on Riversdale Road, Hawthorn. It’s raining. A red balloon plays dodge-the-traffic up ahead. It’s funny how ideas grow.”
Jason Waterhouse’s exhibition lighter than air is a narrative collection of new sculpture and works on paper, all developed from this small, mundane moment.
Deceptively heavy children’s toys – Quad bikes and balloons cast in bronze and aluminum – play with our perception of weight. The red balloon itself is depicted drifting between control and surrender. It exists in a state of duality, at times a message deliverer, at others an escape device. Waterhouse sometimes depicts the red balloon as a force capable of carrying away the signifiers of child hood dreams, yet at others it is depicted showing its vulnerability, left to the mercy of dark, stormy landscapes.
Opening Friday September 4 and running until October 4, the show forms Waterhouse’s seventh solo show and his first for 2009. As well as contributing to over 40 group exhibitions, the artist has been awarded with six art prizes (including the prestigious Moreland Sculpture Prize, Sculpture by the Sea and the Young Sculptors Prize), and has been recognised as a finalist for many more. He has also curated three major exhibitions, most recently Motor as part of the Contempora Festival of Sculpture, Docklands.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
Adrian Doyle
Opening Night Friday
The house is a universal icon and in its simplest form it is one of the most recognised images on earth. It has many variations though culture and climate. Yet, the overall association with the home is generally the same worldwide.
For many the home is the height of success. The Holy Grail.
For others it is unattainable. Or a prison of balanced books and responsibility. The house is where people live out their lives. It is the mitochondria of everyday existence. I love houses and homes. I am fascinated by the designs, history and all that goes on inside.
In Suburbia, houses come together to create vast suburbs. Row after row of dreams, happiness and sorrow, scar the earth to become the new, modern, and more relevant Australian landscape.
The way we engage with the landscape has changed over generations. We are an urbanised community, with an unfamiliar relationship with the rural landscape.
The romantic notion of the Australian landscape still exists. It has however been hijacked by sentimentality and Nostalgia. The true modern Australian Landscape is made up of identical clad suburban streets and small suburbs with small, but important suburban stories. It is in this mediocrity that Australia finds its greatness, and a large part of its identity…….
Opening July 9th and running until August 16th, New Australian Landscapes presents a collection of large-scale paintings by acclaimed artist Adrian Doyle, exploring the idea of the suburban home as Australian cultural icon.
Through meticulous use of colour and medium, Doyle’s paintings explore the idea of suburbia as a vast library of small, important histories, and the ways in which these stories of mediocrity form a large part of Australia’s identity.
Doyle studied painting at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts, completing his Master of Fine Arts by Research in 2002. Since then he has exhibited internationally, from group shows in Dublin, Budapest and New York to a series of successful shows throughout Asia. He has completed residencies in Pakistan, China and Thailand, and will complete a residency with Artistay in France next year, during which he will carry out an intensive investigation of the relationships between Baroque architecture and rural French landscapes.
His artwork is widely collected and is included in important national and international collections such as the National Gallery of Australia. He is a recipient of the Pratt Family Scholarship, Australia Council grants as well as the Martin Bequest Traveling Art Scholarship.
The paintings featured in New Australian Landscapes are super-detailed, multilayered creations rich in pattern and recognisable iconography. Unexpected colours – khakis, umbers, bright magentas - are masterfully harmonised, drawing beauty from visual elements of our suburban surroundings that often go unnoticed.
Exhibiting concurrently to New Australian Landscapes will be I’m Here, at Ochre Galleries from 10th to 2nd August. In addition to a selection of paintings by Doyle, the exhibition will feature contemporary Australian works by leading Australian artists that further challenge notions of the urban landscape and cultural identity.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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Paul Batt
Simon Cross
Robert Starr
Michelle Tran
Opening Night Friday
Opening May 29th and running until early July, photofigure brings together four of Australia’s most exciting contemporary photographers in an exploration of the human figure. Totaling thirteen large-scale prints, the artists’ diverse visions share themes of artifice and construction, as well as a palpable tension between banality and magnitude. From Michelle Tran’s starkly sensuous constructions to Paul Batt’s voyeuristic ode to the mundane, each image gently toys with concepts of the human figure and what constitutes a portrait.
Paul Batt’s critically acclaimed series Service Station Portraits 2006-08 has been the subject of numerous articles and essays, including a feature article in the current edition of Photofile. Poignant and sinister, the images’ seemingly lo-fi, surveillance-style execution belies a rich undercurrent of critical engagement. Leading art reviewer Robert Nelson describes the series as connecting “the everyday realities with a cosmic burden, almost reaching beyond the photography to a higher level of moral consciousness.” In their accusatory capture of unsuspecting subjects, he writes, Batt’s images “transform the idea of portraiture” (The Age, 2008). Selected exhibitions include solo shows at The Centre for Contemporary Photography and Kings Artists’ Run Initiative, as well as group shows at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for Photography.
At the age of 23, Michelle Tran has already been recognized by a number of leading national art prizes, including the National Youth Self Portrait Prize (finalist, 2008). Her quietly minimalist images, featuring footballers, fake flowers, and severely posed young women, have appeared in over 13 exhibitions and feature in the collections of the Australia Council and the Athenaeum Club. She is currently completing her Master of Fine Art at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts.
Debuting in photofigure, Robert Starr’s painterly images inject traditional, grandiose portraiture with arresting immediacy. Inhabiting an undefined, imaginary historical world, his subjects project a realness and tangibility that contrasts sharply with their constructed costumes and set-piece background.
Though strikingly bright, airy and open, the works of Simon Cross are perhaps the most mysterious of all. A lone figure in a hazmat suit conducts inscrutable outdoor experiments, waving fluorescent orange implements against a perfectly blue sky. In one image, we are allowed a glimpse of the figure’s face, but it remains shadowed, his expression elusive. Like the other images featured in thephotofigure, the work hints at a narrative that the viewer can only imagine.
Exhibiting concurrently to photofigure will be a new work by video artist Jenny Hall, to be displayed in the gallery’s Melbourne Propaganda Windows after dark. The unsettling and deeply personal imagery complements and completes the exhibition’s overarching somber mood.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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D*Face
Natalie Ryan
Jason Waterhouse
Tim Sterling
Ben Fasham
Andrew Gutteridge
Infamous and prolific, London-based multimedia street artist D*Face utilizes spray paint, stickers, posters, and stencils to challenge our surrounding ethos of conspicuous consumption. Through his adaptation and subversion of pre-existing capitalist symbols, from bank notes to billboards, D*Face encourages viewers to critically examine our increasingly bizarre, media-saturated pop culture. Until now, his intensely popular culture-jamming work has never been exhibited in Melbourne. Now, for this first outing down under, D*Face has turned his skills to sculpture – specifically, a massive mixed-media megaphone mouth. Created especially for Lifelounge’s Big Mouth Project, the sculpture dramatically calls attention to the need to ‘speak up’ in the workplace. After a once-only outing at Luna Park, the big mouth is now nestled at the end of the Blender Lane way off Franklin St. (Pushing the boundaries of what street art can be.) It is fittingly surrounded by the artwork of some of Melbourne’s most influential street artists (including Ha-Ha, Vexta, Monkey, ghostPatrol and Drew Funk).
The mouth is displayed as part of Obecjkt, an exhibition of fresh sculpture in the adjacent Michael Koro Galleries. From delicate stationery structures to languid skateboards, eerie flocked animals to multifaceted geometric hangings, the work on display reflects a wide range of cutting-edge creations.
Other artists include Jason Waterhouse, whose impressive list of accolades includes the Moreland Sculpture Prize (winner, 2005), the Damien Courtney Memorial Prize for Young Sculptors (winner, 2005), the Dame Elizabeth Murdoch Prize (winner, 2004) and finalist places in many more of Australia’s most esteemed sculpture prizes. Ben Fasham’s massive abstract forms have also been recognised by a number of leading sculpture prizes, most recently the Montalto Sculpture Prize (finalist, 2009) the Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize (finalist, 2009) and the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award (finalist, 2008).
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The credentials of all the exhibiting artists are equally exceptional: Natalie Ryan has exhibited nationally and internationally, and is currently completing a three-year studio residency at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, while Andrew Gutteridge has already hosted seven solo exhibitions since completing his Masters degree in 2005. Tim Sterling (Stamstag recipient) has studied and exhibited from Amsterdam to Venice, and has recently been awarded a grant to carry out a Australia Council studio residency in Milan.
Prolific hybrid and experimedia artist Michael Menneghetti is co-founder of the gallery’s Melbourne Propaganda Window, a permanent, public projection space for experimental video and projection artwork. Exhibiting concurrently with Obecjkt will be Melbourne based video artist Pip Ryan.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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Curated by Adrian Doyle and Joel Gailer
A rare outing of important pieces from the Michael Koro stockroom, Storage showcased the depth and variety of the gallery’s collection. The twelve contributing artists ranged from classic Australian names (David Rankin, Audrey Morton) to infamous street artists Regan “HaHa” Tamanui and A1ONE.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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Curated by Michael Fikaris
“Skulls, skulls, skulls… there are so many skulls.” Devised in conjunction with the Mexican Film Festival, this project gave 100 diverse artists the opportunity to customize one small plaster skull each. These skulls were then placed on a shelf in a continuous line around the gallery. Many of Melbourne’s street art stars contributed skulls for the exhibition.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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Dan Sibley
Dan Sibley’s pointillist paintings examine the notion of what it means to be an Australian, as well as how Australia presents itself to the rest of the world. This light-hearted critique of Australian painting - and of Australian culture – formed the first solo show at Michael Koro Galleries.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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Curated by Michael Meneghetti
The gallery’s first curated installation show featured the premiere of the Melbourne Propaganda Window, transforming the gallery’s front window into a giant projection space. A show for ‘art fags and rock terrorists’, RCD featured sculpture, installation, projection and new media by ten cutting-edge local and interstate artists:
Alex Gibson
Lou Hubbert
Zoe Scoglio
Ben Sheppard
Adrian Doyle
Michael Meneghetti
Joel Gailer
Ryan Foote
Hutch
Dan Sibley
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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Ben Frost
Jamin
Marc de Jong
A raw celebration of painting, Somedayz was punk-arse meets the Guggenheim. Ben Frost, Jamin and Marc De Jong contributed their hottest works to create a culture-jamming mashup of an exhibition.
Michael Koro Galleries Present
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Inaugural Show
Michael Koro Galleries’ inaugural exhibition showcased many of the artists who had been associated with the Blender, and who have since gone on to achieve local, national and international recognition. These young Australian art superstars included:
Adrian Doyle
Anthony Lister
Emma Van Leest
Cameron Hayes
James Dodd
Dan Sibley
Tim Sterling
Roh Singh
Regan Tamanui
Ed Wakeham
Ranging from paintings to paper-cuts, assemblages to stencils, the show’s vast variety of styles and practices highlighted the strong, diverse creativity of the Blender dynasty.
