INSPIRATIONS: FROM THE GROUND UP
Goods Shed Inglewood
Chrisanne Blennerhassett, Prue McAdam, Mel Ogden, Richard Sullivan, Teresa Seismaa, Kate Smith
Artist Kate Smith says, when you want to feel better, look at nature. That simple truth runs through the works of this inspired group of artists, uniting the exhibition from the ground up. In the old railway Goods Shed, with its worn floor and rough walls, you’ll take a walk into forests and look up into the skies, you’ll see how the imagination transforms, into paintings both abstract and realistic, into tactile objects of practical beauty, prints that combine text with texture, earth art drawings. You’ll find forms and materials that contrast and complement, in an exhibition that is both contemplative and energetic. Truly the work of art.
Event
Sunday 5 October 11am-noon
The How and Why of Inspiration
In-conversation with Chrisanne Blennerhasset, Prue McAdam and Richard Sullivan.
Goods Shed, Inglewood
Chrisanne Blennerhassett is a visual artist printmaker who works out of her home studio near Newstead. Her works include Eart Art, collographs, linocuts and drawings: As a printmaker with a deep concern for the health of the planet, my work carries an environmental edge. Birds are a constant source of inspiration, their beauty, flight, and the fear of vanishing species are all reasons that drive my practice.
Prue McAdam My work mostly begins in landscape and emerges as an abstracted version of the shapes, lines, and colours I noticed initially. I use mixed media and add and erase until comfortable with how the compositional elements talk to each other. Recent places that have influenced my work include outback Western NSW and where I live on Dja Dja Wurrung Country.
Mel Ogden was born in Tokyo, Japan, and lived in Singapore, the United States and Taiwan, returning to live in Australia to attend University. She currently lives in South Bullarto. She is a land artist and ceramicist, whose work includes the Lyonville ‘reverie’ project and the Garden of Fire and Water in Avoca. Mel makes ceramic tableware and ikebana vessels and vases, which continue the sculptural practice of her landscape forms on a smaller scale. The aim is to make works that stand on their own merits as sculptural objects, while also providing unique forms that complement and support ikebana arrangements.
Teresa Seismaa Born in Melbourne but raised in Swan Hill, Teresa discovered a love for art at a young age: “I can remember my mother buying me a full set of Derwent coloured pencils for Christmas and that was it, I was hooked. I studied art in High School and as an adult I was most fortunate to be taken under the most generous wings of Jan Lawler, Terry Jarvis, lyn Mellody and Ragina Hona. I started in oils and won a set of Pastels as an art prize and worked predominantly in them for many years returning to oils a few years ago. The ocean and our beautiful landscape have been my muse with some animal portrait commissions thrown in. Nothing beats a great day painting.”
Kate Smith is a multi-disciplinary artist and creative director, working from her home studio in the Muckleford Forest near Castlemaine. Her practice spans painting, embroidery, multimedia, and design, creating both bold, expressive works and delicate, intimate pieces. Inspired by nature and emotion, Kate distils moments and ideas into layered visual poetry that speaks to the many facets of the human experience of nature.
Richard Sullivan My works in the show Inspirations: From The Ground Up take the show’s title quite literally. Printmaking, drawing and collage are used to interpret land, waterways, trees and the bush in Box Ironbark Country in the vicinity of the Loddon River.
