Iain Dawson Gallery ~ Exhibitions ~ featuring young emerging contemporary Australian and Asian Artists and Art

	2008 Exhibitions
View exhibition	Bundit Puangthong 15 - 26 July 2008 Sydney’s newest contemporary art gallery is set to launch with the first ever Sydney viewing of Thai artist BUNDIT PUANGTHONG. Bundit Paungthong is a Melbourne based contemporary Thai artist, whose paintings focus on the rich cross cultural dialogue taking place in modern Australian society. Puangthong relates traditional Thai legends and religious tales, as well as commenting on political events currently taking place in Thailand, Burma, and in particular the relationship of the region with the United States and Australia. This exhibition is a classic East meets West tale, Puangthong draws inspiration in equal measures from legendary New York painter, Jean-Michel Basquiat and stories and fables from his Thai upbringing.

View exhibition	Maree Alexander Behind Closed Doors 5 - 16 August 2008 "How can the cold media of porcelain and glass be so sexual? Maree Alexander manages to blend the hospital with the brothel, the sanitized with the fecund. Illogical as it may sound she manages to make the sterile erotic." Ashley Crawford Editor Photofile Magazine "Maree Alexander's photographs of domestic objects and vessels draw inspiration from the still-life genre in art. Their formal arrangements and curious juxtapositions are playful and at times suggestive, giving them an almost human quality. They seem to speak, touch, nestle and droop." Rachel Kent Senior Curator Museum of Contemporary Art

View exhibition	Mike Chavez 19 - 30 August 2008 Mike Chavez is a Melbourne based artist whose works have been exhibited in solo, group and juried exhibitions across Australia. Mike has been “nominated as one of the top 20 artists under 35 in Australia" by an independent panel of curators and arts writers assembled by Art Melbourne 06. He was featured in New Generation, a showcase of emerging artists who are “doing important work and should be considered seriously by collectors and astute investors.” His paintings based on the Australian ute explore the themes of racism and parochialism through their use of bold images, slogans and repetition. In works featuring anthropomorphized animal characters he examines the complexities of the human condition while in another series entitled La Familia, he looks at life’s daily travails. Chavez’s exploration of his Filipino heritage through the western lens of post post modernism gives his work a unique and powerful impact.

View exhibition	Hanna Hoyne 16 - 27 September 2008 “The Protectornaut provides customized safety for interior travel and the extreme hazards of living”

View exhibition	Angela Grimsdale 30 September - 11 October 2008 This series explores the laws of chance through the effect of gravity on paint. I discovered a process by chance where I simply inject paint into balloons, blow them up and leave them to dry. When the paint has dried, they are taken outside in the direct sun and cut open, which releases the inside tension. The sun then activates them, shrivelling the paint inside into rippled patterns in intricate, beautiful and unexpected ways. After peeling away the latex of the balloon I am left with an amazing sculpture made out of paint. I use the same process for each balloon. There are minor refinements and adjustments I make to the process, such as using different coloured paint or paint with different chemical structures. The results for each are very different as chance determines the outcome for each balloon.

View exhibition	all the beauty you will ever need four important new artists 14 - 25 October SIMON COLLINS KIRRILY HAMMOND MICHAEL MORAN JANICE KUCZKOWSKI

View exhibition	Simon Collins Art Sydney 08 - NEW GENERATION 23 - 26 October Please join us at Art Sydney 08 this weekend from Thursday night to Sunday at the Royal Hall of Industires, Moore Park. Iain Dawson Gallery will be representing Sydney painter SIMON COLLINS on a Renault New Generation stand, for exciting emerging artists. All Renault New Generation Artists are in the running for a people's choice prize of $5,000. Voting is now open online, to vote for Simon, please go to - http://www.artsydney08.com.au/as08/newgeneration.asp This will also be supported by entry forms in the New Generation area at Art Sydney. All votes will be counted at 11.30 on Sunday and the winner announced at the fair at 12 noon. All voters are entered into a draw to win a Renault weekend driving experience, including two nights at Bellachara Boutique Hotel in Gerringong. Hope to see you at the fair!

View exhibition	Louis Pratt The Last Time I Saw You :) 28 October - 9 November "This show is in the tradition of Vaintas, but not in the morose sentimentality of the 15-century concept. Instead I’m asking you to freshen up your afterlife." This show is a playful foray into a dimension where teenage ghosts rule and have their whole afterlives ahead of them. Be prepared, and get ready to be immersed in a world of giants, ghosts of giants, in fact, giant ghosts with a grafitti obsession. This is the latest world to spring, fully formed, from the ever creative mind of sculptor, film maker and painter Louis Pratt. Gravity poses no threat to Pratt’s newest multimedia installation, “The last time I saw you:)” sculptures emerge from the ceiling and a new short film, in 3D, will premiere at Sydney’s newest space for visionary emerging artists.

View exhibition	Gina Haywood Frozen Light 11 – 22 November The sublime charcoal on paper works of master draughtsman Gina Haywood are presented for the first time this November. Haywood manipulates digital images, solarising, increasing contrast and manipulating poses, then, using charcoal and the ever present q-tip, transforms these original photgraphs into works that sit beyond both photography and drawing, a curious hybrid, and evolution in looking. Iain Dawson 2008 "Severed from their roots, the Moth Plant (Araujia sericifera), the subject of the works, can no longer stay alive, although a process of renewal goes on as the drying pods eventually burst to disperse their air-born cargo in anticipation of future regeneration. The intensity of detail in the charcoal drawings captures a fragility and strength, a perverse beauty to be seen amongst the decay of nature in an increasingly sterile and anxious industrial world. The viewer is encouraged to look at that which is mostly overlooked or absent in our urban environment. To gaze with deliberation at the usually unseen as it is here revealed to be worthy of focus and deliberation, to put aside our daily scanning and enjoy a sensual immersion." Gina Haywood 2008

View exhibition	The Artist's Lunch Portraits of Great Australian Artists 25 November - 6 December Food can be nothing, and everything. It can be fast, a culinary one-night stand, evanescent as a drunken midnight feast. Or it can be slow, slower than paint: that special bottle cellared for so long it's older than your grandchild. Whether to cook fast or slow was just one of the questions I took to each of the artists. I wanted to know things such as: Are artists as creative in the kitchen as they are on canvas? Does good taste in art follow through to good taste in food? Will the maxim 'tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are' hold true? Asking all of these questions posed some challenges. An alternative title to The Artist's Lunch could have been Talking With My Mouth Full. When I played back the interview tapes I'd surprised, and a little embarrassed, at how much time I had spent eating on the job. The discovery that I'd been noisily demolishing a piece of English shortbread throughout the course of an earnest discussion with Jeffrey Smart about the incontestable virtues of table manners, made me subsequently wary of steering the conversation too far in any self-defeating direction. Whichever direction the journey took, there were flashes of insight. John Olsen interrupting a brilliant disquisition on Spanish cuisine to remark that paella is like the sun; Mirka Mora explaining how she reads recipes as though they are ballets; Allan Mitelman pointing out which Polish polka should accompany the making of flaki wolowe. Most people don't know what they eat ... much less who they are. The artists' conversations invariably circled back, from the belly to the eye. Cornucopias of fruit and flowers, still lifes of pheasant and hare, idyllic picnics of bread, wine and cheese - what is it about artists and food? We don't immediately associate musicians with the good life. Nor do we connect architects with appetite or filmmakers with fine dining. Writers and liquor is a natural combination. Artists, though, seem to have a thing for food. Is this symbiosis hard-wired? After all, cave paintings show us lunch on the hoof long before they show us religion. Or is it just this: artist's know how to have a good time, and eating and cooking promise the very best of good times. Alice McCormick

View exhibition	Adam Laerkesen Cartonnage 9 -20 December 2008

View exhibition	HOT in the city summer group exhibition 22/12/08 to 31/01/09

Exhibitions

Exhibitions Archive

2008 Exhibitions

Bundit Puangthong

Maree Alexander

Behind Closed Doors

Mike Chavez

Hanna Hoyne

Angela Grimsdale

all the beauty you will ever need

four important new artists

Simon Collins

Art Sydney 08 - NEW GENERATION

Louis Pratt

The Last Time I Saw You :)

Gina Haywood

Frozen Light

The Artist's Lunch

Portraits of Great Australian Artists

Adam Laerkesen

Cartonnage

HOT in the city

summer group exhibition