Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Contemporary Australian and Aboriginal paintings, sculpture, original prints and drawings

EXPLORATION 9
*New Emerging Artists*
May 26 - June 13

RY DAVID BRADLEY : JEAN LYONS : BEN McKEOWN : LISA O'FLYNN
JOHN PARKINSON : DAVID PITT : MICHAEL STANIAK : JEE YOUNG PARK

RY DAVID BRADLEY


Passus I ink on silk 119 x 97cm		Passus II ink on silk 119 x 97cm

Bradley's softly resonant works appear to provide updates to the lineage of various moments in the history of Western painting, however materially they address emerging vocabularies of the information generation, substituting a knowledge of art historical images with screen based manipulations and interventions suggesting a passage to experience and re-interpret such cultural memory. Left with a residue of the transference, his works offer an enquiry into both the painterly and the digital components of new media practices.

JEAN LYONS


Giant Tree Floating, 2009 oil and enamel on canvas 122 x 137cm

Using a monochrome palette and matt and glossy surfaces Jean Lyons' high gloss enamel paintings look more like prints than paintings. The silhouetted forms of trees, rocks and sky are decorated and embellished with mottled patterns and flowers, combat camouflage and bar-codes. These are repeated motifs stirred by disparate ideas of displacement and belonging; chaos and harmony; transience and permanence. Like a piece of Balinese shadow puppetry her surreal environments reveal a strange and precarious drama.

BEN McKEOWN


Country 1 acrylic on canvas 153 x 158cm		Country 2 acrylic on linen 92 x 122cn

McKeown's Australian Indigenous heritage is a steady source of inspiration in his works. He draws on country and his place in the complex and differing landscapes and communitys found within, from his traditional country on the West Coast of South Australia to his place as a young gay man living in Melbourne. His work deals with issues faced by many Indigenous people in Australia.

LISA O'FLYNN


Transient Breeze, 2009 MDF, steel wire, mirrors, enamel paint 120 x 120 x 90cm

O'Flynn's installations, video works and paintings explore the reflective qualities of colour and light. Forms shine against one another's surfaces to create a third, elusive dimension.

JOHN PARKINSON


Goldern Age, 2009 digital vinyl print on board 80 x 80cm	Highway, 2009 digital vinyl print on board 80 x 80cm	Sugartops, 2009 digital vinyl print on board 80 x 80cm

John Parkinson likes moving around the city, enjoys the potential of getting lost in neglected parts of buildings. Curious about anything concealed or cordoned off his photographs are taken on meandering expeditions into department stores, train stations, through backstreets and other public spaces. Once in the confines of the studio, artificial landscapes are built from these photographs, playing with the familiarity of the cityscape and its logic to produce an other worldly, compelling new image.

DAVID PITT


Untitled 1 oil on canvas 25.5 x 36cm	Untitled 2 oil on canvas 18 x 23cm	Untitled 3 oil on canvas 20 x 26cm


Untitled 4 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm		Untitled 5 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm

David Pitt's oil paintings examine concepts of light and shade in an attempt to bridge the gap between the unknown and the witnessed. His small studies of unassuming moments - a tree in a park, someone holding a lantern, on old lamp shade glisten with silky blackness and golden warmth. Utalising the illuminatory and fleeting quality of sun, flame and globe each scene houses within it a poignancy and emotional purity evocative of the incommunicable human visual experience.

MICHAEL STANIAK


Untitled 1 oil on canvas 180 x 130 cm	Untitled 2 oil on canvas 180 x 120 cm	Untitled perspex, wood, fluorescent lights, silicon 160 x 123 x 123 cm0

Thousands of years ago, the concept of space stretched across distances only measurable by observation but as technology progressed, the distance travelled increased and the speed at which it could happen reduced dramatically. At this moment, satellites that have conquered cosmic space orbit the globe providing us with the means to be almost anywhere at anytime. Staniak's luminous oil paintings and translucent marquets transport the viewer to a very different time and space.

JEE YOUNG PARK


DoJung plastic 280 x 220cm

The title of Jee Young Parks installation 'DoJung' recalls an old Korean word used to describe a process or a journey to reach a destination or to achieve something. Referring to both the experience of making and engaging with a work of art her immersive environments literally take the viewer on a DoJung. Layers of thin plastic sheeting part ways to reveal a pathway through which to travel. The physical sensation of this encased and enveloping environment soften the senses - disorientating and quiet.