Tuesday - Friday 11am - 6pm
Saturday 11am - 4pm

Upstairs Flinders is now calling for submissions for 2009.
Closing date: 30th September. Please call or email the gallery for further details.

Individuals represented include Elizabeth Presa, Janina Green, Brendan Lee, Andy Mac, Morry Schwartz and Meredith Turnbull, to
mention but a few.

Windblown trees, sky scapes, wetlands and sand dunes are the images that inspire Ben Fennessy's interpretation of landscape. Late afternoon light plays upon the dark tones present in Fennessy's powerful images of twisted trees and primordial forests, reflecting a sense of hope at the edge of loss.

Fennessy draws upon the influence of artists such as John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough and Fred Williams, in his use of changing light. 'At the root of his work is the English tradition of landscape painting, the pastoral and romantic landscapes…However, the intense contrasts of colour in Fennessy's paintings evoke the drama inherent in the Australian environment: fire, flood and ocean gales.

Beneath the Empire is a group exhibition exploring the influence of Australia's colonial history and its relationship to culture, identity, place and environment.

The exhibition showcases the works of Paul Kalemba, Nicola Page, and Ben McKeown - three Melbourne based artists from diverse backgrounds who themselves are products of shared colonial histories. Through a range of media including painting, drawing, print-making and installations the exhibition explores a shared colonial past and considers the shift from Imperialisation to Globalisation.

The images in Bowman's monochromatic paintings are derived from shapes and narratives belonging to roughly assembled and seemingly mismatched memories.

Bowman has collaged these 'memories' together from a box of found photographs, taken of her grandparents in Warrnambool during the 1920's. The photographs themselves share an allegorical resonance with The Duino Elegies, a book of poetry by Rainer Marie Rilke.

The resulting paintings are an unusual mixture of pathos and laughter. They are a story unravelling, a moment emerging. The perceptive acrylic paintings show the sophisticated brush marks of a confident hand, unafraid to address the unknown beyond the white surface.

Sutherland's inspiring 'visual poems' represent an elegant synthesis of Aboriginal, traditional Chinese and contemporary Western reflections on 'place'. Using both canvas and paper, these works are completed in a single flourish, utilising the bare minimum of materials.

For eighteen months Sutherland has explored the unique landscape of Central Victoria, and has developed what he describes as 'walking perspective'.

In 2007 Kynan was awarded the Dominique Segan Drawing Prize for 'Moonlight Creek'. He was subsequently selected for the Flinders Lane Gallery emerging artists' exhibition in 2008, as well as the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize in Sydney. In 2007 he completed a prestigious portrait of Jill Sewell, President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which is now housed in the permanent collection in Macquarie Street, Sydney. 'Recent Landscapes from Central Victoria' will be Kynan Sutherland's fifth solo exhibition.

With automatic applications of line and wash, the creation of an image from memory is created. These images are derived from the filing cabinet, which is my memory of the past twelve months of my life. There has been no use of photographs or actual objects to assist in the drawing of these forms that fill the compositions on canvas. The subjects are created from memory.

I think of my work as abstract drawing and painting, with subtly hidden subjects, such as figurative connotations. It is a play on simplicity and discipline; a love of mistakes and awkwardness which may or may not be deliberate.

Timed to coincide with the 2008 Olympics in China, these works have been shot in Qianmen district, depicting old architecture, decaying in the Hutong neighbourhood. The work directs the viewer into the lives of those who live with so little. The fabric of Hutong's social community unravels in the images with the arrival of globalisation and uprising of commercial enterprises to house westerner tourists.