Art thoughts

The Home Show (part 2)

Que des femmes/Only women

Melbourne virtual satellite 'The home show'

Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery

September 22 - 19 November

Curated by Terri Brooks and Louise Blyton

International curator Billy Gruner

Bienniale Curator Roland Orepuk

Rose Moxham (qld), Marlene Sarroff (nsw), Suzan Shutan (us), Louise Gresswell
Irene Barberis, Jennifer Joseph, Wilma Tabacco, Louise Blyton, Karen Schifano (us)
Anna Caione, Emma Langridge, Suzie Idiens (nsw), Susan Buret (nsw)
Bogumila Strojna (fr), Danielle Lescot (fr), Connie Goldman (us), Sarah Robson (nsw)
Munira Naqui (us), Wendy Kelly, Terri Brooks

Melbourne is one of the most locked down cities in the world due to Covid-19. When Billy Gruner invited Terri Brooks and Louise Blyton to host the 6th international biennale of non objective art the artists hatched a plan. ‘The Home Show’ is a virtual group exhibition of twenty leading women abstract artists.

The interiors:

Louise Blyton, X, 2021,
acrylic on linen on wood, 31 x 31 cm.

Marlene Sarroff, Equilibrium 2, Equilibrium series, 2014,

industrial rubber, wood, 25 x 30 cm.

Jennifer Joseph, Untitled, 2016,
acrylic on wood, 70 x 40 cm each.
(Jennifer Joseph is represented by Niagara Galleries Melbourne).

Irene Barberis, Assemble Series # 2, Sol Lewitt Studio, 2019, 164 x 22 cm.

Bogumila Strojna, Cube, 2018,

epoxy on aluminium 24 x 24 x .3 cm.

Rose Moxham, Pink Cathedral, 2020,
oil and wax on wood, 20 x 14 cm.

Sarah Robson, Unfolding geometries (shirt grid), 2018,

cotton shirt, 50 x 25 cm. Pinned to the wall.

Louise Gresswell, Fractured (blue edge), 2018, oil on board, 36 x 27.5cm.

Danielle Lescot, Brisant, c2015,
white stoneware,18 x18 x 18 cm.

Connie Goldman, Phasis III, 2007,
oil on panel, 25 x 25 cm x 2.

Photography Louise Blyton and Terri Brooks.

6th biennale of international non objective art

Que des femmes/Only women

Melbourne virtual satellite 'The home show'

Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery

September 22 - 19 November

Curated by Terri Brooks and Louise Blyton

International curator Billy Gruner

Bienniale Curator Roland Orepuk

When Kazimir Malevich exhibited the revolutionary painting ‘Black Square’ circa 1915, he transformed Modernism. Malevich said of the painting ‘the experience of pure non-objectivity in the white emptiness of a liberated nothing’.

A century on from the genesis of non-objectivity and concrete art within Western Art there has been a succession of relative movements in Modernism, some of which are Suprematism, Constructivism, De Stijl, Bauhaus, ZERO, Arte Povera, Op Art, Minimalism, Hard Edge Painting, Process Art and Neo-Geo.

Coinciding with the Women’s Liberation Movement gaining traction in the 1960s a few non-male artists such as Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Jo Baer and Bridget Riley gained major recognition within ‘Abstraction’. ‘Que des femmes’/Only Women, is the 6th Biennale of Non Objective Art and is dedicated to the work of women. The premier exhibition is in France, with satellites, including this Melbourne edition.

The history of Western Art is by and large a male artist history.

Today women artists are free to invent their own histories.

Artists work L-R: Anna Caione, Irene Barberis, Rose Moxham, Connie Goldman, Susan Buret,

Bogumila Strojna, Suzie Idiens, Emma Langridge, Suzan Shutan, Sarah Robson,

Marlene Sarroff, Terri Brooks, Karen Schifano, Louise Gresswell, Louise Blyton,

Danielle Lescot, Wilma Tabacco, Munira Naqui, Wendy Kelly, Jennifer Joseph.

Clement Meadmore chorded chair, c1952, courtesy of Anna Caione.

Photography Louise Blyton.

Jennifer Joseph represented by Niagara Galleries Melbourne.

Kazimir Malevich exhibition 1915.

Main event, France:

Satellites in Poland, Istanbul, Sydney and Toowoomba, Qld.

Terri Brooks

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Terri Brooks and Amanda Ryan at the opening of Direction Now,
Town Hall Gallery, Melbourne 2014.

I created Art Thoughts AU in 2008 as an educational resource and record of Abstract art in Australia. At the time I was nearing the completion of my PhD.

Later during 2013-5 I project managed the national touring abstraction exhibition Direction Now. So it gives me great pleasure to host and co curate the Melbourne satellite of the 6th Biennale of Non Objective Art with Louise Blyton.

‘Terri Brooks has held over twenty five solo exhibitions and has participated in shows in public, university, commercial and artist runs spaces including art fairs nationally and in the United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, China, New Zealand, Poland and Greece.

Brooks is currently represented by Flinders Lane Gallery and Linton and Kay Galleries in Australia and Richeldis Fine Art in the United Kingdom.’

L-R Hinged Edges, Veiled Black Dots and Black Square, Direction Now, Caboolture Regional Art Gallery, Qld, 2015.

Louise Blyton

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Louise with Lisa

Louise Blyton (b. Melbourne) is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and colour. The artist’s geometrically shaped canvases explore colour, light, and form through the visual language of Reductivism, an aesthetic style characterized by streamlined compositions, restricted colour, and a reduction of form and means. Identifying with Reductivism’s simplicity, Blyton’s shaped canvases and three-dimensional wall sculptures elevate craftsmanship and process, achieving a compositional clarity that unifies colour and form while portraying the accidental coincidence of beauty.

“I’m always looking for a kind of quietness and harmony when making my works, even if the colour being used is loud. It’s the accidental beauty in nature that really captivates me. A small shadow from a leaf across the pavement from above. A reflection in a puddle on a cloudy day. Just nature in everyday life. It’s a reminder that you can view the world in a more intimate way.”

Louise Blyton lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia in 1988. Blyton has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions around the world. Recent exhibitions include Annual Summer Exhibition, Bentley Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona, Little Daydreams (petites reveries), at Factory 49 Paris, France; All the Birds are Singing, at Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, USA; Drawing Now Paris, at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at MECA, Portland, ME, USA; and ICONS W\ 13, KNO (Kyiv Non Objective), at Mikhail Bulgakov Museum, Kiev, Ukraine. Her works are held in significant corporate and private collections in Australia, China, France, United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States of America.

Studio installation, 2020, various sizes, acrylic on linen.

Sarah Robson

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Photograph Angela Nolan @_angelanolan

Sarah Robson has been a practicing artist for over 30 years, exhibiting nationally and internationally, with a practice encompassing painting, sculpture and installation. She has been awarded several major public commissions and is represented in public and private collections in Australia, Europe and South America. In 2013 she completed a Master of Cross-Disciplinary Art & Design and in 2015 a Master of Philosophy researching creativity and its processes. In 2021 she completed a Doctor of Philosophy examining the relational, tangible and intangible properties of non-objective (open) artworks. Her research demonstrated how artworks are not inanimate props but vital participants in the creation of meaning and contribute to our understanding of the contingent, complexity of the world. Her most recent body of work employs industrial felt, fabric and cotton twine to construct a vocabulary of forms that do not have a fixed mode of display. These artworks position, philosophically and practically, the rational and the organic side by side and nominate aesthetic experience as a complex of mind/body engagement.

Serial Matters + Intervals, 2021, industrial felt and acrylic paint, 300 x 255 cm.

Munira Naqui

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

'I have a primal connection to the landscape of my childhood.
I store in my mind the various landscapes from my travels too. The topographies surrounding us interest me. I marvel at the common elements found in these apparently diverse landscapes, the geometry of our commonality, our conjoined existence.
What you see, you rarely forget.
How do you remember the fragrance of the first monsoon rain on parched grounds?
How do you remember the sound of rain and thunder?
How do you visualize memory?
I hold on to colour
Only to colour' Munira Naqui.

Colour Memory, gouache and wax on wood, variable, set of 16, each 8 x 8 inches.

Jennifer Joseph

6th international biennale of non objective art

Que des femmes/Only women

Melbourne virtual satellite

Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery

September 22 - 19 November

Artist portrait, photograph Michael Meneghetti.

When asked what my painting is about I like to reply... it's not about anything. It just is. The meaning in my art is to be found in the physicality of the materials used and the marks made. It's not a description of anything. The 'meaning', as in life, is within itself.

My concern has always been with the transitory nature of reality, the fragility of the path of life and death. In painting, works on paper and collage I explore impermanence in the process of making. And often reveal this process in the finished work. All my art is executed at great speed following hours of quiet, still contemplation in the studio. I find long periods of contemplation necessary to be in a totally focused state of mind. I've always experienced art-making as becoming part of the painting, of 'painting from the inside.' Towards this end, to enable and nourish my art practice I live nocturnally.

Why would we say goodbye, 2017, 100 x 164cm (irregular).
(Jennifer Joseph is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne), photograph Andrew Curtis.

Wendy Kelly

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

'Covid19, lockdowns and disruption notwithstanding, the city of Melbourne is experiencing rapid infrastructure growth and development, creating twists and turns and truncated routes. To move, masked of course, from A to B is fraught with closed paths and roads, noise, detours, cranes, and heavy machinery at large construction sites. At times these routes seem to have no logic, but can be interpreted to have a strange inherent geometry. My work is about the sense [or nonsense] you make out of the experience. It can be as simple as the impact of walking through a space, or as complex as being overwhelmed and alienated.' Wendy Kelly 2021.

L-R: Hollow Point, Something Leads to Somewhere 1, 2 and 3, Five Walls Projects, 2019, photo Tim Gresham.

Louise Gresswell

6th international biennale of non objective art

Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Investigating her own subjectivity and its relationship to vulnerability and protection, Gresswell explores the materiality of paint. Textural paintings form sensory narratives as the painted boards are broken and reformed.

The debris of the studio is utilised as holes are patched and cracks are filled with whatever is at hand, string, canvas, hessian and cardboard. There is an act of defiance in the cutting and an implied comfort within the suturing.

Gresswell is a Melbourne Based artist. After studying a BA (hons) in Textile Design at Chelsea College of Art, London, Gresswell went on to complete her Master of Fine Art studies, with Distinction, from RMIT, Melbourne (2017).

Untitled (dark grey), 2020, oil on board, 35 x 27cm.

Marlene Sarroff

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Marlene Sarroff is a Sydney based artist. With a Bachelor of Art Theory from the University of New South Wales Art and Design 1991 - 94 (previously COFA) and Master of Art 2006/7 Sydney College of Art, University of Sydney Her practice extends across several disciplines including 3D Sculpture, wall works, photography, assemblage, painting, and an experimental installation practice. Exhibiting continuously over the past 25 years, with over 20 solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions, both in Australia and Internationally.

marlene-sarroff.com

Experimentation is the essential element that drives the work. Using a minimal and reductive aesthetic, abstract ideas merge equally with the materials found from urban industrial environments. Taken out of their original context, and deprived of their original status, the working process is a journey of unpredictability, intuition and impulsive play. The works are reintroduced in a new context. Materials are discovered more than sourced and corrugated cardboard, bubble wrap, rubber, elastic, tape, foam board are some of the materials repurposed. The material dictates the action performed to bring the work into being. Folding, wrapping, winding, stacking, assemblage are some of the processes employed. A key element in the process is to be guided by the persuasiveness of the material and by freeing the “things” by dissociation, estranging them, removing them from their context.

A Constellation (Abstracted) 2021, 19 stretched canvases, assemblage, approx 110 x 80 cms (size variable).

Danielle Lescot

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Danielle Lescot in the studio with her work 'Hélicoïdale'

Danielle Lescot lives and works in Paris, France.

In her studio, she practices ceramic as well as painting and drawing. Her work currently brings together the constructed and the ceramic transformation of enamel , and evolves into installations of construction games, alignments, rhythmic sequences.

Recent installation referencing a personal alphabet, black stoneware, each 40 x 5 cm approx.

Wilma Tabacco

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Small Excavations

'Thought bubbles, vague ideas floating on the edges of consciousness – unreachable
through forced thinking or writing – often form themselves when one lets the
materials be guided by an unthinking hand.

These small works form part of a series made in 2015 exhibited in my solo exhibition
Cycladic at Langford120. They materialised through my not fussing about ‘what to
do next’. Of course, the starting point is always a vague idea around a broad topic
and the intention is always to use whatever motifs eventuate as preparatory works that
will, hopefully, inform larger paintings.

I don’t usually exhibit these precursor works but in this instance they appeared
independent from but linked to what flowed from them so rather than destroy them –
which is what I normally do – I decided to show them along with their genealogical
counterparts.' Wilma Tabacco, August 2021

Small Excavation (selected works), 2015, acrylic on canvas panel, 15.2 x 30.3 cm each.

Bogumila Strojna

6th international biennale of non objective art

Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

The cubic form (cube, square, rectangle) constitutes a constraint of my work, which is at the same time its formal framework, constantly transgressed, to invest the space, which is the real subject of my creations.

I introduce nevertheless a new element of transformation, which is the act of folding. Thus the flat forms become three-dimensional.

Folding has been used throughout the history of art from antiquity to the present day. Initially used in the representation of the body, but also in the representation of space, currently present in architecture, sculpture, painting as such.

I use it in a minimal way, to initiate the movement and thus the volume, and to introduce the reverse of the right side, and the infinity of the action of unfolding.

Irene Barberis

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

Irene Barberis @ Sol LeWitt Chester Studio, USA, 2019. The series of works here are a direct response to the thirteen music tapes that the late Sol LeWitt left in his studio and were played again by me as I responded to his space in tandem with our long friendship. The Series titled: #Compositions, #Composer and #Intervals explore in this context the relationship of colour, music, location, movement and mapping through both the lens of a visual artist and the somatic responses of a classically trained dancer. The exhibition Choreographing Colour 2021, becomes part of a lineage of exhibitions and works investigating ‘Reading the Space’, which commenced through The Global Centre for Drawing and its international projects in 2001. (Acknowledgements: the LeWitt family, LeWitt Collection, Mahler/LeWitt Studios, Stephen McLaughlan Gallery. Photography: Mark Ashkenasy.)

Composition Series: Dancers on a Plane, St Matthew's Passion 2, Voluns & Bach, Sol LeWitt tapes,
Sol LeWitt Studio, May 2019, Italian tempera, Sol LeWitt pencil, on acid-free Fabriano Paper.

Anna Caione

6th international biennale of non objective art
Que des femmes/Only women
Melbourne virtual satellite
Hosted by Art Thoughts AU at Yarra Bend Gallery
September 22 - 19 November

My art attempts to interpret my personal approach to abstraction, acquired from the innate complexities and layers inherited from my Italian heritage. The work hinges on the philosophical and poetic associations of the single-coloured artwork termed the ‘Monochrome’- a recent occurrence of twentieth-century art. My use of colour sometimes combined with form attempts to reveal a range of interpretative possibilities. I am attracted to the notion of nothingness or the void and how some hues may behold, a moment of silence, quiet, an ending or death. The textural hand manipulation and layering of the surface expose the raw materials used to uncover the surface palimpsest and the artwork’s subconscious narrative, through which the exposure of the artwork’s skeletal structures and layers are revealed.

Anna Caione is currently undertaking a PhD in Fine Arts and holds a Master of Arts by Research Monash University, Bachelor of Education in Visual Arts from Melbourne University and completed a Diploma of Fine Arts, Accademia Albertina, Turin, Italy. Anna has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions her work is held in corporate and private collections in Australia, Italy and Ireland.

Strato #24, 2020, fabric and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm.