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Nathalie Grenzhaeuser
Kapp Amsterdam, Nathalie Grenzhaeuser
Nathalie Grenzhaeuser will be visiting VCA Art for four weeks from mid-May 2007.
Exhibition dates 30 May to 8 June, Student Gallery, VCA Art, Gate 4 Dodds Street, Southbank. Gallery Hours 9.30am - 4.30 pm Monday to Friday.
Artist Statement
Artist Statement
My work deals with the perception of landscapes and their spatiality. Deserts, industrial wastelands, deserted urban and rural spaces are the recurring topics by which I am trying to evaluate the relationship between man and nature. I am intrigued by the emptiness and apparent meagreness of these places that give space for the associative dialogue between memory and present which is substantial for my work.
The material for my pictures originates from my journeys. Often, I take photographs of places that are already linked to the public conscience, either by their specific appearance or by their history. Their outer shapes recall views of movie or stage sceneries and they seem to be charged up symbolically by their past history.
My photographs do not convey a documentary point of view. They are the result of a process that resembles the practice of a painter. Based on various photographic sketches, single moments and picture-parts of a landscape are digitally recombined, over-layered and sometimes even newly invented. Step by step, the original location becomes transformed into a different and new place endowed with special qualities.
In these pictures personal motives are entwined with social ones, reason and emotion are mingled. My photographs show a world related to the real world but which appears like some place out of a dream or a parallel universe. Such, they communicate an inner sight that can be communally shared.
The series “The Construction of the quiet Earth” deals specifically with the arctic landscape. The pictures originate from a two month-journey in July 2005 and April 2006 to the Spitzbergen archipelago. The work as a whole makes reference to the history of local coal mining, to ecological changes and to the historical and emotional aspects linked to this region of the world.Most titles, like “Kapp Amsterdam”, “Svalsat” or “Hotellneset”, are owed to the original names of the different places.
The material for my pictures originates from my journeys. Often, I take photographs of places that are already linked to the public conscience, either by their specific appearance or by their history. Their outer shapes recall views of movie or stage sceneries and they seem to be charged up symbolically by their past history.
My photographs do not convey a documentary point of view. They are the result of a process that resembles the practice of a painter. Based on various photographic sketches, single moments and picture-parts of a landscape are digitally recombined, over-layered and sometimes even newly invented. Step by step, the original location becomes transformed into a different and new place endowed with special qualities.
In these pictures personal motives are entwined with social ones, reason and emotion are mingled. My photographs show a world related to the real world but which appears like some place out of a dream or a parallel universe. Such, they communicate an inner sight that can be communally shared.
The series “The Construction of the quiet Earth” deals specifically with the arctic landscape. The pictures originate from a two month-journey in July 2005 and April 2006 to the Spitzbergen archipelago. The work as a whole makes reference to the history of local coal mining, to ecological changes and to the historical and emotional aspects linked to this region of the world.Most titles, like “Kapp Amsterdam”, “Svalsat” or “Hotellneset”, are owed to the original names of the different places.
Svalsat, Nathalie Grenzhauser
Ester Partegas
Ester Partegas, Less World, Uplands Gallery, Melbourne, 19 April - 20 May, 2006 (photograph courtesy of Uplands Gallery)
Ester Partegas, a New York based, cross disciplinary artist visited the VCA Art in 2006. Ester held tutorials with students and lectured on her work. Whilst in Melbourne she held an exhibition at Uplands Gallery, and edited the latest edition of Slave magazine which was launched at Uplands Gallery on 21 April 2006.
For more information on Ester Partegas please go to www.esterpartegas.com
To see more images from the exhibition at Uplands Gallery, please go to www.uplandsgallery.com
Joel Seah
Joel Seah is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Southern Maine where he teaches Printmaking and Drawing.
He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Seah has recently served as Artist in Residence at Oxbow, the summer program for the School of Art Institute of Chicago
He has also been a visiting artist at the VCA and several other institutions including the University of Arizona, Tucson, Massachusetts College of the Arts, the University of Alaska at Anchorage and Colgate University.
Seah's work investigates identities as they pertain to ethnicity, sexuality and social politics.
He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Seah has recently served as Artist in Residence at Oxbow, the summer program for the School of Art Institute of Chicago
He has also been a visiting artist at the VCA and several other institutions including the University of Arizona, Tucson, Massachusetts College of the Arts, the University of Alaska at Anchorage and Colgate University.
Seah's work investigates identities as they pertain to ethnicity, sexuality and social politics.