egganddartgallery

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EGG&DART_BIG AZ from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

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EGG&DART BIG AZ EXHIBITION from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

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ANDY HUTSON HD.mp4 from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Weeds & Other Problems emerged from artist Andy Hutson riding his bike along a disused rail line in nipaluna / Hobart. He noticed the opportunistic growth of plants along the path and their attachment to disturbed soil in a remnant industrial setting. The flexible and opportunistic status of introduced species became a metaphor. Hutson explains that weeds “get in the way and shift the course from an original intent,” in parallel to the way an artwork can come together from an idea but with an unexpected outcome.

“Almost every time along the path there would be some other things that I would notice. It’s still that same process where I have this idea and all these distractions keep shifting my attention. I have a pocket notebook. What you end up with is something quite different from what was anticipated from the outset.”

The artist has a background in sculpture and jewellery making and completed a residency over 2020-2021 at Contemporary Art Tasmania. With an understanding of soldering and braising, this knowledge creeps into the pieces through the handmade brass attachments and the use of sanders and other tools to model the material. The works have pictorial elements, particularly in their connection to the variable qualities of the weeds encountered, their colours and forms. But in being almost-paintings they are also almost-objects, suggesting shelves, mirrors, hinged doors or framing devices. Each work reaches for a satisfying sense of containment and a structural integrity.

The sphere, the ring, ropes under tension and diamond shapes that suggest cyclone fencing – forms repeat and vary in size, scale and definition. The marine rope offers a further link to the specifics of place, namely the nipaluna / Hobart harbour. Fennel seeds are embedded in encaustic. Mallow flowers have been collected from the path, dried and pressed into the surface under wax, before being scraped back to a flat, resilient finish. In another work a bowl is cut and burnt with a heat gun to form a symbolic Oxeye daisy, a common weed in the district.

A Hole in the Fence uses plywood and found timbers including King Billy, an endemic Tasmanian conifer. The wood has been arranged as variable rings on handmade brass hooks and the work feels like an assortment of material origins brought together to propose a harmony. On the hooks hang loops of the various timbers, carved, painted and suspended like a collection of keys that describe negative space. Nosy Neighbour uses Huon Pine, King Billy and Tasmanian oak. Timbers are arranged as a cosmology of white spheres on a black surface. The specifics of material are important with pencil, wax and acrylic binders applied to both push and engage with specialised timber surfaces.

Andy Hutson is thinking about weedy problems and the complexity of states and materials. Plants are wonderful and advantageous but can be a problem in the wrong context. Then there is the problem of making art, of finding the right language. How should things hang or sit as an agglomeration? Hutson describes “trying to find ways to manifest an awareness of place and history associated with plants and land in general, in a practice that is pictorial and visual without being overt.” In his first exhibition at The Egg & Dart, Andy Hutson works with these tensions to find a contemplative and precarious balance.

Weeds and Other Problems 9-26 February 2022

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MERRY & BRIGHT | The Egg & Dart XMAS Show 2021 from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

GABRIELLE ADAMIK, ADRIAN BAIADA, LEE BETHEL, AMY CUNEO, SCOTT DUNCAN, EBONY EDEN, AARON FELL-FRACASSO, JULIA FLANAGAN, WILL HILZINGER, ROB HOWE, INDIA MARK, JACKSON MCLAREN, MARK MERRIKIN, DARREN MUNCE, FRANK NOWLAN, MADELEINE PETERS, NICK SANTORO, MIGNON STEELE, CLARE THACKWAY, HENRY JOCK WALKER, LEONIE WATSON, CHRISTOPHER ZANKO.

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Christopher Zanko | SWEET MISGIVINGS from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Filming + production by: Silversalt Photography Audio track by: Ashley Bundang + Alec Marshall

In Sweet Misgivings, Christopher Zanko elevates the carved intricacy of his work with increasing surface complexity. He continues with a focus on the mid-20th century home where fibro or brick veneer geometry becomes an armature for all sorts of decorative features. In his paintings we first see the cubic structure neatly placed on the block. From there we may enjoy (as the artist does) all the textural shifts across roof tiling, stairs and gates, the formal gardens, the sculptures and paving stones. Each painting represents a cultural world. Cast concrete planters, conifers positioned like pillars on either side of an entrance, baroque and neo-classical sculptural additions. Ornament gives expression to stories of migration and cultural difference, in some cases also demonstrating the technical skill of an owner-builder (like the Terrazzo brought from southern Europe).

An array of stylistic expressions established a sense of home in a new country while recrafting a house plan to fit the needs of its residents. Zanko mirrors these construction techniques via his own set of tools and skills, carving surfaces or precisely masking up an area to lay out a texture, like formwork is used to frame up a driveway.

In her recent study of mid-20th century migrant housing in Melbourne, Mirjana Lozanovska notes the diaspora aesthetics of the period, describing “a distinct architecture evolving from the interaction between the dwelling habits of migrants that were transported and the material order and form of the detached house.” The modifications to these catalogue homes tell a story of the residents, their habits and their needs. This narrative detail was already evident in Zanko’s work but he has more recently made links with his own family’s history of migration. The paintings in the current show emerged in parallel to conversations with his father about the family’s arrival in Australia, via the United Kingdingom, as refugees from eastern Europe.

Sweet Misgivings sees a progression in the artist’s work from nostalgic taxonomy to a deeper study of character. Zanko enjoys “the way these houses built from a plan offer so much variation in character and story 60 or 70 years on.” The house and its block is a stage on which elements are all organised to suit the habits and relationships within the household. The paintings in this show are then another kind of stage that honours the varied cultural expressions this built form allowed for.

Christopher Zanko was a finalist in the 2020 Brett Whiteley prize and, significantly, the 2019 Wynne Prize. In 2020 he was part of a commissioning exhibition organised by Hazelhurst Arts Centre, “The Home”, that celebrated art deco residential design in Australia. Another great opportunity has been the recent 70th anniversary commission to paint Rose Seidler House for the Sydney Living Museum Collection. Zanko’s work can also be found in the Wollongong Art Gallery and University of Wollongong collections. - Melody Willis

Prof. Mirjana Lozanovska presentation, “Migrant Housing. Architecture, Dwelling and Migration”, 21 Dec 2020 youtu.be/jVdzX0Y_kyA (accessed 16 October 2021)

Lozanovska, Mirjana 2019 Migrant Housing: Architecture, Dwelling, Migration, Routledge

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Scott Duncan | EMPTY VESSELS from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

In Scott Duncan’s ceramics, references from mid-century modern to antiquity fuse together through the firing process. Playful in construction and ambiguous in function, aesthetic histories adhere and then peel off like a turned up edge of corrugate cardboard. With a capacity to conjure the texture of an Italian Bitossi Ceramiche object or a local Bendigo Pottery vase, Scott Duncan pulls our focus to the echo of ancient forms in modern design. Antiquity stares back in the suggestion of an Etruscan face cut out of the side of a fruit box, the mouth inviting a hand to enter it. Duncan’s hand built forms might also suggest delicate perfume bottles with glass stoppers, while offering a scale that is as resilient as a Roman wine amphora. On technique, Scott Duncan approaches things with a punk aesthetic. He has an idea of what he wants to achieve and then figures out how to make it work. Remarkably, each object is a single piece of earthenware. Shifts in texture, colour and gloss are achieved during the firing process. The artist makes his own dry underglazes, manufacturing chalk and his own pencils to create the idiosyncratic lines that mark the surface. Backing up the last five years of dedicated art making is his lengthy experience as a head chef. Downplaying the skill involved in ceramics, Duncan states, “It’s like making a cake,” before adding, “Porcelain clay is kind of like shortcrust pastry.” The production ethic and decisiveness of a chef is certainly evident in these pieces. For the current show, Empty Vessels, Scott Duncan has ramped up the scale and constructed what he describes as a “mid-century monolith” of stacked forms. Saturn is a centrepiece of nostalgic modernist references looping back to a Greek myth origin story. Duncan’s Saturn ravenously expresses an enthusiastic appetite for the designed world high and low, from archaeological dig to a 1970s lounge room. Scott Duncan grew up in Warrnambool on the south coast of Victoria at a time when the pathways offered for young men spanned football, farming or surfing. So he surfed and commenced art study locally with teacher Glenn Morgan. After recommencing his art practice, a residency at Kil.n.it Experimental Ceramics Studios in Glebe, Sydney, has connected him with an audience interested in ambitious work in clay. Empty Vessels is the artist’s first solo show at The Egg & Dart Gallery, Thirroul. - Melody Willis

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Darren Munce | Discoordinated from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Darren Munce offers up an ambiguous surface, the result of erasure, adjustment and slippage. Optical effects disintegrate with emergent geometries that scumble to grey. Skilled paint application is shifted through the squeegee scrape, an orbital sander or a rip of tape. With a background in signwriting and graphics, the artist can be very technical but this methodical work is upended through an impulsive counterplay. Works are rested and then returned to, carrying the weight of time. The paintings end substantially with accretions of oil along the edges, their corners softened by wear.

In one work, a seductive geometry of cubes sits atop a dense texture rendered through chance. In another, a deeply scoured surface is punctuated by a matrix of sharp linework that continues to respond to the undulations beneath. A lattice weaves over and under while carving new shapes and casting shadows. Loose grids and a range of greys mediate striking colour, making it feel right for rich magenta to sit with scarlet and deep cadmium yellow. Lines of lemon and zinc white pierce through as traces of a pattern language that has been pushed back.

An art residency in Leipzig (supported by the Australia Council and Creative Victoria) gave early context to Darren Munce’s interest in the divergent histories of abstraction. Geometry and chance, exactness and imprecision – his work demonstrates how these dualities find their real definition on the painted surface. By negotiating conflicting tendencies, he locates a zone where abstract invention can emerge. - Melody Willis

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Madeleine Peters | NURSE OGILVIE'S BEDSHEETS from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Madeleine Peters’ richly tonal oil paintings unlock fragmented narratives and expose time shifts, offering a sequence of compelling settings. In Nurse Ogilvie’s Bedsheets, Madeleine Peters makes visible female archetypes that are often sidelined – the working woman and the woman in a caring role. Through a practice of binding pictorial and verbal recollections, the images emerge as an instinctive response with an awareness of the limits of representation. She sees photo albums as serving as memory jolts, the images providing a touchstone for a more elaborate verbal recollection.

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FLANAGAN_1080HD.mp4 from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

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Georgia Spain | (Beginning in Blue) Left in Red from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Artist Georgia Spain in her studio talking about her upcoming exhibition at The Egg & Dart, 13 - 30 May 2020.

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On the Plain from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Frank Nowlan talks about his works in the exhibition Now and Then.

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Solidarity with those in Detention from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

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Five O'Clock at Wolli Creek after Brack from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

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At Austi - Short from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

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Now and Then - Virus from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

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Christopher Zanko - Umbra from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Australian artist Christopher Zanko. Shot around the northern suburbs of Wollongong. 2017 Shot and edited by James Cates. Narrated by Dane Taylor.

Music courtesy of Tex Crick. 'Bleu Nuit' Available via: texcrick.net

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Elin Matilda Andersson from Egg & Dart on Vimeo.

Time lapse of Elin's residency in the gallery last year in October.