Kyneton Stockroom is showcasing a new selection of artworks across its gallery rooms and ceramic space.
Gallery one will feature an exhibition by Michael Carney titled ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’, featuring oil paintings that depict dualities within our perceptions and blending the boundaries between safety and fear.
The ceramic space will host ‘Material Agency’ by artist Tatts, presenting a series of ceramic vessels crafted with traditional mosaic practice from a contemporary perspective.
Gallery two will feature abstract portraiture works by artist Ash Coates, in an exhibition titled ‘OOO: An Uncanny Economy of Things’.
Coates said he is interested in the weird and uncanny in nature, the blurring of lines between natural and synthetic, and the way that systems in undergrowth interact with toxic and unnatural materials.
“[I] specifically want to address the themes of microplastics and petroleum based materials in the environment – so I use a lot of acrylic paint in my painting and then in my more sculptural based stuff I use resins, polymers, and different types of plastic building materials,” he said.
Coates said that the title of the exhibition is a play on words, combining triple zero as the Australian number for emergencies and ‘OOO’ as a philosophical acronym for ‘object-oriented ontology’.
“It’s a study of huge objects that are almost too big for our human mind to understand, so we break them down into single words. For example, a weather system encompasses a lot of different factors into one thing – but then it is the one thing,” he said.
“That kind of philosophy is something that I’ve been looking pretty deeply into, and also ideas of post-human – what’s going to happen to us once our biosphere is so deeply entangled with synthetic material that maybe we might no longer have any humans left? That’s kind of the quandary.”
The artists’ work will be displayed until October 6 at the Kyneton Stockroom – 98 Piper Street, Kyneton.
Details: stockroomspace.com/
Oscar Parry
