TAKEN
Christopher Race: Portrait of
Photography by CHRISTOPHER RACE and NICHOLAS SERGEANT
Nicholas Sergeant, Transatlant
Art - selection, style and technique.
Creating art involves many things. Artists not only have to demonstrate instinctive talents and acquired technical skills but also need to select subject matter and a process or style to best express their vision. Whether in painting, sculpture, photography or printmaking, often it is the selection of subject, technique and style that makes a work stand out, as well as the method of production and aesthetic end result.
Two new exhibitions at Falkner Gallery demonstrate this in a range of mediums.
Upstairs is ‘Taken’, photography by Christopher Race and Nicholas Sergeant. Both photographers draw attention to the way their photographs differ and expand upon the expected role of photography.
Race's studies of the skies over central Victoria are careful and decisive selections from an infinite and fugitive display, chosen for their formal artistic qualities alone.
Each of Sergeant's still lifes, architectural studies and abstract compositions can similarly be read as excerpts from life, heightened by their adherence to design principles.
Both Race and Sergeant emphasize what it means to take photographs both technically and aesthetically by means of skilful selection.
Downstairs the exhibition ‘All Sort of Snippets’ highlights similar skilful selection, as well as different stylistic approaches by a group of artists; some local, some from further afield. The common thread amongst them all is their technical excellence using a range of printmaking, drawing and painting techniques.
Together their subject matter includes melancholy, whimsy, seriousness, loneliness and humour.
Anita Klein’s bold etchings of domestic life contrast with Ilse Van Garderen’s pensive lithographs and drawings of inhabited forest landscapes and quiet interiors.
Robyn Rayner’s restrained depictions of rural and urban landscape are very different from Anita Laurence’s patterned linocuts reminiscent of Egyptian wall paintings.
Local artists David Frazer and Liz Caffin both offer an individual way of viewing their world. Frazer often adds a lonely and melancholic human in his meticulous landscapes, while Caffin’s miniature paintings and large charcoal drawings demonstrate her typical whimsy and imagination.
All artists in the two exhibitions demonstrate selection, personal style and masterful technique in their photographs, drawings, etchings, lithographs, paintings and wood engravings.
19 April – 10 June
Falkner Gallery
35 Templeton St
Castlemaine 3450
Tel: 5470 5858
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