Current « FELTspace

Supermarket 2012

17–19 February 2012
Press viewing 16 February.
Opening hours: Fri 11am–10pm, Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–6pm.

SUPERMARKET is an international art fair created and managed by artists.
Artist-run galleries and similar artists’ initiatives exhibit the latest tendencies in art. The focus is on the meeting between audience, art and artists from around the world as much as the exhibition itself.

For the first time FELTspace will participate in an international art fair and we need your help to get us there!
Participation in SUPERMARKET 2012 will allow FELTspace to interact with new audiences and establishing further international opportunities for South Australian artists. In addition to exhibiting artworks FELTspace will be promoting their recent publication FELTspace Gold – A Survey of Emerging Contemporary Art Practice in South Australia 2011.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Unfortunately the cost of shipping our artworks to Stockholm isn’t cheap. Your donations will make sure that the works of six South Australian artists make it over in one piece and that we can bring 100 copies of the FELTspace Gold publication with us to show the world what is happening in Adelaide visual arts right now! This is a unique opportunity and we are calling for any and all donations to bring FELTspace into the spotlight!

You can help by donating towards the cost of exhibiting at supermarket through the pozible website

Patrick Rees : The Dystopian Utopianator - Redux

2nd – 18th Feb. 2012
Opening Wednesday 1st of Feb. 6pm

Patrick Rees, ‘United Front and the Dystopian Utopianator’ (detail), 2011, acrylic, enamel, sealant, wax, modelling paste, putty foam, epoxy resin, clay, PVC, glitter, found jewellery, dimensions variable, photography by Steve Wilson.

Imagine some bad sci-fi television future when earth has been discovered by pre-historic aliens 1,000 years after the apocalypse has destroyed all of earth’s inhabitants. Sifting through the remnants, these prehistoric aliens discover books about modernism, religious iconography, Blake’s 7 and birthday cakes. Unable to read, the aliens use the photos in these remaining books to construct a shrine to the fallen humans, using the forms and configurations that they believe were highly valued by the now extinct species. Employing the motifs of the religious shrine, late modernist painting and sculpture and 70’s and 80’s sci-fi, The Dystopian Utopianator – Redux is an attempt to provide freedom from the austere concepts of order, harmony and collective transcendence, celebrated by high modernism, fundamentalist religion and fascist doctrines. The Dystopian Utopianator – Redux, offers the nonsensical possibility of utopian salvation through plasticine, fake fur and bathroom sealant. It is through the humour of this nonsensical proposition that ultimately I hope to celebrate the very human realities of our perpetual inadequacy, our collective existential conundrum and the pleasure of childhood play.

Patrick Rees graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in performance and screen studies from Flinders University in 1995. After working in the film industry (predominantly B grade) in Sydney as a performer and writer he returned to study visual arts at the College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW in 2001. Rees was a founding member of the 2% art collective in Adelaide and has been involved in a range of group exhibitions as visual artist and curator from 2007 – 2011. In 2010 Rees completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) degree at the University of South Australia. In 2011 he will have a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Centre of South Australia – Project Space, and travel to Los Angeles to undertake an artist residency at RAID Projects.

Malia Wearn : WILL HAPPINESS FIND ME

2nd – 18th Feb. 2012
Opening Wednesday 1st of Feb. 6pm

All of these sentences are something someone did or thought that they felt they should be ashamed of. None of these people were too ashamed not to tell someone else, be that the artist or the world via the Internet. Using the book ‘I Love Dick’ (1997) by Chris Kraus as a kind of stepping off point for emotional expression and personal involvement in art, Malia examines herself and those around her in a kind of secret swap or tell-all. In ‘I Love Dick’ writer/artist Chris Kraus re-examines the notion of vulnerability and openness in a completely unashamed way. Malia’s work showcases these attributes in a way that reveals and hides those things we all share but don’t talk about. In a sense all of the secrets are the artist’s. It is not just that she has taken them on through the shared moment of secret telling; she has, but it is more than that. There is a universality to them all that can make them seem both possibly shocking and completely banal. Some of the events, thoughts or actions described actually are the artist’s own, but the fact that she considers the rest of those that have not at this point occurred to her to be on a level of possibility for her future and past selves makes her identify with them and feel ownership of them also. In embracing the secret and the gossip aspect of this project, the artist also opened herself and her life up to the creation of secrets or adventure through the art process as did those whose secrets or stories were shared with her. By using lights and glow-in-the-dark thread, different feelings are conveyed within the work. The hidden and the displayed take on new meaning and the fleeting nature of seeing or truth is also apparent. The painstaking and generally feminine process of embroidery imbues fleeting confessions with a kind of importance that one might prefer they did not have. Due to the large amount of intimate time the artist spent with each part of the work a fondness for the ideas and sentences referenced was created, and ultimately a way of owning the secrets and responding to them in a completely different manner than is usual.

Malia Wearn is an Adelaide based artist working primarily in textiles and light based sculpture. She graduated from the University of South Australia in 2006 with a Bachelor of Visual Arts specialising in painting. Malia has recently exhibited in small group collective exhibitions at Adelaide’s Paper String Plastic gallery and Format Project Space.