Naturally Inclined
Saturday 7th December
Savina HOPKINS, Elyss McCLEARY, Emily SIMEK, Mateja SIMENKO
Four artists showing work connected to gardens and the experience of nature.
Curated by Savina Hopkins.
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Savina HOPKINS
TITLE: Nature > strip > garden > bed
MEDIUM: photographic print on cotton fabric, bias binding, thread
I have photographed abandoned mattresses whose fabric linings are adorned with botanical motifs. These unwanted beds were found slumped on suburban nature-strips, awaiting hard rubbish collection, bound for landfill. The textile designs of the mattresses feature flowers, an emblem that can evoke positive associations of gardens as sites of pleasure, relaxation and sensory experiences. The visual noise of the repeated motifs also serves to disguise stains and wear and tear - the corporeal messiness of human bodies imprinting and merging with stylised representations of nature. I’ve printed these images of discarded bed textiles onto cotton fabric to reconnect them to the varied experiences and materiality of our beds and bodies. Back into the ground it all goes …
Savina Hopkins is a visual artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Through her artwork she explores the interface between damage and preservation and the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. She enjoys working in a space where humour and history rub shoulders, where nostalgia and discomfort mingle. Her art encompasses collage, assemblage, painting and photography. Across these fields, she is attracted to working with salvaged materials and objects imbued with specific histories and uses. Contemplation and manipulation of these materials, and the ideas and stories that are embedded in them, drive her creative practice.
Instagram: @savinahopkins
Elyss McCLEARY
TITLE: Light traces on tiles
MEDIUM: Mixed medium (mirror tiles, found steel reinforced mesh, sharpie markers, gouache, paper, copic markers)
Light traces shapes over around and through the plants and trees. There are some built structures with fading paint, surfaces eroding with the rain and sun. The sky is bright framed by both Felicity and Vera‘s garden I overlook in the flat I rent. Across the creek I often observe the leaves' everchanging compositions butted up against the concrete path. With sharpie pens, collaged paper, gouache, shiny mirror tiles attached to a found hard rubbish structure this work explores surfaces changing with the elements, layered shapes tresselled up a lattice for tomato vines. Standing in front of the tiles a face appears like when it brashly reflects in a car or shop window suddenly. I just laughed at myself - eek is that my face now - sunglasses please!! A step back or to the side reflects the sky again or what surface the little mirror tile is next to. Little shapes and colours.
Elyss McCleary is a visual artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice explores forms found in layers of spaces, shapes and colour that shift between representation and abstraction. Working predominantly in painting and drawing, her compositional placement rhythms are both a reflection and response to environments. She creates portals of imagined spaces mixed with cinematic backgrounds of the everyday that are fused with memory and observation, interrupted by ‘cameo’ appearances of significant urban structures. The works additionally comment on how images are repeatedly orchestrated in media. Elyss is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery.
Instagram: @elyss_mccleary
www.nicholasthompsongallery.com.au/artists/elyss-mccleary/
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Emily SIMEK
TITLE: getting side-tracked at the working bee (tips on a quilt in progress)
MEDIUM: advice, Indigo grown in the Patch-Work garden on unceded Wurundjeri land Summer 2023, upcycled silk and cotton.
I like gardeners and sewists because of their willingness to tinker. I can make a quilt without going to quilting school. I can tend a garden without horticulture training. At the working bee, everyone has something to share and learn.
p.s if you have any ideas, I'm making a summer quilt.
Emily Simek is an artist with a practice in digital art, textiles, installation, writing and gardening. Often working collaboratively, she is interested in relational practices within food webs and local networks of exchange.
Emily is of Czech and Dutch ancestry and lives on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Her art practice cross-pollinates with her work as a paediatric physiotherapist and home gardener. She is a contributor to Patch-Work, a collaborative project at Joe’s Market Garden, and provides technical support at WORLDWIDEWORMS.NET.
Instagram: @emily_simek
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Mateja SIMENKO
TITLE: Visceromotor
MEDIUM: oil on board and mixed media
In this work I reflect on the resonance between the tree structures my gaze is drawn to, and my internal viscera craving this stimuli. ‘Retracting’ an occasional upward glimpse from the daily house-keeping chores, I contemplate the communication between the networks outside and inside me. Looking up at a spread of a tree, I sense the branches of my autonomic nervous system, my ‘visceromotor’, resonating with the network of the branches above me. Channelled by my sight, the visual stimuli delight in the recognition of kin, imprinting themselves onto my bodily networks (para)sympathetically. Spreading the sensations onto the paintings, I perpetuate this vibrant conversation in rhythms sustaining vital connections. Fleetingly recording these intermezzos in my daily tasks, the resulting paintings are viscous traces of internal processes, open to further exchanges.
Mateja Simenko is a visual artist residing and looking up at trees in Naarm.
Instagram: @matejasimenko
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Retractable Art Space is an exhibition project initiative that uses a retractable clothesline spanning an undercover carport and open-air courtyard in Naarm / Melbourne. Participants are invited to create work that can be hung, displayed, or otherwise interface with the retractable unit and its domestic environment.
The idiosyncratic space has inherent limitations but may also generate new ideas for your work. Retractable Art Space is unlike a traditional gallery: partly undercover, but open to the elements. Fair weather is the friend of this exhibition space as wind, sun and rain are possible. Use these inbuilt qualities, or time your event with an eye on the weather forecast. Think of a big wet towel being the maximum advisable weight for each cord. The space is best used for single day events.
Retractable Art Space sits on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and to all First Nations people.
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- THINGS I HAVE BOUGHT, SALVAGED, FOUND & SPOTTED (ARCHIVED)
