Meredith Cravey: Artist Statement & Bio

During the pandemic, I had to reconsider my practice outside of the studio environment. I searched for means of sculpting with the menial. Sugar had an intriguing materiality that I sought to extended with the invitation of other environmental elements such as heat, air, humidity or my body. The nature of sugar is to change and deteriorate, in both a natural and a controlled way. Humidity affects the hardened sugar causing it to melt once again, allowing it to return to its early form that is molasses.

I am interested in exploring the idea of entropy texturally. Entropy is the inevitable and steady progression of all matter and energy in the universe to change toward a state of disorder or randomness. There is an element of randomness with which the plaster components are made, in the sense that the movements and contours of my body are never the same and are not predetermined.

Meredith Cravey is an emerging artist currently based in Sydney. She has recently graduated from the National Art School where she majored in sculpture. Cravey is interested in finding unusual potentials in conventional material. Pivoting from the notion of entropy, Cravey’s sculptural practice experiments with the textual limits of plaster and sugar.

Emma Pinsent: Artist Statement & Bio

My work follows a process of reimagining objects, landscapes and materials into strange, embodied environments that teeter between real and fantasy worlds. Most recently, my practice involves the use of unconventional materials; such as waste paper pulp, and inks and dyes made from organic matter. Using an abstract and intuitive sensibility, the forms I create seek to generate an ecological language that considers the hybridity of our current world: a combination of human, man-made and organic interactions. 

Emma Pinsent is an early-career artist who lives and works between Darkinjung (Central Coast) and Gadigal (Sydney) land. Her practice spans painting and sculpture; reimagining ubiquitous objects, landscapes and materials as embodied environments that teeter between real and fantasy worlds. Emma has exhibited in various group and solo shows within Sydney. In 2019, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at UNSW: Art & Design. Also in 2019, she was selected for Eden - Unearthed at Eden Gardens (Macquarie Park, NSW) and was a finalist in the Jenny Birt Award at UNSW: Art & Design and the Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award at Gallery Lane Cove.

Claire Welch: Artist Statement & Bio

Small Dreams - Exhibition Statement

‘Dawn’ and 'watching it happen', explore the distortion of possible positive directions, which are warped by the anxiety and despair generated by negative media. Both works use monoprinting and reductive mark making techniques to create ambiguous bodily forms.

 

In our current state of uncertainty about our future we experience overwhelming apathy and despair. ‘Dawn’ explores this anxious state, an eruption of dark lines draws the eye to the strained body. The figure is entangled looking out to every horizon for hope.

 

‘watching it happen’ further explores this conflict. Presenting a chrysalis or a shroud, it emerges into life and draws away from it. The diptych exaggerates this conflict by loosely connecting the two halves, leaving a disconnect between them. The figure is caught in time between ambiguity and actuality. The open palmed hands both reaching out but still in a posture of self-protection.

Claire Welch’s printmaking practice revolves around ambiguous and tense bodily forms. Welch is an emerging artist based in Sydney, Australia. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2020 majoring in printmaking. Welch has exhibited in selected group exhibitions, such as 'Rats' at 321 Project Space and 'Luxury Item' at DownUnder space. Welch received the Jocelyn Maughan Sketchbook prize in 2019 and the Bouddi Foundation of the Arts grant in 2016.

"In my practice I examine the body as being in a constant state of becoming; a progressive form. The anxiety I look to is in the slight but important dislocation between body and self. My printmaking practice focuses on this tension through ambiguous bodily forms. The technique of monoprinting is both immediate and unpredictable. This allows for unique textural lines and gestural marks in each print. The process can only produce singular prints rather than reproductions. In this way, my practice mirrors the constant state of change the body and mind undergo".

Claire Welch: CV November, 2022 Download

Brigitte Podrasky: Artist Statement & Bio

Brigitte follows an intuitively led practice, allowing forms to emerge organically through the process of making. Improvisation and chance are important elements of her practice as she recollects and combines emotion, memories and observations into mutating forms. Her skeletal-like ceramic pieces allude to the potential of growth through imitating the scaffolding of architectural structures whilst simultaneously referencing images of decaying ruins. Brigitte attempts to position her work through an exploration of double meanings and contradictory interpretation.

Brigitte Podrasky is an artist and designer working on Gadigal land. Working across ceramics, interactive installation and sound, Brigitte is interested in moments of transformation and mutation, when something exists in an undefinable state.

Brigitte Podrasky: CV November, 2022 Download

Sïan Kelly: Artist Statement & Bio

The body is a site in Western art that is categorised by corporeal symbolism pertaining to a specifically binary model of gender. The way we are taught to read the body as gendered presents a significant chasm between the expanded philosophical concept of gender, and its translation into a visual field of thought.

Residues 1-5 make up part of the artist’s work Body Language (2020), a collection of works across sculpture, performance and installation that seeks to prompt the audience to critique binary perception, categorisation and consumption of the body. To push up against spectacularity and gain autonomy. The sculptures sit between embodiment and legibility. Born from the performative gesture of the artist binding their chest with artificial skin, each piece presents a relief of their body, fossilizing what is an otherwise temporal state of transformation.These auto-biographical sculptures strive to align the visual presence of the artist’s body not just with their own identity as non-binary, but with the expanded philosophical and phenomenological concept of gender as a whole.

Sïan Kelly is an emerging artist based on Gadigal Land of the Eora Nation [Sydney], in so-called Australia.

Their interdisciplinary practice utilises core mediums of drawing, ceramics, performance, installation and sculpture to investigate the political landscapes of both gender and the body. They are particularly interested in the subtle points at which the two touch, or pull away. Kelly has exhibited in galleries throughout the greater Sydney region, including Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, UNSW Galleries, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. 2020 Saw their debut solo exhibition, Body Language, at Kudos Gallery, and second solo exhibition, Eggshells, at Sydney Art Collective.They have been placed as a finalist in such awards as the TWT Excellence Award, Kudos Emerging Artist and designer Award, Yen/Staedtler Art Award, and ArtExpress. Kelly has received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from UNSW Art and Design.