Denis Clarke: Artist Statement & Bio

Painting for me is a bodily thing. It involves the relationship between one’s self and making contact with the tactile. Why tactile? Because I am touching materials and feeling out my experience of looking at a subject such as landscapes, people and buildings.

Drawing is the whole key. Not drawing for its own sake but drawing to explore ideas for connecting with the world. Finish is irrelevant. These drawings serve the purpose of the painting and illuminate my imagination to the possibilities of new compositions. I am interested in the physicality and directness of drawing which often finds its way into my works on paper as well as my paintings.

My interest is what I would call 'creating a process of informed experiment'. I allow myself to risk and play with media while aligning my senses with the observed. It is the otherness or feel of a subject which provides the impetus to experiment and find new solutions with mark.

For me, working before a subject is deeply complex and a chance to explore visual language. The test is to find graphic statements and abstractions which truthfully parallel perceptions and travel towards a resolved image. Previously Unseen explores my reactions and connection with the urban which has been an important aspect of my painting for many years. It is a reference to my wish to try and see the world anew.

Denis Clarke works across painting and drawing, exploring the relationship between himself, the bodily and the tactile. Interested in creating a process of informed experiment, his paintings extend conversations of subject, texture and paint fluidity that suspend perception and reality. His work layer playful exchanges between drawing and painting processes, finding new solutions with mark-making to explore the subject. Contextualised within the European neo-expressionist movement, Clarke’s colourful gestural works deconstruct improvisation, inviting new and playful languages of representation.  

Clarke completed post-graduate study at St Martins School of Art, London, and received the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship as well as Moya Dyring residency at the Cite International des Arts in Paris. 

Based in Sydney, he has spent periods working and studying in London and Switzerland, teaching at the Camden School of Art and the Hampstead School of Art, exhibiting at Gillian Jason Gallery, Boundary Gallery and James Colman Gallery, Knightsbridge, as well as creating set designs and costumes for the experimental Opera Factory, in Zurich and London. 

Clarke returned to Australia in 1998. 

He has held 17 solo exhibitions since 1975 and has collaborated with several premier arts organisations such as Opera Factory in London and Switzerland, Warwickshire Arts Festival in the UK, and most recently as the artist in residence at Wollombi Valley Arts Council. From 1999 - 2010 Denis was a sessional lecturer at the National Art School and tutor from 2011 ongoing. He also instructs master classes at Charles Sturt University, the University of Southern Queensland, the Mitchell School of Art and the McGregor School.  

Clarke has exhibited in numerous Art Fairs including ‘Line Art, Ghent’, The Brussels Art Fair, The 20th Century British Art Fair, Royal College of Art, and The Islington Art Fair. His work is included in private and public collections including: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Fitzwilliam College Cambridge and Lloyds of London. 

Clarke has been represented by Stanley Street Gallery since 2014.

Denis Clarke: CV July, 2022 Download

Jacquie Meng: Artist Statement & Bio

My works explore exaggerated and self conceptualised self portraiture in a way that considers arranging the self, objects and landscapes in a way that is carnivalesque and grotesque.  The idea of the carnival liberates us from the constraints of everyday life, allowing for a fluid exchange of identities and roles.  This idea resonates deeply with the diasporic experience, where identity is often fragmented and multifaceted. I also consider site-specificity, and how the displacement of cultural objects impacts identity formation within diasporic communities. I believe that arts relationship to place can reshape perceptions of identity, and thus paintings not only exist as static objects but engage with the context of their display. 

A large consideration in the making of my work is ‘thing-power’, a concept that explores agency within objects, and how non-human entities can possess agency in determining meaning.  In these works the self is a clock, the eyes are pool balls, the dresser mirror is a portal to a playground, the pool table is a groomed garden with patterns of i-ching coins.  I am interested in the way that patterns travel across time and space and have spiritual meaning or idiosyncratic ones… or both. Scattered in my work are patterns from Han Dynasty tombstones, traditional fortune telling mechanisms and prints on fabric and clothing.

Jacquie Meng graduated from ANU with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours)/ Bachelor of Art History and Curatorship in 2022. She was awarded the Brett Whitely travelling scholarship in 2021, selected as a finalist in 2022 'the churchie' emerging art prize at the IMA, and PICA’s 'Hatched'. In 2023, she took part in residencies include Kunstraum in New York and Pilotenkueche International Art Program in Leipzig and in 2024 she was selected as the recipient of the Waverley Artist Studio residency in Bondi.

In 2023 and 2024 she represented Stanley Street Gallery at the 'Sydney Contemporary' and was also selected for the 2024 Canbera Art Biennial.  Meng also exhibited in ‘YEAR OF THE DRAGON’ at 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art, ‘The Floor is Lava’ with Tiles Gallery and ‘Choose Your Fighter’ with Marvin Gardens New York.

Jacquie was awarded the 2024 Mosman Art Prize - Guy Warren Emerging Artist Award and was a finalist in the Lenn Fox painting prize.

Jacquie Meng: CV November, 2024 Download

Lucy Chetcuti: Artist Statement & Bio

Phenomena in the natural environment or in a gallery are not altogether self-evident. Their meaning and value are not inherently pre-determined but rather, are dependent on the individuality of the viewer. My work proposes that social “norms”, like heteronormativity, are perpetual and embodied, which influences the sensorial experience of art materials and artworks. My art practice examines the ways in which materials exist within the symbology of the viewer’s understanding of the world which is influenced by heterosexism, capitalism and colonialism. My research applies the theory of queer ecology, to frame my understanding of natural phenomena and objecthood in painting. 

My studio investigations have been led by material experimentation and the development of an abstract language, which includes paintings, objects and installation pieces. By presenting works as “phenomena” and in dialogue with each other, an alternative experience of their spatial reality and inter-relation is inferred. 

I explore the ways that abstraction can be used to queer normative understandings of nature. I emphasise the material state of my works as fragile, precarious, and temporal by incorporating found and natural materials outside of their economic value. My research considers the question, “what makes something queer?” within the realm of abstraction. 

Fragile artworks present themselves from a place of vulnerability and ask for the care they require to exist in the world. Using precarious and impermanent refuse materials critiques the use-value of an artwork and queers an understanding of phenomena in nature. My practice results in a wide array of “anxious objects” without having a secure or clear final form. Many of the works will change over time. My paintings which might be considered a more stable object are made with materials that will change. By presenting art objects in intimate relationships with one another, I propose a queering of natural phenomena. 

Words from 'All Fours' held at Canberra Contemporary Art Space 2023
(A selection of the works are in 'Reprise' 2023 at Stanley Street Gallery)

I use automatic drawing techniques to explore a range of new marks in these recent works. I have also featured monoprinted gestures, shifting between the predictable and the unpredictable. The marks I apply to the ground react within this framework to create a tension between spontaneity and intention, fixed gesture and the innocuous uncontrolled line and ultimately give life to the surface.

Works in this exhibition arise from the compositional prompt of a four section grid. For me, the grid functions as an enabling constraint within the picture plane, which produces more creative possibilities. I consider 'the edge' as a fundamental visual threshold or boundary that can be broached, conversed with, or erased.

The geometric grid is a structure that resonates throughout our everyday environments, memories and worlds. In my search for the exciting feeling of freshness in something mundane, different qualities of line are discovered.

Lucy Chetcuti is an emerging visual artist based on unceded Ngunnawal/Ngambri land, Kamberri / Canberra.

Lucy was a board member of Tributary Projects Artspace between 2019-2021. In 2021 she won the ANU School of Art and Design Drawing Prize. She was a finalist in the 2022 Goulburn Art Award. Her work is held in private collections in Australia. She received First Class in Honours in Painting at the ANU School of Art and Design in 2021. She is a studio resident of Australian National Capital Arts in Kamberri / Canberra.

Andrew Sullivan: Artist Statement & Bio

Andrew Sullivan is a renowned Sydney based artist, a past winner of the Sulman Prize.  Sullivan’s practice is known for being idiosyncratic, saturated with detail, accompanied by a wicked sense of humour.  He creates complex still lives and portraits, whether he has created them for his amusement or for the viewer.  They are narratives that rigorously weaves through memory, melancholy and history.  

While Sullivan's penchant for detail is evident, one must approach his works closely to fully appreciate their luminosity and meticulousness. Each piece possesses a unique personality, inviting viewers on a journey through time and prompting contemplation on deeper levels.

With a career spanning 30 years, Sullivan has exhibited extensively and his works adorn both institutional and private collections.  

Andrew Sullivan lives and works on Gadigal land, Sydney. He graduated from the National Arts School and has exhibited in numerous galleries around Australia and New Zealand since then. He has been a past winner of the Sulman Prize, a finalist in several prizes including the Archibald, Blake Art Prize, The Mosman Art Prize to name a few, he has had numerous solo exhibitions and group shows.  

With a career spanning 30 years, Sullivan has exhibited extensively and his works adorn both institutional and private collections nationally and internationally.

Andjana Pachkova: Artist Statement & Bio

Andjana Pachkova is captivated by the never-ending dance of nature and the human; passionate and loving to be sure, yet also violent and at times exploitative. Her painting practice is firmly grounded in the intuitive, responding to the invisible and the ephemeral, to landscapes both travelled and felt. Her process follows the flow of substance, finding a place for herself that is liquid, fluid and moving very quickly. Interested in the infinite and treacherous possibility of water and surface, her painting practice explores the mutual interaction of the human and the landscape, how they move to shape and touch each other.

Born in Ukraine, Andjana Pachkova comes from a traditional Russian art tutoring background. Following the political movement Perestroika, she moved to Moscow and took classes at Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts.

In 1997 Pachkova won the prestigious Davis Fellowship and subsequently moved to the United States. Alongside her academic studies, Andjana developed a drawing and painting practice informed by a passion for human relationships to landscape, in particular exploring the subtle changes in human psyche that occur when a person moves through a series of places.  Andjana took art courses both at Dartmouth Colledge, New Hampshire and NYU, New York.

Grounded in the intuitive, Andjana’s paintings team with passion, submerging the viewer in an active experience of movement and self- actualisation. Responding to both invisible and ephemeral connection, to topographies both travelled and felt, her practice explores the mutual interaction of human within the landscape, how they move to shape and touch each other. Recently interested in the infinite and treacherous possibility of oceanscapes, her works and painting process have taken on the turbulence of substance, of flowing paint and swirling water, to find a place for herself on canvas that is fluid and living.

Pachkova has studied with notable artists such as Idris Murphy, Jo Bertini, Brandt Lewis, Denis Clarke and Tony Tozer. Upon her move to Australia in 2013, she began to exhibit her work in Sydney.

Andjana's works are held in private collections across the United States, including Harvard Law faculty in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Israel and Lebanon.

Artist portrait by Jessica Maurer

Andjana Pachkova: CV January, 2025 Download