Harley Oliver: Artist Statement & Bio

Though best known for his career in television, Harley’s first love was painting. His Great, Great, Great Grandfather was well-known English portrait artist Samuel Massey, who married the sister of his friend and fellow painter JN Rhodes. His Grandfather who, along with Harley inherited the middle name of Rhodes as all first-born sons in his family have done, was also a painter. So it’s hardly surprising that when Harley picked up a brush at the age of eight, he felt a special affinity for the art form.

In the late 1960s Harley went to Wimbledon Art School in London, painting English landscapes in an era of abstract minimalism. Post art school, Harley’s career was in television as an editor at the BBC, then producer and director, making documentaries for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel as well as programs for TV channels in Australia and New Zealand. In between projects he continued to paint, but only recently decided to dedicate the majority of his time to being an artist.

Amy Dynan: Artist Statement & Bio

"I use the framework of beauty to explore the relationship between humanity and nature. My large-scale pastel paintings merge photorealism with abstract sensibilities to document moments of sublimity, transition and fragility in nature. The dynamics of light and dark work as a metaphor for the opposing forces in nature and in ourselves, creating landscapes that hover between land and sky, material and ethereal.

For me, drawing is a lens through which the spectrum of our existence is revealed, and a means to marvel at how lucky we are to feel it fully. To this end my work documents nature in flux and celebrates the beauty of what we stand to lose.”  

Amy Dynan is an award-winning artist, renowned for her nuanced balance between conceptual rigour and classical drawing skills. She completed her Master of Contemporary Art and Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts in 2017, developing a strong conceptual framework of beauty as a means to explore human relationships with the natural world.

“As a visual artist, research can offer a deeper, more profound connection to the significance of one’s own art practice in a field beyond the studio. I knew that my passion for drawing, combined with rigorous institutional and art world scrutiny and support would provide the necessary framework to further my aesthetic.”

Dynan has held two sell out solo exhibitions at Stanley Street Gallery, ‘Water’ in 2019 and ‘Skytalk’ in 2021. Dynan has been a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize and the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize. She has been selected for art residencies in France, Norway and Iceland (2018), Hill End (2017, 2020), Mornington Peninsula (2020) and Bundanon Trust (William Fletcher Scholarship) (2024).

Amy Dynan: CV November, 2023 Download

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

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 and since 2017 has been represented by Stanley Street Gallery in New South Wales.

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.

Andjana Pachkova: CV April, 2024 Download

Elizabeth Kelly: Artist Statement & Bio

My work in glass over the last 20 years has focussed on industrial handling processes of pressing and centrifuging to design works repeated in production incorporating a specific (largely transparent) colour range. During the last decade I have focussed on the composition of elements to construct larger objects, moving from utilitarian objects to a sculptural emphasis that still incorporates industrial methods of production but strongly draws from theoretical research for inspiration. This approach is informed by my work across other platforms prior to bringing this intent into my materially specific work.

I have always enjoyed changing scale; micro to macro cosmic observation has a way of changing perspective, and tailors to the aptness of purpose, and sets challenges in resolution of any work.

In these intricate iterations of cast, assembled and cold finished works my point of departure is the examination the origins of abiogenetic life and elemental organic geometry as inspiration. The theory of abiogenesis examines how the natural process of life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. Furthermore I am examining chirality or the asymmetry of chemical structures in the triggering of growth sequences, elemental in the understanding of what trips this potential ‘life’ switch. Mindful of these chemical processes, my work has a strong serendipitous affinity with marine invertebrates, realised through compositions of rhythmic sequences

Elizabeth Kelly is an artist who has a committed to exploring colour and form through glass. Her current focus, explores the built environment and patterns in engineering. Underlying this subject is a fascination with the social and historic values imbued in architectural structures and the link to scale and perception. 

Throughout her career, Kelly has worked collaboratively with architects, designers and sculptors on specific projects, and has continued a vigorous exhibition engagement.

Elizabeth initially trained as a glass blower before broadening into sculpture and applied design. She gained a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Australian National University, Canberra, and a Master of Visual Arts degree from Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney.

Elizabeth Kelly established Studio Tangerine in 2003 from a need for a dedicated studio to research and develop small scale industrial processes of coloured glass applied to architecture, art and design.

Previous to Studio Tangerine, Kelly lectured at Sydney College of the Arts taking up the prestigious position of Head of Studio, and also lectured at JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design Centre in Adelaide, South Australia. She has travelled extensively working in studio glass and has completed a Fellowship at the Creative Glass Centre of America, an Artist in Residency at the Seto International Ceramic and Glass centre in Japan. She was awarded the Capital Arts Patrons Organisation Fellowship in Canberra and most recently a Churchill Fellowship.

Elizabeth Kelly: CV January, 2020 Download

Oscar Martín de Burgos: Artist Statement & Bio

Volume allows us to caress, to feel, to travel to each degree of a spherical perspective, in which we can experience the four dimensions. Time is also present, generative or degenerative evolution is part of the work itself. The fifth dimension waits beating inside us....

Oscar Martín De Burgos is a Spanish sculptor and mystic who through his practice, seeks to unify past, present and future expressions of spirituality. Taking as a starting point prehistoric symbolic manifestations, he delves with psychic empathy into the cultures of our ancestors. Using different materials; namely bronze, brass, aluminum, polymers and ceramic, Burgos engages the viewer in an accessible memory that escapes from the correlative line of time and human history.

De Burgos studied Sculpture and Environmental Design at School of Art and Design as well as Urban, Environmental and Landscape Design in Alicante (Spain).

Along his professional career De Burgos has received different grants and awards in Spain and France in recognition of his work. His pieces of art are in public and private collections all over the world and he has also been commissioned by institutions and private companies for large scale public art works. These include the: Cid Campeador at A-1 highway, Ministry of Public Works, Spain Government, Neolito at HUBU (University Hospital of Burgos). Seed, a high relief mural at San Francisco Monastry from x. XIII, Cáritas Foundation of Spain.

In additon, De Burgos is the author of many representative sculptures as corporative art for international business groups and public institutions, such as: Grupo Antolín Ciudad de Burgos Awards, FAE de Oro Business Awards, and the official 3D image of the XVII Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences.

Oscar Martín de Burgos: CV January, 2020 Download

Margarita Sampson: Artist Statement & Bio

Human life to me has always been part of a rich and interconnected world, rising and falling, living and dying, interdependent: the mouth of a flower is also my mouth, the surface of a prickly pear is like testicles and soft anemone forms are like our own soft tissues. Healthy and unhealthy; reaching maturity and falling away. In my work, allusions to multiple forms are drawn but not cemented. For me, the power of the work comes from a rich soup of inferences which the viewer provides from their own experience. I say, “is this not unlike...” and you say “yes, but also...”.' The works bring up questions, invites narrative and suggests possible futures with any number of outcomes.

Margarita Sampson was raised on Norfolk Island, and the varied sea life made an indelible impression on her as a small child. As an adult, her sculpture and jewellery work draws upon this rich visual vocabulary. All works are meticulously hand-made by the artist, comprising of hand and machine sewn textiles. In Sampson's Infectious Desires series, the found furniture is sawn and altered, re-carved and gilded, before being overlaid with textile 'landscapes'.

Born in Nowra, NSW (1970), Margarita Sampson grew up on Norfolk Island, attending COFA in Sydney with a BA & M.Art in painting (1990, 92). She began textile sculptural work in response to the first Sculpture Sea (1997) & a photograph of her initial work ‘Urchins’ went become one of the defining images of the exhibition in its early days. Her following work “Fish Curtain’ received the People’s Choice in 1998. Her textile work is often inspired by her childhood summers spent moving between aquatic & terrestrial realms on Norfolk, and embraces hybrid soft forms that transition between human, animal, vegetative and mineral states. 

After some 15 years away from Australia, Sampson returned in 2011 and won the Object section of the Waterhouse Art Prize in 2012 with her work ‘Anenome Incursions: Zsa-Zsa', and subsequent works been finalists in the Wynne prize, the Blake Prize, twelve Sculpture by the Seas Exhibitions and most recently won the Hillview Indoor Sculpture Award 2018.  Her solo show ‘Infectious Desires’ at Stanley Street Gallery in 2015 received international press coverage and critical acclaim. 

Sampson’s work often takes a domestic object and imagines a paradigm of excessive growth, where the soft parts grow and overtake the host, a reflection on current environmental unbalances and possible ecosystem collapse. The work is also very personal, as the objects contain lush openings, curvaceous forms, are provocative and often feminist; meditating on the artist’s aging body within society and spiritually reflecting the artist’s Buddhist practice. She currently lives in a meditation retreat centre. 

Sampson works with commercially available textiles and found objects for her interior works, but also draws on her jewellery practice for work utilising enamel and copper, and wood and steel for large outdoor works.

Margarita Sampson: CV January, 2020 Download