If you missed GUAN WEI's lecture at the Australian Tapestry Workshop last February, you can now watch it entirely here! As part of the 'Friends of the ATW' lecture series, GUAN WEI delved into his practice from the late 1970's to more recent works.
HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT
Honey Long & Prue Stent, Banana Slug, 2018, archival pigment print, 72 x 108cm.
Honey Long & Prue Stent, Salt Pool, 2018, archival pigment print, 72 x 108cm.
ARC ONE is delighted to present Phanta Firma, the first solo exhibition in Australia for talented collaborative duo HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT.
Multidisciplinary artists Honey Long and Prue Stent have worked together since 2010. Their spontaneous and playful art centres on a fascination with gender and the body, and seeks to undermine notions of the passive female. They employ the body and unconventional materials to distort and fragment the bodily form, often with unexpected outcomes. Dreamy, fluid, saccharine, gritty and fleshy, Long & Stent challenge and captivate audiences with powerful imagery that crosses the subversive and the surreal.
In Phanta Firma, Long & Stent have quoted and appropriated signs, tropes, and motifs of woman from contemporary culture and the canon of art history as an erotic lure that guides the viewer into unfamiliar territory. In these works the artists have carefully composed their own bodies, and those of friends, according to the traditions of Classical aesthetics. Embodying Botticelliean nymphs and Venuses, Classical sculptures, and sirens draped in material that clings to the female form or billows in a seductive Monroesque fashion, their gaze never confronts the viewer.
However, rather than passive, still and compliant, these young figures are in control, self-assured, and enjoying their own agency as they completely immerse themselves in their hyper real earthly landscapes. For Long & Stent, ‘in dissolving the body within these spaces there is a sense of energy being liberated through the clash and mingling of matter’. This incorporation of the landscape with the female form forces the male gaze to blink and poses questions to the viewer regarding the cultural construction and representation of female sexuality and desire.
Long & Stent’s sculptures, made from blown glass slumped and deflated onto rocks collected while on location shooting their images, and containing water samples from these sites, continue this project. They act as physical conduits to these photographic works, furthering the connection between the viewer, the landscape and the figure’s experience.
Phanta Firma is a playful fantasy that seeks to embed itself in solid ground.
Working across photography, performance, installation and sculpture, Honey Long and Prue Stent (both b. 1993, Sydney, Australia) have been making art together since they were teenagers. Long completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney, in 2015 and Stent completed her Bachelor of Arts (Photography) at RMIT, Melbourne, in 2014. Their work has been shown across Australia and in various counties internationally, including Zurich, Madrid, the United Kingdom and the United States. Recent exhibitions include London Photo, The Female Lens: 9 Contemporary Female Photographers, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London (2018); Future Feminin, Fahey/ Klein Gallery, Los Angeles (2018); Long and Stent, Nicola Von Senger Gallery, Zurich (2018); Players, curated by Cristina De Middle Puch, Photo Espanña Festival, Madrid (2017); and Sites of the Imagination, ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne (2017). They have participated in a number of projects, including This _ _ _ _ _ _ _ may not protect you but at times it’s enough to know it’s there, collaboration with Amrita Hepi, Underbelly Arts Festival, Sydney (2017); Sound and Vision, Sydney Opera House, Sydney (2016); and Gucci #24 Hour Ace, LA. Long & Stent currently live and work between Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.
MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO
MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO has an amazing new public artwork in Green Square, the City of Sydney’s new community and cultural precinct. MARIA FERNANDA's work, While I Live I Will Grow' sits at the entrance of the precinct and is made of sandstone and Queensland bottle trees.
The precinct will be launched officially on Saturday 26 May and MARIA FERNANDA will be in conversation with Green Square curatorial advisor Amanda Sharrad between 1.30pm – 2pm.
Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Where I Live I Grow, sandstone, queensland bottle trees, 2018.
ROBERT OWEN
Image: Robert Owen, Endings - Kodachrome 64, No. 00, 22/07/1992, 2009, archival print on 310gsm, 104 x 72.5cm.
ROBERT OWEN has two of his 'Endings' prints at CCP's Fundraiser The Art of Collecting. This is a fantastic opportunity to support the Centre for Contemporary Photography, with works available from leading contemporary Australian artists.
The opening is Thursday 17 May, 6-8pm.
HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT
PRUE STENT & HONEY LONG have a fantastic work in CCP's Fundraiser The Art of Collecting. This is a fantastic opportunity to support the Centre for Contemporary Photography and all the wonderful work they do.
The opening is at CCP, Thursday 17 May, 6–8pm at 404 George Street, Fitzroy!
Honey Long & Prue Stent, Suckle, 2017, archival pigment print, 87 x 58cm.
DANI MARTI & JULIE RRAP
DANI MARTI and JULIE RRAP are in the exhibition Hunter Red: Corpus, at the Newcastle Art Gallery.
The overarching exhibition theme of red is loaded with symbolism and tactile metaphors. The colour also provides audiences with an exploratory experience in the exhibition space with works of art that evoke life, death, blood, reproduction and mortality.
The exhibition will open on 26 May and continue until 22 July, 2018.
Image Caption: Dani Marti, 'Looking for Felix', 2000, plastic beads, curtains, 300 x 300 x 300cm.
LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN
Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Installation view of Morning Star, on display at The Sir John Monash Centre in Villers-Bretonneux, France
LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN's tapestry Morning Star is on permanent display at The Sir John Monash Centre in Villers–Bretonneux, France.
The tapestry will provide a lasting legacy in perpetuity commemorating the 46,000 Australian lives lost in battles of the Western Front in the First World War and commemorate the centenary of ANZAC.
The magnificent tapestry is hand-woven at the Australian Tapestry Workshop by Pamela Joyce, Leonie Bessant, Chris Cochius, Jennifer Sharpe and Cheryl Thornton.
LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN
Lyndell Brown & Charles Green's exhibition Morning Star: An Exhibition is currently on view at the Australian Embassy in Paris, France.
The exhibition continues until June1, 2018.
Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Installation view Morning Star: An Exhibition, Australian Embassy in Paris, France
PRUE STENT & HONEY LONG
Vault Magazine, Issue 22
PRUE STENT & HONEY LONG have been featured in the current VAULT magazine, Issue 22. The feature article talks about the power of their collaborative process and their upcoming exhibition at ARC ONE, opening 24 May, 6-8pm.