NIKE SAVVAS

Nike Savvas monograph Full of Love Full of Wonder has been published by Black Dog Publishing.

Nike Savvas, winner of the prestigious Australia Council Fellowship Grant for Fine Art in 2010, is an artist of both large-scale installation and small-scale works. Drawing her inspiration from a variety of sources, from Op Art through to kitsch, her work often conflates painstakingly crafted detail and complex mathematical algorithms - drawing attention to both the tangible and the abstract at once.

Her objects and installations often invite the viewer to partake in the active experience of her work, by physically shifting, repositioning and refocusing their gaze, in order to unveil ever-changing facets to the works. Her art is never quite ‘stable’, rather Savvas creates tantalising, fluctuating objects that captivate and mesmerise the eye and the mind. Full of Love Full of Wonder is the first monograph on her work.

Born in Sydney, Australia, of Greek-Cypriot parents, and moving to London in the mid-1990s to develop her arts practice, Savvas continues to work between London, Sydney and Nicosia— her artistic identity is therefore an eclectic reflection of her multiple heritages.

The book is currently available through Black Dog Publishing or Amazon.

MCA commission NIKE SAVVAS for LOUIS VUITTON
ARC ONE are pleased to announce the partnership of Louis Vuitton and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.  Nike Savvas has been commissioned by the MCA to create an installation at the Louis Vuitton George Street store in Sydney. 

ROBERT OWEN

ROBERT OWEN's installation Silence in the new Hamer Hall, is featured in Spanish Design Magazine Modaes:

"Swarovski fills Melbourne with the brightness of its crystals. Through its division Elements, the company has signed a partnership agreement with the sculptor Robert Owen that is reflected in the interior of the Hamer Hall in the Arts Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

Suspended from the ceiling at different heights above the main entrance of the Hamer Hall, hangs seven stainless steel sculptures with Swarovski Elements, each unique in geometry and scale.

The installation is called Silence and aims to amplify the audience's experience at a concert and provide a link between the visual and performing arts, adding also the theatrical space. The structures of the creations are completely covered with 62,000 Swarovski Elements."

To read the full article, click here.

GUAN WEI

GUAN WEI
THE ENCHANTMENT

09 October - 10 November 2012 
Preview: 4-6pm, Saturday 13 October, 2012

Guan Wei’s artistic practice draws on his own experience as a Chinese national who migrated to Australia from China in 1990—following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Guan Wei made many changes in the 1990’s. It became a significant time for him in Australia, where he explored cultural relationships among China and Australia, ideas of immigration, colonisation, identity and cultural tolerance, come together to create a fantasy world illustrating his own personal transition between the two cultures. In 2005, he returned to his homeland, this pilgrimage to his native soil mediated a sense of wellbeing, and finally, a sense of place.

Guan Wei is an adept storyteller who masterfully engages his audience. There is fine and gentle nature to Guan Wei and his artistic practice. The gentleness manifests in his own questioning and enquiry of his creative world. The Enchantment, a series of twelve paintings, and Up in the Clouds, a series of five bronze sculptures, retains the humour, wisdom and cross-cultural exploration that have become characteristic of his oeuvre.

In The Enchantment, the artist as magician plays his hand to the allure and power of art. In this imagined new world, the ‘Big Guy’ is the central figure in the paintings. He features as the modern day alchemist, masterfully playing out and watching over scenes of his enchanted universe. In the words of the artist: the passing of time translates the tension and strangeness experienced at the beginning, into maturity, and finally capability. The alchemist has mastered his universe.

As a continuation of his sell-out Cloud sculptures of 2009, Up in the Clouds features a series of dark bronze sculptures. The cloud, as a symbol of liberty, features prominently throughout his practice. Up in the Clouds portrays gentle figures playfully interacting with their cloud. The harmony between body and form alludes to the transience and freedom of nature.