ARTIST PROFILE Issue 16 :: out now!
Sam Leach’s paintings are stunningly rendered and haunting in their subject matter. He paints to investigate the natural world and the ways we relate to it, assembling visual cues from historical painting, scientific pursuits and modern technology to populate his uncanny compositions.
For our cover story this issue, Sam Leach welcomed us into his studio to discuss the ideas behind his polished surfaces. Having begun a PhD at the beginning of the year, Leach talks to us about how his paintings look to science as an agent for change in how humans interact with their natural world. It is a contentious topic generating heated debate across our planet as we face up to the consequences of rapid development. These issues also consume our second feature artist Sarah Smuts-Kennedy.
A New Zealand native, Smuts-Kennedy works in a variety of media including film, photography, painting and sculptural installation, with a recent focus on industralisation, its impact on the environment and our ability to shut out the consequences from our comfortable domestic lives. Through the eye of a narrative filmmaker, Smuts-Kennedy tries to make sense of her world with delicately constructed objects and personalised landscapes.
Where Smuts-Kennedy finds delicacy and danger, John Olsen advises us to ‘get out there and draw’. With an exhibiting career spanning more than six decades, Olsen handles our natural environment with a creative intimacy few can match. Olsen recently returned from a tour to Lake Eyre and readily admits his heart and inspiration lies in the Australian landscape and the stories it has to offer.
John McPhee argues this very case for indigenous artist Barney Ellaga, whose paintings record the dreamings of his mother’s Alawa country; Julie Harris walks us through her abstract landscapes; while Bernard Ollis’ more formal compositions offer viewers a moment on a dream-like journey far away from home. Bronek Kozka leads us back to the uncomfortable familiarity of domestic life with cinematographic images of characters frozen in an awkward reality.
Simon Ives takes us into the painting conservation rooms of the Art Gallery of New South Wales as he restores and cleans Eugene Von Guerard’s Milford Sound; Peter Simpson reflects on the work of artist and friend, Michael Shannon; we hear from three emerging artists to watch – Emma White, Simone Eisler and Ali Noble – on our project pages; and we preview forthcoming exhibitions by David Wadelton, Jake Walker and Ryan Presley.
We have now added 16 extra pages each issue to squeeze in even more profiles, projects, essays, news, and reviews from Australasia and beyond. And if you need your ARTIST PROFILE fix between issues, check out our blog, or find us on Facebook and Twitter so we can keep you up to date in real time throughout the year.
