Dr Elisabeth Weissensteiner was born in Vienna in 1958 and has lived and worked in Melbourne since 2003. She has worked as a practicing artist since completing her PhD in German Philology and Art History at the University of Vienna in 1983. Weissensteiner’s multi-disciplinary practice traverses sculpture, photography, video, installation and technology-based work. In recent years her work has been chosen for numerous large-scale public sites and commissions. She frequently holds solo exhibitions both in Australia and across Europe.

In Weissensteiner’s upcoming solo exhibition at Anna Pappas Gallery, Bodies and Spirits, the artist will present a new body of ethereal photographic and sculptural works. These new pieces continue Weissensteiner’s exploration of how we, in the present, are affected by our family histories and ancestral roots whilst also delving into the notion of an unknowable past.

Tina Smyrnios’ first solo exhibition at Anna Pappas Gallery presents new works that explore photographic and drawing processes to create images of both fragile beauty and strong confrontation. Through experimentation of materials, and manipulation of surfaces, Smyrnios has constructed images that recall pain, frailty and destruction, while allowing an unexpected radiance to break through the darkness.

The physical surface of paper works is violated with tools such as scrapers, burnishers and sandpaper creating an almost sculptural feel that invokes the materiality of stretched skin or a dark sky, while photographs are manipulated to stress a level of tension and vulnerability. These strong physical compositions that play with a protrusion and recession of form are fragmented by a sensuality and fragility that belies a contradiction of content and image.

Christina Thwaites, is a painter born in England in 1980, graduated from the University of Scotland in 2004, attended the École du Louvre in Paris, was tutored by the Italian artist Alberto Parres at la Porta Blu Studio in Rome and lives and works in Canberra, Australia. Body Transformations is Thwaites’ first solo exhibition with Anna Pappas Gallery.

“…There is thus a strange kind of superfluidity or doubleness about Christina Thwaites’ images of her pregnancy. Her belly and breasts swell up; her legs, now that she no longer has time to shave them, grow hairy. She waddles, she gasps for breath, she frequently has to stop for a rest. But we can no longer decide whether it is her art or her pregnancy that makes her like this. Or, put another way, she is doubly full: both with her baby and with the art that depicts her this way.”

– Rex Butler, September 2014

This recent body of work, Perpetual Present, continues Hamish Carr’s interest in contemporary modes of communication specifically the creation of digital networks and virtual communities. Envisaging these interactions in formation has formed the basis to activate a reality specific to his practice.

The work for this exhibition has developed through the adaptation of etchings, digital technologies and topographic methods. These recent paintings employ both concerted and gestural applications of medium. This combination enables Carr to create a fluid and transient environment.

Vin Ryan is interested in dirt. For his new series of photographic work Ryan has invited his family, friends and various acquaintances to sweep the floors of their houses, collect their sweepings; the discarded, dirt, grime and dust, and submit these sweepings to the artist for aesthetic consideration. The collective effort of this strange request forms the basis of Ryan’s new solo exhibition Dirt World. Ryan believes that with each sweep, contained within each dustpan, is a memorial – a sample of life – as revealing as a diary.

Visit Anna Pappas Gallery at the 2014 Melbourne Art Fair. Booth C105. Royal Exhibition Building.

The gallery will be showcasing the work of Stephen Giblett, Michaela Gleave, Emma Langridge, Simon MacEwan, Cameron Robbins, Justin Williams and Jarek Wojcik.

The curtain rises in August on the much-anticipated Luke Roberts exhibition Kunstkamera – an overview at Anna Pappas Gallery. This extensive presentation incorporates both floors of the gallery and includes photography, painting, video, sculpture and found objects providing a broad overview of the career of this icon of Australian art.

Major works from the AlphaStation/Alphaville series shown at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2010) and the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2011) will be on display as well as works from Roberts’ AMOROMA project resulting from his 2012 residency at the renowned British School at Rome.

Of course, no exhibition of Roberts’ work would be complete without highlighting his strong performance history. Over four decades Roberts has developed a world of elaborate mythology and multiple personas. Images of and items belonging to his most famous persona, Pope Alice, as well as some of Roberts’ other notable personas will feature in the exhibition. This year marks a significant milestone for Roberts’ celebrated persona Alice Jitterbug, who first visited the National Gallery of Victoria forty years ago in 1974. This timely overview contains a live performance element, an unorthodox occurrence within the commercial gallery setting yet one integral to the artist’s oeuvre and especially relevant during this historic anniversary.

Luke Roberts MFA was the Australian Fellow at PS1 MoMA, New York (1996-97). During the 1980s he lived in Amsterdam, Paris, Kassel and Berlin. He was an Australian representative in the 2nd Asia-Pacific Triennial (1996) and the Biennale of Sydney (2002). The National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, QAGOMA, and the Renia Sofia have collected his work. Luke was born in Alpha, Central Queensland his practice is concerned with constructs of history and gender and investigates marginalization and spirituality. HDH Pope Alice, his visionary performance persona, embodies his aspirations.

Through his hyper real and high key chromatic oil paintings, Jack Rowland aims to alter our perception of the natural world and urges us to re-discover our surroundings. In Illusive Reality, Rowland present us with a new series of work in which he has transformed the familiar Australian landscape into an unfamiliar, dreamlike, or even alien environment. At times eerie, psychedelic or seductive, Rowland shows us our environments ability to change and suggests that this powerful force affects us all.

Jack Rowland holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from RMIT University. He recently completed a residency with Takt, Berlin and his work was shown in a number of exhibitions whilst in Germany including Naturlich!, Kunstraum Tapir, Berlin and Above From Below, The Cellar Gallery, Berlin. Rowland is represented by Anna Pappas Gallery.

The work Viridian by young artist Justin Williams may appear to be the product of an active imagination. In recent years, however, Williams has been living and working in Victoria’s picturesque Dandenong Ranges, where he has encountered unique tales and characters that have proven to be more curious than fiction. From his idyllic studio in the mountains Williams produces distinctive ceramic and painted works that reflect on and celebrate the character of the place he lives.

Justin Williams is a painter and ceramicists based in Victoria. Williams was born in 1985 and received a Bachelor of Communication and Design, Majoring in Printmaking and Illustration in 2004. He has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and had his work featured in numerous publications including Artist Profile Magazine and Australian Creative. This is Williams’ first solo exhibition with Anna Pappas Gallery. Williams is represented by Anna Pappas Gallery.

Master draughtsman Matt Coyle is well known for his skilful use of black pen on white paper. In 2014 Coyle has introduced a bold new element into his work; colour. With this turn his subjects take on a new charge, rich and seductive, yet still hauntingly sinister. In Warm Blooded Playthings, Coyle presents a new series of meticulous drawings that display his flirtation with tinting and shading, with hues and saturation. The result is a heightened sense of drama, where hyper-real and menacing subjects bestow upon the work a palpable tension.

As Matthew Kirkcaldie (Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience at the University of Tasmania) has aptly noted ‘through Coyle’s eyes, the world becomes a richer, more sinister place. These days we are deadened by imagery, films swamped by a tide of CGI, the endless styling of the trivial, viewing kids’ parties and live bands through our phone screens. Coyle gives us back the little, the simple, the quotidian – and suddenly everything around us crackles with significance.’

Emma Langridge’s paintings, although physically composed of few elements; line, proportion, colour and medium, visually the works are incredibly complex. Langridge says her work is the ‘accumulated result of the repeated action of hand and arm, left to right, upper edge to lower, mapping an expansion of time and space.’

Even in the most mechanical of processes, if the hand is employed there will no doubt be a degree of unintentional mark-making which finds its way into a work. Such is the case in Langridge’s painting practice. By adhering to a rigid process, that which is unintentional becomes the variable and therefore the focus. The schism between the deliberate, perceived and that which occurs randomly is Langridge’s long-time subject and will be the focus of her solo exhibition Signal to Noise.

Langridge completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Western Australia in 1996 and moved to Melbourne in 2001. She has held solo exhibitions across Australia, had her work included in numerous curated exhibitions, prizes and award shows nationally and internationally including exhibitions in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany, United States of America and Greece. Emma Langridge is represented by Anna Pappas Gallery.

Visit Anna Pappas Gallery at Art Athina 2014, booth D1.

Exhibiting works by: Stephen Giblett, Sam Grigorian, Marc Standing, Elisabeth Weissensteiner and Jarek Wojcik.

Slip draws together works containing a suggestion of change. Slight and subtle slips that may be almost imperceptible, yet nevertheless present.

The artists’ works cross over numerous mediums and as such the exhibition will include painting, collage, sculpture and installation based works. Each artist’s practice is highly individual, as too is the way in which the artists’ works link and respond to the theme of the exhibition – each in their own way hinting at a possibility of shift.

The notion of the ever-changing landscape – that of salt flats and ice fields – is captured within the work of Emma Hamilton and Scott Miles. For Emma Hamilton, the salt lakes within Victoria’s Mallee region provide an ongoing reference point. These flat, white, expansive landscapes are continuously changing as, with each rainfall, the dense layer of salt which makes up the extensive terrain is recast – different from how it was before, yet still the same.

A similar observation of the changing landscape could be construed from the paintings of Scott Miles, whose recent work is concerned with snowy landscapes and ice fields. The focus here, however, appears to be more concerned with the morphing abilities of colour and light. To research these works Miles travelled to Greenland, north of the polar circle in order to experience the polar night – an expanse of days when the sun does not rise above the horizon, turning day into a lingering twilight and night into an almost impenetrable blackness.

Travel is also important to the work of Elyse de Valle, who will soon travel to Italy to continue her research into the life and work of renowned sculptor, Charles Francis Summers. De Valle’s work takes a kaleidoscopic approach to the past and present. Creating schisms and shifts in time, she distorts and multiplies events, overlaying her experiences and actions with that of a predecessor.

Gian Manic explores the ability to recognize the self, and the difference in the self as reflected. Through his paintings of reflective surfaces, mirrors and foils, Manic examines a slippage between the object and the image. In these works, Manic addresses the mirror itself, presenting us with an inversion of the traditional self-portrait.

Anna Varendorff’s delicate sculptural works draw lines through space. Her refined brass structures suggest that movement and interaction are possible – that these lines may traverse the gallery, yet no change occurs. The viewer is presented with a series of static objects, whose inherent harmony between light and shadow imply movement.

Sam Fagan’s works also feature items that appear to circumvent function. Interested in simple acts of defiance, Fagan utilises everyday items: the chair and the newspaper – altering these forms to a point where they can no longer serve their intended purpose. Whilst large traces of the original state and function remain, interventions and a sense of unrest drive the pieces into new territory.

Migration is likewise a key concern in Laura Carthew’s new works. Interested in ritual and memorialisation, Carthew’s photographic works featuring a burning boat communicate both these concerns. The works also speak of tragedy, as we trace the boat’s progression from form to ashes.

As a viewer of this exhibition, you are invited to explore the small transitions that are apparent in each work: the changes, slippages and shifts.

– Tahlia Jolly, April 2014

This exhibition includes work by artists: Laura Carthew, Sam Fagan, Emma Hamilton, Gian Manik, Scott Miles, Elyse De Valle and Anna Varendorff.

Christophe Canato’s evocative photographs trigger memories of one’s childhood. This rich series of darkly lit portraits and still life photographs, each piece brimming with a sense of uncertainty and mystery, delves into the psyche of childhood and looks at the fascination and imagination held only within the mind of the child.

As Alasdair Foster (Director of the Australian Centre for Photography, 1998-2011) writes ‘Christophe Canato’s photographs of boys are not so much portraits as psychological portrayals of the developmental stage that follows infancy and precedes adolescence. These human subjects are complemented by photographs of inanimate forms and structures… Objects that fascinate the mind of a boy but retain little interest for the busy grownup. In this way the artist sets up a dialogue between the adult viewer and the half-remembered period of childhood his photographs evoke.’

Born in France in 1966, Canato grew up in an artistic family, his father a talented painter. At seventeen Canato successfully enrolled in the Beaux-Arts School and went on to complete a Diplôme National Supérieur D’expression Plastique in 1989. Canato lives and works in France and Australia.

Los Angeles-based Bonnie Lane returns to her hometown of Melbourne for a new solo exhibition. Lane’s newest exhibition Monsters will be a series of video works that splice together segments of the human body to form bizarre creatures. These monstrous beings, with their fragmented and contorted flesh, are manifestations of the darker parts of our subconscious, our private desires and most secret thoughts. From their starting point as simple paper collages, Lane has developed these Monsters into almost living creatures that will make one overly aware of their own body as they navigate the exhibition and interact with these strange yet seductive beings.

Lane’s intimate video installations generate an emotional connection with the audience by creating immersive environments to be stepped into, which alter ones perception of time and space. Combining horror with the sublime, Lane’s practice addresses anxiety, fear, loss, memory, and disappointment whilst searching for comfort, connection, and resolution. This exhibition will follow on from the success of Lane’s 2012 solo exhibition at Anna Pappas Gallery, Make Believe. The key kaleidoscopic video work from this exhibition was widely acclaimed and as such was chosen for the curated exhibition Art Athina Contemporaries: Paradise Lost (Art Athina Contemporary Art Fair, Athens, Greece, 2013), was a finalist in the prestigious Guirguis New Art Prize (Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria, 2013) and is currently on an international tour in Asialink’s Vertigo exhibition, curated by Claire Anna Watson.

Yasmin Heisler has been using polyethylene bags as a medium in her practice for over fifteen years. Her latest project, Formed in Air comprises of a photographs series taken in the foothills of West Gippsland between 2008 – 2013. Here, Heisler has found fascination within the tactility and pliability of plastic waste. Continuously reacting to its surroundings, the plastic waste expresses temporality visually. The photographic frame suspends the form, capturing a point of levitation before gravity takes over. The images act as a way of looking at both desire and failure.

Yasmin Heisler is a Melbourne based artist whose practice includes photography, installation, video, sound and text.  She completed a Masters in Visual Art at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1999 and has held multiple exhibitions nationally, including exhibiting with the Queensland University of Technology and a series of shows with the White Street Project.

Held in February each year, our annual Project exhibition has become a stand out event of the Melbourne art scene. Designed to promote boundary pushing artists, each year the exhibition takes a new curatorial premise as its starting point.

“The universe, believed to be at least 10 billion light years in diameter has been expanding since its creation approximately 13 billion years ago. All matter and energy but still mostly unknown, it is both challenging to many and difficult by a long way for human reasoning.”  In 2014 absolutely nothing is stationary and as such this exhibition will be a snapshot, one of many possibilities and subject to change. The universe takes front stage and artists under the heading of FREE RANGE will break all the rules through a chaotic mix of light installation, video, painting, collage and mixed media works.

This year’s homegrown list includes Rebecca Baumann, Michael Brennan, Will French, Stephen Giblett, Michaela Gleave, Brad Haylock, Yasmin Heisler, Troy Innocent, Emma Langridge, Hermione Merry & Henriette Kassay-Schuster, Brendan Murphy, Cameron Robbins, Sandra Selig and Justin Williams.

Artists: Rebecca Baumann, Michael Brennan, Will French, Stephen Giblett, Michaela Gleave, Brad Haylock, Yasmin Heisler, Troy Innocent, Emma Langridge, Hermione Merry & Henriette Kassay-Schuster, Brendan Murphy, Cameron Robbins, Sandra Selig and Justin Williams.