2013.01-2013-10 Kudos Exhibitions

01. Hungry Ghost 

Amber Camille Jacobs 

22 January-2 February 

Amber Camille Jacobs' exhibition  Hungry Ghost  implements experimental and original use of paint, print-making, installations, animation and light in order to explore the ancient, Buddhist concept of the Hungry Ghost.

02. After the Mayans

Meng-Yu Yan, Sam Shennan, Muriel Anne Ricafrente, Nick Fox, Tamara Muzikants, Hannah Carroll Harris, Beth Dillon, Kieran Bryant, Lachlan Herd, Harriet Robey, Lily Taylor, Trent Connor, Zac Fenn, Clare Powell, Laura Taylor, Rose Jurd, Georgia Emslie, Renae Swann, Cecilia White 

Curated by Kieran Bryant and Lachlan Herd 

19 February - 2 March at Kudos Gallery  and  COFAspace

Based around the 2012 phenomenon, comprising a range of eschatological beliefs according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on 21 December 2012. This date is regarded as the culmination of a 5,125 year long cycle in the Mayan Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.

03. Launch Sequence

The Kudos Gallery Committee 2012 presents Launch Sequence, featuring the work of graduating or recently graduated artists including Bernardo Bento, Kieran Bryant, Susan Bui, Sophie Clague, Eric Davidson Gluyas, Beth Dillon, Tamara Elkins, Nick Fox, David Greenhalgh, Sarah Kukathas, Gillian Lavery, Allison Marie Low, Tom Macphail, Ramesh Mario, Gemma Messih, Claudia Nicholson, Jason Phu, Lisa Sammut, Samara Shehata and Giselle Stanborough 

Curated by the 2012 Kudos Gallery Committee 

5 March- 16 March   

Sometimes things don't go as planned. 

Some say that on July 20th  1969 Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.  Aldrin maintains that a UFO accompanied them out of the earth's atmosphere. Apparently their astronaut suits were so big that they broke the lunar module's "on" switch. As an alternative they used a felt tip pen to restart it and get back to earth. 

04. Chances We Take 

Jane Fontane 

19 - 23 March   

In our formative years, we create the foundations of our identities. We form self-concepts and react to experiences; we become an individual. How much are we a product of experience? 

Chances we take  explores this process of construction through the unique perspective of pre-adolescence, investigating the notion that we are allrgba(0, 0, 0, 0.73) constructs of our time, place and history, just as the presented screen-print works are of theirs. Concern is placed on the journey, the process that we all make from birth to death mirrored in the voyage the image takes from idea to reality, life subject to screen-print. Thus the conceptual properties of screen-printing are linked to the formation of an identity based on experiences as layers of the finished work, each informing the alignment of the next, drawn together in an exploration as portraits, interactive games and installation. 

Primary colours and superhero dress-ups: What is expected of us as we 'grow up'? Where did we come from, and how do we know where we are going? Is it really ok to be the sum of strength as well as flaw?

05. Proximity 

Melanie Beresford, Sarah Bovis, Minét Brits, Zachariah Fenn, Matthew James, Aaron Moore, Simon McGrath, Simon Swadling, Santina Ingui, Louise Zhang, Jemima Trappel, Joe Oppel, Clare Maxwell, Lorna MacRitchie 

Curated by Zac Fenn 

26 March - 6 April  

prox•im•i•ty : (noun) nearness in time, space, or relationship. 

At the very core of our beings, humans have a deep-seeded longing for companionship and fellowship. Loneliness is a kind of social starvation. Where has this longing for relationship developed from? 
Our very livelihood is dependent upon the perfect structuring and balance of our solar system. 
Can such an extravagant and complex network simply come about by chance? …or has it all been intelligently designed? 

Join us as we as we explore these universal questions through art as a means of communication and expression.

06. Performance Anxiety  

Ben Rak 

9 - 13 April  

Theories of performativity have asserted that all people are in effect participating in some form of role-play.  Regardless of what we imagine our identity to be, we render it for the benefit of both our selves and our audience.  This performance evolves in response to reactions, which in turn reshape our identity - it does not embody the identity, it constructs it.  Performance Anxiety is the result of an ongoing project exploring the role of style, body language, stereotypes, clichés and media narrative in the manifestations of cultural identity. By appropriating stereotypes, I argue that within this time of media saturation, the 'authentic self' is lost, replaced by a pastiche of media images and clichés.

07. Illusion

Tom Rynne

16 - 27 April    

As artists we spend much of our time thinking about "The Truth", but in a world where truth depends more on what newspapers you read, what TV you watch and who your facebook friends are, the idea has lost much of its currency. As a group our works deal with a wide spectrum of ideas around truth, lies, fact, fiction, the real and the artificial. We aim to question what reality and illusion are, with stops at delusion, dreams, our own private wonderlands and the starkest of realities. Our works traverse themes from interpersonal relationships and connections to the need to escape the reality we find ourselves in, whether through dreams or through drink. We're here to question what is real and we're here to examine our illusions.

08. Walking Mountains: Responses from the Heart

Daniel Antkowiak, Melissa Beowulf, Meredith Christie, Marissa Dale-Johnson, Donna Eddie, Amanda Farquharson, Jade Gunn, Wenhui He, Lachlan Herd, Joanne Meligonitis, Toshiko Oiyama, Katya Petetskaya, Chloe Platt, Spider Redgold, Anna Russell, Renae Swann, Rachel Waters, Christine Wiltshier 

30 Apr - 4 May    

A pilgrimage through the Kumano Kodo Trail, Japan.  

A group Exhibition featuring works created as a response to an International Special Elective, taught and organized by Louise Folwer-Smith. Walking Mountains is a collective exhibition which shares with you  creative reflections and personal experiences from eighteen COFA students, following an international journey through culturally significant sites in Wakayama, Japan. These students, of varied artistic discipline, warmly welcome you to enjoy and engage in a brilliant display of cultural creative endeavours.

09. Morphology 

Ainsley Wilcock, Anitta Smith, Louise Zhang, Mathew Purchase, Emma Davey Jenkins 


7 - 18 May    

Morphology: the branch of biology dealing with the forms and structure of organisms.

A multi-disciplinary exploration of art forms in nature playing with the phenomenal aspects of the seemingly irrational natural world and the imperial/rational world of natural sciences. Through The use of hyper-real colour and form exaggerate the artifice of recreating the natural in a gallery context. A documentation of our own understanding and imaginings of the science of nature and the natural. 

10. Emerging Topology

Josh Harle 

21 - 25 May 

All stories are travel stories.  

The spaces we inhabit are becoming progressively more legible through ubiquitous access to Google Maps and GPS navigation, introducing new types of travel story and new types of space. Emerging Topologies explores the shifting landscape of a city experienced through mobile mapping technology, and sketches out its own improbable paths through the shadows.

Informed by his previous research degree in Computer Science, Josh Harle has created a series of software tools to map, scan, and visualise the city in contingent, poetic ways, in spite of the rationalising imperative of geo-locative technology. The works tell tales: compiling unreadable maps of journeys through strange cities, and taking playful, winding trips across the smudged face of the reference map.