Platform Gallery

11 - 28 January
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Artist and sculptor Bianca Hayden calls herself a late bloomer.
 
“At least that’s the simplest explanation of a much more demanding set of obligations, or expectations that hold many women back from pursuing their passions,” she says.
 
After many years in many different caring roles, Bianca has put together a spectacular debut solo exhibition that has spent a long time in the back of her mind, waiting patiently for its chance to be taken care of.
 
“I’ve spent a lot of years caring for those coming into life, those learning how to live, those fighting to hold onto life, and ultimately preparing to leave life behind. It’s generally women who take on the caring of life and death in all its myriad forms.”
 
“This exhibition is my chance to double back. The process for this exhibition really began five years ago when I built my first dining table, to fulfil my dream of bringing my art practice into the everyday things we use.”
 
“Using sustainably sourced timbers, each piece is meticulously cut, carved, painted, gilded with gold foils, embedded with metal flakes, resin inlays, copper, brass and anything else I can find that is going to make the timber sing.”
 
Behind each piece is a loving interplay between the natural and artificial worlds. Bright, playful colour, gold foils, glitter and resin playfully contrast natural timber tones and recycled materials in Bianca’s painstakingly created works of art.
 
Recalling the women’s work that was first apparent in her caring roles, and now reflected in her creation of every day domestic objects, Bianca is injecting a traditionally male-dominated field with the feminine, inserting sparkle into timber, and merging playfulness together with artisanal woodworking techniques.
 
Each piece is an artwork that is made to be lived with and enjoyed on a daily basis, created by Bianca in her Blue Mountains studio in Lawson. Join us at the opening of Double Back on January 11 to enjoy Bianca’s impressive body of work, and to celebrate women everywhere who are taking care of things and carving out their own paths.

You can view all artwork details, images, dimensions and prices in the Probare exhibition catalogue here. Thanks so much to the artist, Leonardo Uribe, for putting this beautiful catalogue together.

For all sales enquiries please contact the gallery on 4742 0047 or hello@platformgallery.co

Platform Gallery is partnered with Art Money, who offer interest free loans for art purchases, spread over 10 equal monthly payments (but you get to take your art home with you straight away!) Please let us know if you are interested in using Art Money and we would be happy to help. 
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14 Dec – 7 Jan

Join us for the exhibition opening Friday 14 December at 5.30pm
 
“For this exhibition I was inspired by my immigration situation,” says Leonardo Uribe, a Colombian artist who has been in the Australia for nine years, and living and making art in the Blue Mountains for the last several.
 
“I had a difficult time recently, when I had to give the Immigration Department a lot of evidence about myself and my intentions to become a permanent resident. It is the same every few years, when I have to re-apply for my visa.”  
 
These immigration interviews and evidence-gathering, resulting in mounds of paperwork, often leave Leo feeling frustrated. He has begun channelling these feelings into his artwork, resulting in work that reflects no only his immigration journey, but more fundamental questions about family, identity and belonging. Probare, the exhibition’s title, is a Latin word, meaning to prove, demonstrate, get accepted.

“For me the best proof of who I am, and who I will be in Australia, comes from photos and objects that belonged to my family. I have taken inspiration from this, for example re-creating family photos and immigration documents using my family’s hair.”
 
Leo grew up surrounded by hair in his mother’s salon, which he had to walk through to get to his house. Using hair as an artistic medium is, according to Leo, both “beautiful and symbolic.” It is also a literal marker of his identity, with hair containing both his and his family’s DNA.
 
Another significant influence for Leo is religion, having grown up in a religious family in the majority Catholic Colombia.
 
 “I am working with some religious elements that remind me of my childhood. For this exhibition I have used rusted metal to recreate ‘niches’ – the traditional little shelters that contain sacred images.
 
“And I have used LED lights and motors in some of the sculptures, inspired by the movement and light found in the traditional Nativities in Colombia.”
 
Probare is a powerful meditation on immigration, religion and identity, expressed through sculpture, assemblage and painted works. The artworks may be based on Leo’s personal journey, but the themes – and the works’ appeal – are universal.

16 November – 10 December

Join us for opening night, Friday 16 November at 5.30pm. 
 
“We’ve reached an unprecedented moment in planetary history – the Anthropocene,” says artist Kevina-Jo Smith. The Anthropocene is a term used to describe the current epoch, characterised by significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems.
 
“I have been investigating the idea of the cyclical nature of human behaviour - the idea that we’re going in circles. I envisage a cyclone, where there is an inward-moving cycle and an outward-moving cycle. That is how I feel humankind is behaving – some people doing everything they can to undo or at least not contribute to the problem, and some people are just winding deeper and deeper into environmental chaos.”
 
Kevina is known for her practice of creating large scale weavings using upcycled materials. For this exhibition, she has taken inspiration from the image of the cyclone, creating scaled-down circular weavings that reflect the tension between the inner and outer cycles, not only of the weather system, but of how humankind is dealing - or not - with anthropogenic climate change.  
 
 “There are now so many of us, using so many resources, that we’re disrupting the great natural cycles. Almost all the planet’s ecosystems bear the mark of our presence. As Oxford University geographer, Professor Andrew Barry says, our ‘impacts are now connected, and systemic.’ This interconnectedness is what I have tried to reflect in my artwork.”
 
“While creating these artworks I have also been preparing to give birth for the first time – and so it is important for me to consider not only my personal impact on the environment, but also the impact my child will have on this planet.”
 
“I have been reconfiguring my practice, adjusting to working on a smaller scale. I have been researching and speaking to other artists about how they have continued their creative practice once becoming a parent, and I hope the meditative nature of this process and my art practice encourages the audience to stop and think about their own personal impacts, and what they can do to change it.” 

19 October - 12 November

Join us for the exhibition opening at 5.30pm Friday 19 October - featuring mini tarot readings by Emma Magenta and a talk by Niki Read of The Groundswell Project, a community organisation that uses art to increase death literacy. 

What if, instead of desperately trying to avoid discussions about death and dying, we brought it out into the open? What if, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, and trying to cope with it on our own when it inevitably does happen, our society was primed to talk about what it’s really like at the end of your life, or about grief, or about how death is just a natural part of life?
 
In The Great Divide, eight current and former Blue Mountains artists explore these themes, offering up their own concepts of mortality in order to help lessen the fear and denial around what it means to die or be dying. This exhibition is designed to help start a conversation that is long overdue in Western culture.
 
Artist Hayley West, who has reimagined a series of ceramic cremation urns, taking found vessels and creating new custom lids for each, is fascinated with the objects that get left behind when someone dies. “Ordinary objects can become significant keepsakes, at times revered like a reliquary of histories,” says Hayley.
 
Yoka Terzic, who has produced black and white ink works that serve to heighten the contrasting nature of life and death, says “death scares us because life is all we know. It is the role of the shaman and artist to visit the world of the dead and then return with the obtained wisdom; born again.”

Along with the big philosophical questions, this exhibition also delves into artists’ personal experience with death. “My images were inspired in part by my grandmother, who recently passed away,” says Mount Victoria artist Nina Lipscombe. “I wanted the images to express that feeling of loss, but also of letting go.”
 
Join us for this beautiful, poignant exhibition, and join the conversation about death and dyling, guided by the beliefs, insights and practices of the artists.

Exhibiting artists: 

Cate Dudley
Nina Grodahl
Ona Janzen
Nina Lipscombe
Justin Morrissey
Kevina-Jo Smith
Yoka Terzic 
Hayley West 

21 September - 15 October 
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“These goddesses and female winged creatures come to me as stories, and often act as my guardians,” says artist and printmaker Jan Melville. “They are created from my own mythology, and protect not only me, but the environment.
​I feel that they have a big role to play in the landscape.”
 
The strong women and female beings featured in Jan’s exhibition include butterflies, moths and birds, as well as goddesses. One powerful presence is Insect Girl, who, according to Jan’s mythology, lives in the gardens along with her tribe of insects.
 
“The winged insects face an uncertain future. My ongoing concern is their decline due to habitat destruction, climate change and pollution. Insect Girl is here as a watcher and protector.”
 
Insect Girl is one of several lino prints in Wings for Flight. The exhibition also features assemblage and mixed media, including a series of printed cockatoo feathers, a woman’s flight helmet made of woven feathers and paper flowers, and a fertility totem featuring two winged goddesses.
 
“All of my mythological creatures are beautiful and iconic. They represent freedom, beauty and peace.”
 
Every piece in the exhibition is hand made, created or printed by Jan in her Blue Mountains studio (except Insect Girl herself, which was designed and cut by Jan but printed by master printmaker Gary Shinfield).
 
Jan will be sharing her process in a relief print workshop in the gallery on 6 October, where Jan will discuss topics such as safe carving, how to transfer images onto the plate, and the differences in various types of paper, before participants create their own lino or vinyl cut print on the day.

24 August - 17 September 

“This series arose out of my love for fashion,” says artist James Gordon. “I especially love making the jewellery – I’m in heaven when I’m doing the tiny diamonds and emeralds.”
 
James’ art has been described as a combination of collage, fashion and sculpture. He works with scissors, scalpels, pencils and watercolour to create intricate paper relief sculptures, layering detail upon detail of delicately carved and painted paper artworks.
 
“I start by making their faces and hands, then I make clothes and jewellery, and play around with combinations until it looks right. The first few I made were these striking men in black and white tuxedos. If a man doesn’t look good in a tux, he will never look any good.”

If anyone should know about fashion and a good tux, it’s James. His artistic career has been studded with couture collaborations, from styling Collette Dinnigan’s shows for fashion week, to working on covers for Vogue, to causing a scandal on Little Collins Street in the 1970s as a visual merchandiser for the department store Georges.
 
As a renowned event producer, James styled some of Australia’s most high profile weddings, including those of James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch. But in between these brushes with celebrity, it is always his paper sculptures that James comes back to.
 
“If it pleases people and makes them feel happy, then I’m happy. I love seeing people smile with pleasure when they see my work. I hope that when they look at it they get a sense of my love of doing it, because I really do love it.”
 
We look forward to seeing you at the exhibition opening at 5.30pm Friday 24 August. 

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29 June - 23 July 

Join us for opening night Friday 29 June 5.30pm 

“I feel like this time the inspiration has come from doing the work, rather than the other way around,” says Blackheath artist and designer Hannah Surtees.
 
Hannah, together with husband Mark, is the winner of this year’s Sculpture at Scenic World major prize, for their work Geronimo. With The Unexpected In-Between, Hannah is showing a body of solo work featuring sculpture, painting and prints. We talked to Hannah about how her process for this work evolved out of a creative block, which she pushed through by returning to childlike play with paper and pen.
 
Join Hannah for her Unblocking Creativity Workshop on Sunday 1st July. 

“A few years ago, I was struggling to rediscover my own style, after years of producing commercial work for other people. I was blocked, creatively. We were heading overseas for a family trip, so I brought some sketchbooks with me, in order to get back to the basics.  
 
“I found the act of doodling very cathartic and freeing for my creative process, where I didn’t have to worry about the end result; just being present in the moment. It took me back to when I was about five, spending many happy hours repeatedly drawing the British flag, filling sketchbooks with my drawings, trying to find the perfect one.

“When we got back from our trip, I photographed all the work from my sketchbooks and uploaded them into my computer, playing around in Illustrator and experimenting with reversing the doodles, playing with negative space.
 
“It was a serendipitous way of work, and I felt able to look at the end result more subjectively. I enlarged some of the shapes and painted one onto canvas, just feeling my way with colours and framing, going with my gut instinct.
 
"This process has inspired me to push through my creative block. I’ve discovered that the good stuff can sometimes be hiding unexpectedly in the space in-between. If you keep looking hard enough, you’ll find it eventually."

If you would like to know more about Hannah's process and learn her techniques for breaking through creative blocks, join us for Hannah's Unblocking Creativity Workshop on Sunday 1st July. 

Embroidered works by Jess de Wahls available for purchase. Please contact the curator, Kelly Heylen on kelly@platformgallery.co or 0414 771 439 for all sales enquiries. 

Platform Gallery is a partner of Art Money, who offer interest-free art loans over 10 months to make art buying more accessible for everyone, and we are very happy to discuss this option with you.