FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dark Luminance: Melbourne Gothic - The Instersection of Old and New Technologies
John Derrick, Jane Hall, James Hullick, Rene Van Kan, Julie Mihalovska
August 7 - 28, 2008
Gallery Sakiko New York is pleased to present "Dark Luminance: Melbourne Gothic - The Instersection of Old and New Technologies," featuring works by Australian artists John Derrick, Jane Hall, James Hullick, Rene Van Kan, Julie Mihalovska.
DARK LUMINANCE is an exhibition that will celebrate and present the visions of five up and coming Australian artists working around the notion of Australian Gothic to the people of New York at the Pratt Institute (Brooklyn) and Sakiko (Chelsea) galleries in August 2008. The same show will return to Melbourne’s Mars Gallery in September 2009. Several concerts showcasing some of Australia’s ingenious sound artists who also engage with Gothicism will also be presented, along with an Australian Gothic art-film/video-art night. The exhibition will also be shown in the virtual world of Second Life, and be projected in all three gallery spaces, combining the real and virtual artworks in the same space.
Curators and artists for DARK LUMINANCE, John Derrick and James Hullick, describe the Australian Gothic as:
“an essentially dark or ‘empty’ (either in colour palette or psychology) that can be manic, disturbing, vacant, haunting. Night-time can be beautifully captivating as well as terrifying. Emerging through this darker base are moments of bright luminosity and transparency (again either in colour/light palette or psychology). Considering contemporary Australia’s arts practice from a birds-eye view suggests that the dialogue between old and new technologies in art making practices is key to the core of this contemporary and localized Gothic aesthetic. The nature of this dialogue is loaded with quirky interpretations on the semiology and functional worth/worthlessness of technology.”
The DARK LUMINANCE artists are dynamic:
- John Derrick takes the tradition of portraiture and combines it with 3D digital projections. He is extending the role of figurative oil painting on canvas by harnessing the use of new technologies through the use of 3D gaming environments. Derrick is visual curator for DARK LUMINANCE. "human assemblies masked in the rueful incognito of their own emotion, Derrick is a Watteau of malaise.” Bruce James, Samstag Catalogue.
- James Hullick’s sound installations are dark and disturbing landscapes. He utilizes robotics in his installations to generate sound, and he seeks to describe the relationship between traditional and progressive technologies using the phenomenon of recursion in his work. Hullick is artistic director for JOLTand sound curator for DARK LUMINANCE. "he's been up to no good, with mayhem on his mind." Penny Web, THE AGE. “in the keenest listening to the application of the musical fabric, a highly reduced transparent psychogram, that shocks as much as electrifies the listener.” Rafael Rennicke, Südwestpresse. www.jameshullick.com
Lisa Dethridge is a leading light in the development of Second Life environments in Melbourne, where her explorations focus on the social interaction arising from virtual worlds. Dethridge is a published writer and academic at the School of Creative Media RMIT University.
- Jane Hall will show prints that are abstract and organic. She works intuitively making marks on paper and revealing relationships between each mark. Colour is used expressively to convey particular moods or feelings.
- Rene Van Kan transposes the language of graffiti into the gallery setting, straddling the fine art world and public art in the streets. He works intuitively using his “tag” to construct a mural, and combines this with paint on canvas. New York is a base of aerosol art and it will be an electric experience to see what similarities arise between Van Kan’s work and other local New York aerosol artists.
- Julie Mihalovska will display oil paintings along the themes of her Macedonian heritage and the use of her cultural icons such as churches, streets and historical monuments. She uses her poetry as text with the imagery to reveal universal emotions.
