Keep a close eye on Wide Open Road Art this month as our transmuting installation morphs. Courtesy of Wide Open Road Art Collective.

Adventures in Permutation explores the idea of a Structural semantic rhetoric. The evolving installation begins with a highly stylised representation of a lense flare. From this point the work will develop following the four principles of permutation, transposition, addition and omission. Each shift will be recorded and examined in terms of its semantic properties.

Stay tuned…

Melbourne artist Lucy Farmer works with watercolour to explore a contemporary rural landscape, behind the glass of a fast moving car. Farmer juxtaposes the singularity of each journey with the homogenised, blurred landscape that flies past. Moments extracted from the blur once captured become whole. ‘Along The Highway’ will be on show until June 2nd.

The mixed-media installation Origin Myths is the continuation of Jaxon Waterhouse’s evolving, multi-disciplinary practice investigating the intersection of time, place, space and the narratives that emerge from these intersections.

 Drawing from his background in historical studies, Waterhouse combines sculpture, found and archival material, to create an historical narrative that combines truth and fiction, in order to examine and critique both the construction of stories and colonial museological practices.

Origin Myths opens on Saturday 1 April 2017.

Castlemaine State Festival March 17-26. A busy period for Wide Open Road Art involving Harvest at The Mill (details below) and Transition by Simon MacEwan (see previous post).

Harvest at The Mill features a selection of artists who have previously exhibited at Wide Open Road Art. The artists share an eye for detail and an interest in the handcrafted. Artists involved are: CiPi, Carolyn Cardinet, Selby Ginn, Susie Elliott and Helen Mathwin.

Welcome to Semophoria, CiPi, 2017

Waterways (detail) Carolyn Cardinet, 2017

Untitled, Selby Ginn 2017

Untitled, Susie Elliott and Helen Mathwin, 2017

Thanks to Harvest at The Mill for lending us their space and local wine producers Boomtown for supporting this event.

Transition (2017)  Simon MacEwan

Transition is concerned with the tension between things with form and no substance, and those with substance and no form, the dialogue between the constantly shifting waves of the ocean and the invisible lines of maps, where the chaos of the world meets the systems that we impose upon it.

Simon MacEwan’s works appear courtesy of Anna Pappas gallery, Melbourne. This exhibition takes place as part of the Castlemaine State Festival and will  have an official launch on Sat 18th March 6-8pm.

For more information, contact helen@wideopenroadart.com

London based Brisbane artist Emily McGuire combines her training in fashion design with a critical interest in the political forces of fashion that shape our lived experience. Her work explores the complex relationships between fashion, sustainability and female identity using textiles, thread, and secondhand clothing.

By juxtaposing fast fashion and handcraft, Fashion Unlearned questions the powerlessness of consumers to access fashion beyond means of consumption. Repetitive embroidery stitching constrains and fragments each secondhand garment or cut-out logo to demonstrate an act of resistance to the formation of dressed identity through consumerism. Since fashion is sold as a “closed” product, consumers are dissuaded from personalising their clothing to remain de-skilled, apolitical participants in the fashion world. Fashion Unlearned prompts viewers to contemplate this wilful obedience to the forces of mainstream fashion so they might discover more meaningful and empowering ways of engaging with clothes. 

For more information, contact helen@wideopenroadart.com 

 Sydeny-based Iranian artist Sepideh Farzam’s installation Emotional Path (2017) is the current exhibition at Wide Open Road Art.

Sepideh’s creative practice revolves around personal memories and what it means to be female, through which she examines issues that implicate society, politics and culture. Her use of textile, as well as various media such as installation, sculpture, painting and drawing, offers metaphors for the oppression of women. Childhood memories, lived experiences and the artist’s own cultural background strongly inform the work she produces.

Sepideh’s work incorporates worn clothing, fabric and discarded objects in a symbolic gesture to distant memories and the passing of time. The transformation of thought and the body is integral to how the artist uses these elements to traverse emotion, trauma, vulnerability, sexuality and the body.

For more information, contact helen@wideopenroadart.com

Helen Mathwin juxtaposes materials, style and palette to explore domestic moments of transgression.

Luxuriant is the latest installation by  Elizabeth Nelson. Inspired by the romantic idea of nature as a primal force  Nelson creates evocative and theatrical scenes from familiar landscapes, in this instance the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens.

 For more information, contact helen@wideopenroadart.com