Kiss Hug Kiss started as an ear worm, a song stuck tight within the artist’s head. The songs, catches of pop music, became a catalyst for the enquiry into communication, social anxiety and emotional boundaries. A visual language based in textiles, of embroidery and patchwork, evokes moments of comfort, a handkerchief for catching tears, a quilt for warmth and containment. The artist hopes the songs are recognisable and that they get caught in your head.
More pictures to follow:
Works featured in Kiss Hug Kiss are available for sale:
Embroidered handkerchiefs in the left and right hand cabinets- $75
Central piece, recycled denim-$420.
Contact helen@wideopenroadart.com or ph/ 0425878075 for sales enquiries.
Linear Response is based on lines and shapes extracted from WORA’s 2018 Arts Open project. Hard lines are juxtaposed with insignificant moments to create an unclear intersection. Linear Response is put together by the WORA collective.
Arts Open 2018 has been a great success; for five days over the last two weekends Helen Mathwin and Susie Elliott have been busy rolling out Wide Open Road Art’s mobile art installation out and around Castlemaine. The work is part of the Fight Me series.
Wide Open Road Art is now mobile! Our new, compact exhibition space will be launched during Arts Open in March 2018. More info on where to catch us soon.
Rockbank Landscape 11 61 X 90 CM (2017) Oil on Canvas $2000
Tibooburra Landscape V111 61 X 90 CM (2017) Oil on Canvas $2000
Amoonguna Landscape V 61 X 90 CM (2017) Oil on Canvas. $2000
Australia is a country that has been shaped dramatically by fairly recent arrivals,both of people and the fauna and flora they have imported with them. When we visualise an Australian landscape, it is most likely the un-spoilt wilderness we imagine as the typical Australian landscape. Although most of the population live on the fringes of the continent, the idea sticks. These paintings are depictions of the landscape most Australians and visitors are far more likely to see.
For sales enquiries please contact helen@wideopenroadart or susie@wideopenroadart.
Our latest installation is the work of Susie Elliott, Castlemaine artist and Wide Open Road Art curator. In Exploded moment (2017) she continues her exploration of themes of attachment; to materials, to processes, and, in this case, to moments.
The rough sketch, like the fallible grasp of a memory, is overlayed with the lingering investment of time and energy, as small clay balls, hand-rolled and dyed in inks, create the next layer. Over this is a translucent sheet, pressed against the glass, synthetic, dyed, drawn on, and stitched. The work pursues the sensory absorption we experience in certain moments, their momentousness (for us at least), despite often being mundane.
Trees are our benevolent neighbours. They are the permanent residents and silent witnesses that hold space, colour our seasons and frame our views. Street Trees by Sydney artist Melinda Marshman records the artists walks in the labyrinth of streets, lane-ways and parks of Paddington, NSW, her adopted neighbourhood.
Spring Avenue 2017 oil on Canvas (87.5 x 66cm) $1050
Autumn Street 2017 oil on canvas (92 x 69cm) $1200
Parkland Pine 2017 Oil on Canvas (87.5 x 66cm) $1050
Exhibition open from October 29- December 7, 2017.
All works are available for purchase. Contact helen@wideopenroad.com for any prior information regarding sales.
The remnants of material presence draws together three artists. In Sublime by En En See, a small overlooked cut out is placed neatly on the wall and is absorbed into the peripheries.
In Sidewalk by Aniquah Stevenson the fabric folded by a window remains unnoticed by those passing by and quietly it soaks up sunlight over the rooftops.
In Ripple by Mel Jane Wilson threads pucker – light sweeps the surface and peers through.
Sublime Sidewalk Ripple on show from 17 September – 26 October 2017.
Our three-day, multi-location show as part of Craft Victoria’s Craft Cubed 2017, The Handmade House, finished on Sunday. In various locations within Melbourne’s CBD four artists manually crafted a house frame from rudimentary materials in three two hour time slots. This process was linked via live streaming to another three artists in downtown Castlemaine. These artists responded simultaneously with 3D printing, development and installation of small, digitally manufactured houses in the Wide Open Road Art cabinets.
Susie Elliott, Jaxon Waterhouse, Helen Martin, Handmade House
Our different house installations were made with the artists in conversation across geographic distance and time lapses, and produced some striking work.
Kate Meade, The Handmade House 2017CiPi, The Handmade House 2017Mark Richardson, The Handmade House 2017
Our city artists, Helen Mathwin, Jaxon Waterhouse, Elizabeth West and Susie Elliott, had only crude materials like wood, screws, wool and clay, and needed to find innovative ways to move their growing house structure to the three city locations over the three days. They were also beset by damage to the house in this process, including the smashing of its clay windows.
We also had to keep live streaming and video comms going so our artists in Castlemaine had a sense of what we were up to. Overall, this manual side of the show was slow, cobbled-together and constrained by the limitations of materials, process and transportability.
Up in Castlemaine, artists CiPi, Kate Meade and Mark Richardson had smaller bio-plastic houses that were 3D-printed from a digital file that they could install and modify how they saw fit in each of their window boxes. House production here, while certainly faster, was not as rapid as we initially expected, and continually modifying the file to reflect the CBD house slowed the process down substantially.
Community engagement was high with both city and country shows, with many passers-by stopping to question to work, make suggestions on how to add to it, or to discuss the inexhaustible topic of housing in Australia at the moment.
Throughout the work, themes regarding the double-edged nature of the house emerged; of nostalgia, the home as a sacred, golden place, but also of its flimsiness, transience, and even limiting nature. In Mark Richardson’s tower, the extremes of status and power that are now a fact of city and even some regional house markets are also invoked.
For more information, please contact 
