Some might consider it a wasted youth, but thanks to the years I spent with my face buried in poorly written fantasy dross, I can identify even the most obscure mythical creatures. Griffins? Hah, child’s play. Basilisks? Yeah, I read Harry Potter too. Try the Manticore on for size. How about about the Catoblepas? Or the unlikely Hippalektryon. It’s from this lineage of the medieval grotesque, the fantastical stitching together of beasts, that the multi-artist exhibition A Magnificent World springs.
Pia Bennett, Joshua Fitzpatrick, Thea Constantino, and Anna Nazzari have produced works that unpick the relationship between the grotesque, the sublime and the unknowable. They use various mediums – found images, drawings, paintings, pyrography, sculpture – but produce work towards a common goal.
Academically, it’s an investigation of why the art of a bygone era was so obsessively focused on bestial mythology and miraculous sorcery. But it’s also just a great excuse to draw wicked imaginary creatures.
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David-Ashley Kerr, ‘Rückenfigur’ ...Though still beautiful, Melburne-based artist David-Ashley Kerr’s photographs use the device to inquire “into the visualisation of place,...
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Felicity Boevink VisorsWith absolutely no ball-sports in mind, Brisbane milliner Felicity Boevink creates her visors in black, nude and a futurist holographic silver...
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Jeff Wall PhotographsCanadian photographer Jeff Wall is 67-years-old and as close as you’ll get to a rock star in his field.
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Annabel Dixon, ‘Return To Form’ ...Annabel Dixon has pulled a Michael Jordan circa 1995 and returned to play the solo exhibition game.
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Making Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet...One thing I love about Los Angeles is the sheer fruitcake-iness of the place. Religious cults, diet gurus, pet psychologists, auras and fads....
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Nathan Barnett, ‘An Excursion’ ...The garage-come-gallery known as the Museum of Natural Mystery is an apt setting for Barnett’s work: both are charismatic, mystical entities...