Past Exhibitions
Reclamation: Exploring Memory
This multi-faceted project utilised the mediums of visual art, story and music. The visual art exhibition opened on March 13, 2021.
As part of the Sundays@Mounted program, a music concert was held on April 3, 2021 and a short fiction event with live readings on May 30th.
Event-Exploring Memory through Flash Fiction-May 30
Event-Exploring Memory through Music-April 3
IDENTITIY CONSCIOUSNESS
This exhibition was originally scheduled for 2020 but Covid forced its
postponement. Mounted is very excited to now be able to host this show by two young emerging artists, both of whom are recent graduates of UNSW College of Art and Design.
Identity Consciousness is an exhibition that explores identity through the unique and specific lens of the life experiences of Third Culture Kids (TCK). Wikipedia reveals that TCK is a term coined in the 1950s to describe the experience of people whose life journeys are shaped by spending their developing years in a culture not that of their parents'or the culture of their country of nationality, and who also live in a different environment during a significant part of their child development years.
TCKs move between cultures before they have had the opportunity to fully develop their personal and cultural
identity. The first culture of such individuals refers to the culture of the country from which the parents originated, the second culture refers to the culture in which the family currently resides, and the third culture refers to the amalgamation of these two cultures.
Both the artists in this exhibition would describe themselves as TCKs.
How much of our identity is shaped by our surroundings, the cultural context that we inhabit, especially in the early years of life? The artists in this show wrestle with these questions in their work. They state, “ The cultural and life experiences we have had has profoundly shaped our artistic practice, and made our art what it is. Just as our life experience has had many cultural influences, our art inevitably reflects the rich diversity of cultural influences, both positive and negative, that have come our way, the confusion and fusion that form our unique personalities.”
The Viewer is Present 2020
Over nine weeks in October and November 2020, Mounted held an exhibition that focused on providing the viewer with a guided experience in looking more deeply and reflectively at art. Each week there were three new curated spaces including a short written work. Viewers booked in for up to an hour and often provided written feedback about their experience.
The Viewer is Present
Was open by appointment every Sunday in October and November 2020.
image credit Oslo Art Gallery by Anita White, Oil on cotton
Above the Beyond - No Horizons
Philip Bell - March 2020
Sydney based photographer Philip Bell presented a selection of aerial photographs, focusing on Lake Eyre (Kati-Thanda), in flood. Taken from a light aircraft, the images of the landscape take on a sublime abstracted beauty. The works pay tribute to the aerial perspective of Indigenous Kimberley artists such as Rover Thomas and Paddy Bedford.
“ …I avoided showing horizons, allowing the the facing sun to ‘solarise’ the watery viens flowing through the greening deserts. I looked for patterns, for man-marks scratched geometrically across the flood-plains. I saw dune-islands waiting for the waters to visit and recede, like some kind of primitive life.. Mostly I saw contrasts, edges, marks, stains brought into relief by the flood waters’ quiet fall to the South.….” Philip Bell
Pre -Text 2019
Twenty six artists and writers were paired in a collaborative process that resulted in an exhibition where writing and image hung side-by-side in the gallery. A public reading of the written pieces was held at the exhibition opening.
'The Pre-Text project gave me, as a writer, the opportunity to enter my artist’s creative world. Ruth shared with me her process of making a painting: how she engages deeply with her subject matter, and how her loose, bold style belies her careful colour planning and layering of texture. I found lessons in this for my own creative practice. I then shared with Ruth my writer’s perspective, as I interpreted her work through a narrative, historicised lens. We learnt much from each other, and we both enjoyed this experience very much.' Kathryn Knight talking about her collaboration with Ruth le Cheminant.
Pre-Text Exhibition November 2019
Mono/Cular
by Vicki Benn
The micro bot was dumped in the desert, the scene of many a science fiction tale. Abandoned, alone, to sink or swim. Any sinking, or swimming, would have to be done in sand. Not a nice ending for Mono/Cular.
Strictly speaking, he was not alone, nor was his gender definitive. Being made in a time when genitals and gender were much the same thing, we’ll call him a he, ‘though his own were forever obscured by a stylish chastity belt, complete with an oversized brass lock. He had a little companion, Phi Do, named after the terrestrial canines to which she bore a slight resemblance, yet lacking the usual doggy problems of shedding and farting.
Since the Nano bots had taken over, Mono/Cular was no longer micro, strictly speaking. At 16 inches, he positively towered over his descendants. And that was the problem, he was outmoded, an anachronism. Dr Ocular was going out of business. Nobody needed eyes anymore; everything was signals and data.
Dr Ocular turned his back and Mono/Cular pleaded. Surely he couldn’t abandon his own beautiful creation, his shiny, unique bot child? When Ocular opened his prosthetic wings, Mono/Cular knew it was time. He focused his eye and pointed his guns (wasn’t that what he was made for?) and shot his father-maker in the back. As his life blood seeped into the sand, the Doctor smiled with pride. How precise, how accurate was his creation!
'The War of The Worlds' by Andrew Jakeman was part of the 2019 exhibition, ‘Pre-Text’. Andrew collaborated with writer Vicki Benn. Vicki's story, Mono/Cular was a response to Andrew's sculpture.
Understory
Geoff Matthews
May 2019
The first exhibition at Mounted was a solo show by local Blue Mountains visual artist, Geoff Matthews. His landscape-inspired paintings blur the lines between representation and abstraction.
The exhibition was supported by a ‘Flash Fiction’ evening with writers presenting short fiction works, and a musical soiree that included local singer/songwriter Maizy Coombes, supported by Alex Sherden and other musicians.