RADIUS 3.0 - EXHIBITION 25/02/22 - 9/05/22
AT THIS MOMENT
In its third year, the Radius artist development and exhibition program continued to support early-career artists from the Pilbara and Kimberley region through professional and peer mentoring while engaging the selected artists in a collaborative learning experience through digital and online formats.
Featuring Rose Barton, Samantha Bell, Lauren Greatorex, Chelsea McAuliffe, Karren MacClure, and Rachel Taylor, Radius 3.0 – At This Moment presents a group of dynamic artists who harness their artistic practice to explore endless possibilities and create meaningful and compelling artwork. Each artist brings their unique and profoundly considered voice to this exhibition – expressing ideas of memories and place, drawing and commenting on social injustice, and exploring new artistic processes.
KEY EXHIBITION DATES
Opening
Friday 25 February 2022, 6.00-8.00pm
Artist Talk
Saturday 26 February 2022, 1.00-2.00pm
Venue
Courthouse Gallery+Studio
16 Edgar Street, Port Hedland
Free Entry
All welcome
*Please check in and provide proof of vaccination upon entry, masks are required for inside the venue.
Exhibition Dates
25 February – 9 May
This program is supported by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural
Industries, the Royalties for Regions funded Regional Arts and Cultural Investment
Program and Regional Arts WA.
Artist information + statements
Get to know the artists
Chelsea Mcauliffe
Chelsea Mcauliffe graduated from Edith Cowan University with Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours in 2007. She went on to participate in the Painting Sheds Graduate Show where she received the Artsource Industry Award for demonstrating the highest degree of professionalism in her practice and approach to art. Chelsea went on to participate in the Cossack Art Awards in 2020 and 2021 on top of the Dampier Art Awards (2021) where she received the Highly Commended Award.
Artist Statement
One moment with you draws on forms and textures found in the Pilbara landscape. The work culminates as a creation that straddles realism and abstraction through my process of connecting with nature, documenting the landscape, and finally, the painting process. Being in nature frees me from the onuses of life and gives me time to reflect internally. Similarly, this large-scale work allows me to apply the paint broadly, unravelling creative freedom, which I then build upon with fine details and marks to create a deeply layered image.
One moment with you was inspired by spending time with my youngest daughter exploring the rockpools at Cleaverville. I chose a close-up image of oyster shells and barnacles for aesthetic nature and feel a strong connection with oyster shells, as they symbolise prosperity, protection, and femininity. One moment with you invites the viewer to build a relationship between the material object and themselves.
Karren MacClure
Born in country NSW and living in Queensland for many years, Karren MacClure is an artist based in Port Hedland. Having no formal training, Karren began her work in ceramics in 2021 and was a finalist in the 2021 Jury Art Prize with her sculpture White Horse. Karren’s work is focused on wildlife which is influenced by her country upbringing and extensive travel. The major source of inspiration for Karren’s horse sculptures is derived from her early years riding horses, which she dives into when creating her ceramic horses.
Artist Statement
Through a fluid process of hand-building and experimentation, ceramicist Karren MacClure builds sculptures that explore her memories of, and experiences with horses. Merging her knowledge of the horses’ form, movement, and nature with her interpretation of their strength, beauty, and individuality she creates these expressive sculptural forms. Combining textural Raku clay, with distinctive colour techniques, Karren fuses her recollections with her imagination to create new ways for the viewer to experience the horse.
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Lauren Greatorex
Born in Geraldton, WA, Lauren Shiarna-Rae Greatorex is a proud Malgana, Nyikina and Jabir Jabirr woman. Lauren works primarily in acrylics, pouring mediums and digital art from her home studio in Port Hedland, WA. As a child, Lauren was given paints and colouring mediums which led to art being a part of her being and growth into adulthood. Lauren’s cultural connection to country and family is a significant influence for her art where she shares her culture and stories with the world.
Artist Statement
Storytelling and art are integral parts of our lives. We could express ourselves with the art we had when there was no written language. We created a map for ourselves with our songs, music, dance, and artists. We understand that when we create art, there is a tremendous responsibility. Our creations don’t just belong to us. We are telling our history, illuminating our story, and documenting our spiritual journey. Through our art, we transmit ancestral guidance. Through it, we can learn about how the world came to be and navigate its complexities. Art tells us a story that is not yet complete. We, as a people with deep roots in the earth, must pick up the trail left by our old people and leave a map for future generations.
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Rachel Taylor
Rachel uses layers of coloured beeswax and resin in her works to denote flowing tides, shifting landscapes and ancient rocky outcrops through flows of movement and collisions of colour, built up into layers to create an artwork with incredible depth and to achieve an assimilating viewing experience. Rachel’s works celebrate colour and organic shape, they bow to the infinite nature and flow of energy she feels strongly in the landscape and which she feels compelled to paint using a dynamic, mixed-media approach.
Rachel graduated from De Montfort University in the United Kingdom with Bachelor of Arts (Hons)Fine Art in 2014 and went on to participate in ‘Capacity’ at LCB depot in the UK. Subsequently, Rachel has participated in The Shinju Matsuri Acquisitive Art Awards (Broome, WA) in 2019 and 2020. In addition to that, She has most recently participated in The Derby Shire West Kimberley Art Prize (Derby, WA) and ‘Art Above the 26th’ (Broome, WA).
Artist Statement
First and foremost a celebration of colour and organic shape, my work bows to the declaration of nature so present here in the North West of Australia, wildly captured on canvas with a planetary expanse of colour, throwing any centre of focus deliberately off balance in order to achieve an assimilating viewing experience. My work encompasses our high tides, full moons and our raging sun, and as we see a collective return to our natural roots, this echoes ancient ideas of connection and community. When I moved to the Kimberley several years ago I was immediately besotted with the declarations of vivid colour everywhere. I remember feeling like a guest in someone’s beautiful home, taking it all in, wondering how so much beauty could be in one place. My passion for travel and new surroundings drives the encaustic work I now make, centering itself upon the Kimberley’s natural phenomena and land, expressing what it means to share life as a guest alongside nature’s magnificent scenery. As an encaustic artist, my preoccupation is with colour and form, watching the interplay between creating a striking composition and enjoying the wild process of pushing the material to its limits. This pursuit of balance on canvas nods to the notions of opposite principles in nature, a sentiment carried throughout my work. Painting on wooden boards, with beeswax and resin allows me to feel connected to materials found in nature, incapsulating the relevance of the work for me. Then there is something so elegant about using the element of fire to alter their state. It’s such a fun, wild, exhilarating way to make art. When applied with heat, the coloured wax seem to dance around the board, delving into deeper layers and surfacing with patches of mottled colour and abstract shapes. My task is to work out the force of heat needed to create the effect I’m looking for, often this means pushing the material to its absolute limits, sometimes with unsatisfactory outcomes. The beauty with encaustic is that I can add more layers and then fuse them together, leading to the build up of layers you can so often see in my pieces. Working intuitively and instinctively with organic materials comes naturally to me and proves to be an exciting process of experimentation and risk.
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Rose Barton
Rose Barton (b. 1996) is an emerging West Australian artist from Wardandi Boodja, currently living and working on Yaburrara, Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Ngurra. Rose holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Australia. She has exhibited at various institutions in Western Australia, including at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and received numerous awards and grants in support of her practice. Most recently she won the Emerging Young Artist Cossack Award and was selected to curate the prestigious annual HERENOW21 exhibition with Professor Ted Snell. Rose has held various positions as an arts coordinator and educator, with a focus on promoting accessibility, diversity and inclusion, working with disability, migrant, refugee and Indigenous communities, As a young person in the sector, Rose has quickly established a reputation as an in-demand arts professional and a talented emerging artist. Her multidisciplinary practice explores themes of memory and connection. Often process and participation based, her works invite tender contemplation and reflection of one’s personal and shared identity, our relationship to place and to other humans. As a student of psychology and sociology, her practice considers social justice in a contemporary society and seeks to challenge audiences in their interaction with those around them. Her work intends to create an all-encompassing sense of being in a space, rather than a purely visual dialogue from artwork to viewer. In line with this, her practice incorporates multi-sensory engagement including tactile and audio elements. Rose’s work is often abstract and minimalist, with a focus on intricate texture and detail. Her work beckons the audience to engage deeply and closely, creating an intimate lingering experience.
Artist Statement
This body of work presents the beginning of a critical exploration into social and political injustices and how they relate to empathy and human connection. Through photography and hand-sculptured forms, the work offers thought to how existing structures that intend to support individuals instead exemplify confinement, restriction, and limitation. Finally, the pieces seek to invoke alternative ways of existing as a collective society founded on inclusion and equity practices.
Sam Bell
Sam Bell is a photographer and printmaker based in Port Hedland. Currently, she is exploring Abstract, Experimental Photography. She is interested in playing with colour to create bright works that evoke Wonder and Contemplation.
Artist Statement
In this body of work, I use my experimental photographic approach to explore the contrast between organic shapes that naturally occur from rust. By digitally manipulating the colours in each photograph, I create vivid and vibrating hues that lead to a dynamic expression of contrasting moods and emotions. As a result, each photograph becomes a captivating experience of opposing elements and what I like to refer to as extraordinary, unexplored galaxies and universes.
