The BSA Project Space
VIEW THE EXHIBITION CALENDAR
The BSA Project Space is a contemporary exhibition space located inside a repurposed industrial workshop that sits within the headquarters and studios of the Byron School of Art (BSA) in Mullumbimby, NSW.
Since its founding in 2014 the space has functioned as both a springboard for students of the BSA who wish to gain experience in professional exhibition practice, and as a space for the curation of exhibitions across a diverse range of disciplines.
The BSA Project Space aims to support the development of a diverse range of artistic practices from our region and beyond including 2D and 3D works, installation, digital media and more.
Other initiatives supported by BSA Project Space include talks by exhibiting artists, curators and visiting art organisations.
Jenny Gill Shirmer - Grace and Substance
Grace and Substance forms part of my ongoing exploration of women within the complex social structures of family, society, and institutions. I have created hand-built ceramic architectural forms as a way to explore the historical notion that women have been expected to exhibit masculine qualities in order to hold positions of authority. The forms are structurally very strong - the use of the dome, arc, apse and bridge are all used in traditional architecture as forms of strength and integrity. Yet the very nature of ceramics creates a softness in both their scale and evidence of the handmade, additionally the painterly glazes are soft, gentle and feminine in nature. Moving between the deliberately formed and the found objects allows me to investigate the tension between the refined ceramic surfaces and the physicality of the found object; pieces that hold their own history. This juxtaposition of the works reflects the way I move through the world and is also a reflection of how I see the women around me. I hope these works occupy a strong yet soft presence in the space.
Exhibition runs from Friday 19 April - Wednesday 9 May
Antoinette O’Brien - Water Vessels
Exhibition runs from Saturday 16 March - Tuesday 16 April
DEAN STEWART - Selected Works
Dean is an artist whose practice investigates how history and memory are embedded within found objects and remnant materials, invoking the profound simplicity of everyday human experiences—the moments hebelieves are most authentic.
At the heart of his process lies the act of reclamation. Dean salvages discarded objects and materials—industrial offcuts, packaging foam, paper and card, as well as found objects such as vintage signs, timber blocks and bowls, book covers and board games. These remnants become his raw materials, waiting to be transformed.
For his solo exhibition at BSA Project Space, Dean presents a limited selection of pieces with which he has used book binding cloth, vintage signage, parchment-like polyester film and reclaimed timber blocks and objects to inspire a collaboration with the observer, inviting them to rekindle their own memories and forge connections with the narratives embedded within the artworks on display.
Selected Works runs 19 February - 13 March and is open from 10am - 3pm Monday - Saturday
BSA 2023 GRADUATE EXHIBITION - EXIT 9
Opening Friday, 24 November 6-8pm, Exit 9 showcases the work of nine BSA third year the students and features a dynamic array of artworks across painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, found object art, installation and video, with many of the works for sale.
Exit 9 runs until Saturday 9 December and is open from 10am - 3pm Monday - Saturday
BSA SECOND YEAR STUDENT EXHIBITION - 10 Volts
10 Volts, the BSA second year student exhibition, opens Friday 3 November from 6-8pm at the BSA Project Space, Mullumbimby. It features a dynamic array of artworks from a diverse group of emerging artists.
10 Volts runs until Tuesday 14 November and is open from 10am-3pm Monday – Saturday.
TRAVIS PATERSON - Shearers’ smoko (redux)
A version of this work was originally shown as part of re-figuring ground at Grafton Regional Gallery and was a response to Bernie McDonald’s painting, Shearer’s Smoko, from the gallery’s collection.
'When I was around 14 years old I spent some time during my school holidays in a town south of Perth called Kojonup working as an offsider during shearing season: a roustabout of sorts. My father was wool pressing and had brought me down to help - perhaps so we could spend time together or perhaps so he could try to toughen up the soft, quiet boy I was at the time. In the shearing shed I found myself surrounded by this group of men, shearers whose masculinity I was unfamiliar with. They were boisterous, humorous and crude. I found them fascinating, intimidating and attractive. I was an observer to their homosocial bonding through their work and their stories. I was starkly aware of my difference. Upon encountering Bernie McDonald's Shearer's Smoko I was reminded of this time: something I hadn't thought about in many years.
By working with Polaroid film I am able to subvert the spatial and temporal logic usually associated with the medium. There is a displacement between the found images being used and the known cultural rules and behaviours of the medium. Drawing from the archive of Australian homoerotica I am able to construct events, realities and memories that have never occurred outside of my fantasies.
My version of Shearer's Smoko is a world imagined beyond the borders of Bernie McDonald's canvas. It is a suffix, an alternate possibility. It is a lament for lost opportunities and a celebration of hidden stories and encounters."
BELLE BUDDEN - Blak Matriarchy
Blak Matriarchy is a series of paintings that honour and celebrate the ways of knowing, being and doing of our doobai (Aboriginal Women), the ones who care for Country and community and continue culture. The ones with strength, resilience, humour and beauty. The ones with the survival genes and the large earrings. The ones who keep caring when things get tougher.
Blak Matriarchy is not about being negative towards our men. It’s a realisation that I am the product of matriarchs and that I walk alongside the matriarchs learning the ways of caring for our people, our Country and our culture.
Belle Budden is a Wakka Wakka woman living and working here in Bundjalung Country, a doobai, a mother, a sister, a dancer and a fierce advocate for Aboriginal community.
Exhibition runs from Friday 18 August - Wednesday 13 September
MICHAEL PHILP - Art Of My Mob
Exhibition runs from Friday 28 July - Wednesday 16 August
BSA Visual Arts Foundation Course students
Tuesdays
An exhibition of work from Term 2 by the BSA first year students (working with Michelle Dawson)
"The joy of a class can be the communal support of the group and the vortex that is created by everyone being engaged. Sometimes you can feel it swirling above the class. It is there to call on.
This was a big term. We looked at colour theory, complementary colours, composition, colour mixing, and a variety painting techniques.
Each week there was new information and explorations of new territories that could be both confronting and challenging.
We had nine Tuesdays and nine challenges that 16 students met wholeheartedly.
Here is a a celebration of that work”.
JAMES GUPPY - Looking Back
Exhibition runs from Tuesday 13 June - Thursday 29 June
MICHAEL CUSACK AND MEREDITH CROWE
This cherry weighs a tonne
Part family portrait, part studio portrait, This cherry weighs a tonne present a series of shelves, adjoined and separate works with the artists’ individual and shared interests displayed in dialogue with one another.
Exhibition runs from Monday 15 May - Tuesday 6 June.
BELLE RAINE - The Volumes
What is this flow of life, moment to moment? One moment appears only to be stolen by the next. Capturing and releasing. We get hooked on things, objects, images, people and places. They reach into us and somehow capture our vision, our hearts, our minds and our bodies. We hold onto them, hope to pin them to some eternal place. What is left with us as these things inevitably slip away? Are we richer? Are we more somehow, because we have experienced both the holding and the losing? Is it in the waning that value is gained?
The following poem by Emily Dickinson expresses this idea:
BY A DEPARTING LIGHT
By a departing light
We see acuter, quite,
Than by a wick that stays.
There's something in the flight
That clarifies the sight
And decks the rays.
As moments stain us, so I use the paint to stain the linen. In an intuitive process of applying and erasing, layer upon layer, I continue until a rich surface develops. This way of working acts in some way, as a simulation of the human experience.
Holding...
Losing...
Only the stains remain.
Exhibition runs from Friday 14 April - Thursday 4 May.
CHRISTINE WILLCOCKS - Moss and Stone
Exhibition runs from Monday 27 March - Thursday 13 April
EMMA WALKER - Interim
Exhibition runs from Monday 6 March - Thursday 23 March
MICHAEL CUSACK - The Tower
Exhibition runs from Friday 10 February - Wednesday 1 March
COURTNEY COOK - Little Stories Everywhere
We all have a story.
Woven deep within us are many stories. Some stories are more prominent, while others are subtle and small. Some of our stories are abstracted from our memories, while others exist in our reality.
Little Stories Everywhere explores the various ways in which we access our memories and nostalgia. Through connection to the other, human or landscape, we have the capacity to gain more insight into our own psychological landscapes.
With the portals being a direct link to the process of reflection, the layers of abstraction are imbedded with the illusive and nuanced nature of memory.
Exhibition runs from Friday 20 January - Tuesday 7 February.
Please join Courtney in the galley on Saturday 21 January or 4 March between 10am - noon if you would like to share stories with her.