Exit 9 references the nine BSA graduating students (Emily-Sarah Boldeman, Isabell Heiss, Anne Hicks, Greg Hughes, Victoria Rehn, Dean Stewart, Luke Thomas, and Emma T Woodburn) and will feature a diverse selection of work, including works on paper, painting, sculpture, found object art, installation, video and multimedia.

The exhibition will showcase their collective works which demonstrate a willingness and determination to push boundaries while exploring materiality and contemporary concepts.

Opening Friday, 25 November 6-8pm, Hello I must be going showcases the work of ten BSA third year the students and features a dynamic array of artworks across painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, installation and video, with many of the works for sale. The exhibition runs from Friday 25 November – Saturday 10 December 2022.

Falling Into Place, the BSA second year student exhibition, opens Friday, 4 November 6-8pm at the BSA Project Space, Mullumbimby. It features a dynamic array of artworks across painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and video. Falling Into Place runs until Tuesday 15 November and is open from 10am-3pm Monday – Saturday.

Art Byron is a contemporary art gathering held on 30 September through to 3 October 2022 on Bundjalung country.

Curated by First Nations artist Karla Dickens, the inaugural event will explore multidisciplinary forms by bringing together local and internationally acclaimed artists to celebrate creativity, culture and diversity.

Over four days experience a rich and diverse program of exhibitions, installations, artists talks, workshops and arts markets.

To kick off the festival please join us for the opening event at BSA on Thursday 29 September from 6 – 8.30pm. The exhibition includes works by internationally acclaimed photographic artist Polly Borland and local differently-abled artist Zion Levy Stewart, including his commissioned portrait of Polly. Also exhibiting at BSA is artist Stephen Bird, Selena Murray, Hiromi Tango and Michael Donnelly. Tralala Blip will join in the celebration with a special performance.

During the exhibition the BSA building will be transformed into a multi-media installation at night featuring video projections by Djon Mundine, Justine Muller and Ryan Andrew Lee along with large collage works by Laith McGregor.

Opening Event: Thursday, 29 Sept, 6-8.30pm

Exhibition runs: Friday 30 Sept to Saturday 8 Oct 9am-3pm

Artist Talks:

• Artist and Archibald Prize winner, Blak Douglas in conversation with fellow artist and Art Byron Creative Director, Karla Dickens Saturday 1 October 1-1.45pm

• Photographic artist, Polly Borland in conversation with Jamie Perrow (Partner at Urban Art Projects) and Ashleigh Ralph from Lismore Regional Gallery Saturday 1 October 2-2.45pm

All tickets are $15 and available for purchase via art-byron.com.au/2022-program

Blue Island investigates the interplay of colour and memory in relation to individual experience. Paintings draw on hydrangea related respective experience to demonstrate the capacity for colour and object to hold and trigger memory and association. The exhibition seeks to question the reliability of memory and offers a way to authenticate experience through colour. In attempting to realise something perhaps visually impossible to verify within their paintings; mixing colour truthfully and straightforwardly from memory, the artists are challenged to settle on feeling and intuitive correctness rather than absolute truth and certainty.

Using a uniform size canvas, the 14 invited artists were instructed to translate, from their ‘mind’s eye’, the colour they most strongly associate with their experience of hydrangeas. The result is a collection of essentially monochrome surfaces steeped with hidden and concealed recollections of mothers and mother’s mothers, former neighbours and neighbourhoods, marriage, childbirth city front-yards,  suburban backyards, households and broken family homes. More visually evident (than the personal histories imbued in the paintings) is the materiality and individually distinctive application of paint to surface. These largely monochrome works give a condensed, and detail like insight into each artist’s painterly signature, almost all of which are instantly recognisable.

Due to unforeseen circumstances this Saturday’s opening event has been cancelled. Alternative dates are being considered so please stay tuned for updates.

Please head here to view an online catelogue and contact admin@byronschoolofart.com for any further information.

We are witness to the increasingly industrialised symbiosis of the human with the more-than-human world, leaving behind (and ahead) a trail of detritus, a grotesque entanglement of leaking bodies and spent intelligence. This work protrudes from a hypnagogic subconscious fantasy, searching for psychological mitigation for the abject shock of the past, and sweaty, white-knuckled fear of the future.

‘One job that fantasy can do is to lift us out of the unbearably humdrum and to distract us from terrors - real or anticipated - by an escape into the exotic [...]. But another of the things that fantasy can do is to normalise what is psychologically unbearable [...], inculcating a strange apathy concerning the process of [...] destruction which I for one find haunting and depressing. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these [...] specters’.

Susan Sontag

My brother and I grew up with our insomniac father in the bush. He would plough the field at 3am with a rattling rotary hoe in the light of a gas lamp he’d rigged up. To keep us in our beds he played a reel-to-reel tape to muffle the noise. The sequence began with Satie’s Gymnopedies, Al Caiola’s version of Grieg’s A Minor Concerto, and for some harebrained reason Widor’s Toccata. Those three works have pretty much informed my creative life. These pieces belong to the four of them.

Moving On is an exhibition of new work by:

Sophia L Franks, Gala Jane, Fabian Pertzel, Bridy Jean Walker, Kairan Ward, Eli Waters & Mia Zapata.

Please join us for Susan's Artist Talk this Saturday, 15 May, at 11am

Susan's Weekend Workshop, "Hyperreal Sculpture Using Discarded Materials", will be running 22 & 23 May. Click here for more information.

"My practice examines Eurocentric ideologies and practices, tracing them back to British invasion and colonisation, revealing their impact on the natural terrain and first peoples (the traditional owners) of this country. It emerges from a need to better understand the implications and moral responsibility of what it means to be a woman belonging to a colonising culture in contemporary Australia.

In Ecological Antidote, I utilise the mimetic qualities of discarded materials to create objects that explore environmental issues. For example, the replicated earmuffs I use as a metaphor for the imperial monologue that views the coloniser as progressive and civilised, and therefore beyond the realm of the natural world. Consequently, other cultures and the non-human world are viewed as inferior, something to be conquered, eradicated, or controlled and ultimately used for man’s benefit. These continuing colonial assumptions underpin a majority of white Australian culture." - Susan Gourley

Look At / Look Through is a group exhibition that explores the relationship between the figure and the landscape. In some works, figures survey the landscape in front of them. In others, the viewer becomes an absent figure, with the work inviting them into another place outside of the gallery. Strategies such as blurring, non-indexical use of colour and painterly gestures deny the illusion of real space, creating tension between image, surface and object.

Lithosphere like an orange peel by Jana Moser is an exhibition that considers the intimacies of mark making. Through the processes of drawing and printmaking combined, Moser creates intricate and textured spaces for organic and artificial worlds to unfold. 

“I find a lot of comfort in the scribble, the shade in, the scratchy quick motion; this movement repeated becomes a sort of practice of remembering what is inherent, what my body and thinking is made up of, what the tree and the molecular structure of its leaves are made up of, how the micro accumulates to make up the vast, and how the earth moves us in constant transition.”

Moser is a multidisciplinary artist whose art practice explores space, literal and metaphoric, through pictorial and textual relationships. In their visual articulations of urban and natural environments, they investigate anthropocentric and binary perceptions of the world. Colour and form interplay with layering, producing moments of liminality where multiple spacial channels intersect. In doing so, pathways are created for viewers to travel from the sensate to mental spaces of contemplation. 

Moser works across drawing, printmaking, text, paper making and installation. They graduated from Victorian College of the Arts in 2018 and was a recipient of the Lionel Gell foundation Award upon graduating. Moser has exhibited in numerous group shows in Melbourne and in Germany where they attended Pilotenkueche International Artist Residency Program in 2019.

Facilitated by Marian Tubbs, "This exhibition addresses ‘instability’ as a method of making and allows the work of six artists to intersect via exhibition and event.

A static series of disciplinary descriptions; mark maker (Anastasia Klose); sculptor (Jay Jermyn); poet and chef (Mashara Wachjudy); painters (Jemi Gale and Jackie De Lacy); and sound artist (Laura Hunt) does not suffice, rather the exhibition is an expression of how these practices may unfold together.

Their politics stem from queer generosities and serve one another and their audience in such spirit.” - Marian Tubbs

We are launching our 2021 exhibition calendar with Private View, a group exhibition by BSA staff including Chris Bennie, Rene Bolten, Meredith Crowe, Michael Cusack, Michelle Dawson, James Guppy, Travis Paterson, Dale Rhodes, Kat Shapiro Wood, Robyn Sweaney, Emma Walker, Amber Wallis & Christine Willcocks.

image: Christine Willcocks Displaced 2021 acrylic on canvas

Featuring works by Josephine Ehlers, Di Kelly, Andrea Portela Moreno, Gabe O'Neill, Belle Raine, Aly Ratcliffe, Zen Staff, Julia Stockhausen, Justin Telfer and Meg Walters, this exhibition is the culmination of three years of dedicated study in the Visual Arts and exhibits a very high standard of work from all involved. 

The title of this show, Abandon Proceedings, was chosen by the students as a play on the title of their 2019 group show, proceed with abandon. Through this difficult year, our Third Year students have cemented deep friendships, worked tirelessly and ultimately found ways of engendering a sense of optimism and hope.

Opening hours: 10am - 3pm Monday to Saturday
Special Open Day: 10am - 3pm Sunday 6 December

Byron School of Art second year students would like to welcome the community to view their exhibition, eleven seconds, at The BSA Project Space from 14 to 25 November. 

 During 2020, eleven students investigated contemporary art practices, including printmaking, sculpture, assemblage and painting. Featuring works by Cindy Alice, Tamara Cox, Sue Davidson, Shanti Des Fours, Elizabeth Dwyer, Tiffany Gee, Jen Hogan, Priya Link, Bill Meertens, Anastasia Rashid and Jen Schirmer, eleven seconds is the result of an unusual year of negotiating and investigating “space and place” in the expanded field - both literally and metaphorically - to come to a position of resolve. 

Unbound is a series of 5 photographs printed onto Dibond. The surface of each work has been engraved, exploring the details of rare stones found around the creek lines of Northern NSW.

Photographing landscapes and creating painterly abstractions has been my medium for the past five years. The ability to step behind the lens and capture the tranquillity of the landscape is an exercise in mindfulness, and it’s often stillness I’m trying to find within.

As the freedoms we have to travel have changed, I find myself turning inward and interacting with my work in a new experimental way. Integrating my drawing practice with photography has allowed me to explore my own intuitive responses, making impressions on the finished work. 

Blue Island, Water Vessel pairs two paintings of hydrangeas. The first is a still life by Guy Maestri which depicts a tin of dried hydrangeas (the same tin of hydrangeas he has been painting for the duration of our relationship). The second is a panel of colour, mixed from memory, which represents the particular colour I associate with hydrangeas.

This small exhibit is an example of the project which I proposed to curate at BSA Project Space but due to Covid-19 has been postponed to 2021. I proposed to invite 6 painters, including myself, to paint a 150 x 150 cm panel of colour, mixed from memory, which they associate with their experience of hydrangeas. The work investigates the interplay of colour and memory in relation to individual experience. I, as well as various other painters, have been depicting hydrangeas in my work for some time. For me, they represent a particular place and time I am constantly recalling, revisiting, remembering and trying to forget.

If it is the pattern of artists to revolve around an idea, to return to a motif in cycles, then part of this cycle is the pull in the opposite direction to the furthest point. This small suite of paintings is situated at this point.     

 Aphelion is the term for the furthest point an object in orbit is from the Sun.

New works by artists and (not guilty) partners in crime and love René Bolten and Claudie Frock, reflecting on memory and nolstagia.

A collection of keepsakes made together and alone. 

Falling Over Itself, a collaborative exhibition between Jacob Boylan and Skye Jamieson. Both artists work with expanded print practices, exploring materiality and the act of flattening the image.

The BSA Project Space Drive-in Gallery is very pleased to share a selection of paintings and ceramic work by local artist Zion Stewart.

A love of life and people gives Zion the inspiration to his unique, quirky portraits.

“I like drawing people. I live in a place called Paradise, which is like heaven.”

Nothingness but shining is a collaborative exhibition by Michael Donnelly and Maggie Schreiber where they will transform the windows of the BSA Project Space Drive-in Gallery through a mixed-media installation.

Double Aspect seeks to explore the shifting nature of artistic influence, with particular interest in the impact of immaterial dialogues on the material production of painting. This is more fitting than ever given we are viewing each other’s work more through the immateriality of a screen, rather than in person, and forming new connections and ideas through these degrees of separation. 
 
Kathryn Dolby (NSW) and Jonathan Kopinski (QLD) have never physically met. Yet through regular online image sharing and discussion in relation to colour, memory and association, both artists have produced a series of individual – yet connected – works that influence and in turn, reflect those of the other. This initial exhibition of paintings will be the first time that Kathryn and Jonathan have come into any kind of physical interaction, albeit through their work. It will be followed by a full exhibition at the BSA Project Space in 2021.

Six Painters is a group exhibition with works by Jane Couttie Burgess, Dale Burke, Natalia Carr, Joshua Gooley, Christopher Miller and Lily Timberlake.

Ecdysis or molting is the process by which a crab sheds its old self when it has been outgrown, having generated a new self within. Crab communities perform this renewal of form together en masse. This project reflects a similar process, where a scouring of the internal landscape has allowed for cathartic expurgation of old stories. As they are given externalized form, receiving acknowledgment and expression, they are simultaneously released. A shedding of what is outmoded and out-lived. The viewer is invited to make interpretations via their own internal stories and notice what is ready to be shed.

Emily McGregor is an interdisciplinary artist, based on the east coast of Australia, where changing light and elements, alongside the merging of land, sea and sky, provide constant inspiration.

JOIN US FOR AN ARTIST TALK BY EMILY ON SATURDAY 14 MARCH AT 10.30 - 11.30AM.

Paracosm describes the rich inner world I’ve always had. A pocket universe that opens up as my hands busy themselves with the repetitive action of creating. In this mental state I can think clearly and unravel emotional knots.

The particular pieces in this exhibition represent the cathartic mental process I have been immersed in during the last couple of years since the death of my Father. The works reflect my thoughts of death, decay, rebirth, joy and reverence. - Helle Jorgensen