▶ MELINDA LE GUAY + HELEN MUELLER IN 'PAPER NOW' AT INCINERATOR ART SPACE

Next week the curated group exhibition Paper Now will open at Incinerator Art Space in Willoughby. Our represented artist Melinda Le Guay and exhibited artist Helen Mueller both have work included in the show. From the exhibition website:

"Paper Now comprises thirty works by eleven Australian artists who share a common approach to their current practice through the use of paper as the primary medium. Paper is part of our everyday experience - we use it at home, at work, in our leisure time. It is functional, ephemeral and transient. Rarely does it extend into the realm of the aesthetic. In this exhibition artists Sally Aplin, Bronwyn Berman, Marguerite Derricourt, Melinda Le Guay, Brigiat Maltese, Nerine Martini, Helen Mueller, Maryann Mussared, Jenny Pollak, Liz Shreeve and TianLi Zu employ concepts and techniques from a range of artistic and cultural traditions to transform our experience of paper. They cut, fold, stitch, etch, stamp, trace, draw and paint on and with paper highlighting the sensuality and fragility of this extraordinarily versatile substance."

Paper Now runs from the 28th of January until the 4th of March.

▶ MELINDA LE GUAY: BLAKE PRIZE DIRECTORS' CUT

▶ MELINDA LE GUAY AND AL MUNRO, CLOSING 4 JUNE

A reminder to visit the shows by Melinda Le Guay and Al Munro before they close on Saturday 4 June.

Adjectives ranging from delicate to spiky have been used by the press to describe the dresses in Melinda Le Guay's current sculpture exhibition. The various embellishments including fishhooks, thorns and sharp pins, pierce the bodices of the wire garments and the titles of the works highlight the underlying threatening nature of the series.

We are pleased to announce that four of Al Munro's works from the 'Mineral Crystal' series have been acquired by Artbank for their collection. The 'Mineral Crystal' series features screen prints of the knit wire sculptures Munro creates to represent the arrangement of atoms within a solid. Each print is a unique work and each design is flocked with a different coloured glitter. Munro melds the fields of art and science and creates a sparkly representation of the mathematical coding of crystals.

▶ PRESS: MELINDA LE GUAY + TODD FULLER IN SPECTRUM

Written by Lynne Dwyer

▶ MELINDA LE GUAY, 'TARGET PRACTICE'

The sculptures in Melinda Le Guay's current exhibition, 'Conflict', are constructed with recycled wire, giving the dresses shape and form. The volume is achieved with knit thread and the varying embellishments - ranging from pins and feather to beads and bones - establish the narratives found within each work.

An example of this narrative is illustrated in 'Target Practice' (left). According to Le Guay, she imagined the dress belonging to a beautiful girl, one who was popular and effervescent. Due to her beauty and popularity she became a target of envy and jealously. The target is represented literally with long pins adorned with blood red feathers assuming the appearance of a dart. The pins pierce the dress and fish hooks are ensnared within the layers of thread and wire. The phrase 'green with envy' is embodied via the fish hooks which are appropriately coloured green.


Left: Melinda Le Guay, 'Target Practice' 2011, enamelled copper wire, thread, hooks, feathers, pins, beads, 80 x 35 x 8cm

▶ MELINDA LE GUAY + AL MUNRO, OPENING 14 MAY

New work by MELINDA LE GUAY and AL MUNRO will be on view starting Tuesday 10 May 2011. Please join the artists for a drink to celebrate the launch of their solo exhibition at the Gallery on Saturday 14 May from 4-6pm.

Andrew Taylor featured Le Guay's upcoming exhibition of etherial, knitted wire dresses in a half page article in Art & Culture in The Sun-Herald, published on the 24th of April. Le Guay says the dress "suggests an inner world of discord and struggle for perfection whilst maintaining an outward appearance of grace and beauty."

Left: Melinda Le Guay,  'Battle Dress' 2011, enamelled copper wire, synthetic thread, feathers, fish hooks, glass beads, 80 x 37 x 9cm
Right: Al Munro, 'Purple Mineral Crystal’ 2010, screenprint + glitter on Stonehenge paper, 113 x 76cm

Crystallography is the field of science which studies the arrangement of atoms within a solid. According to Munro, "My work takes as its starting point a number of crystallographic diagrams which function as descriptions of the natural world in terms of mathematical code, but which, like any code or language, can be spoken and written in unintended ways."

The Gallery is also pleased to announce the long awaited return of Sam Robinson's wonderful decal porcelain bowls, cups and illuminators. We look forward to welcoming you to the Gallery to view the new exhibitions as well as the new additions to our stockroom.

▶ MELINDA LE GUAY IN THE SUN-HERALD

▶ PRESS: MELINDA LE GUAY IN DAS SUPERPAPER

  'Wire Mesh Steel Dresses', Megan Fizell, Das Superpaper Issue 17, February 2011, p.32-33.

"As a young girl, Melinda le Guay learned to knit, a skill that she revived to create her intricate and detailed sculptures. Using discarded copper wire, the dresses are knit into a loose mesh with other soft materials – paper, gauze, feathers – woven into the design. Le Guay does not follow a specific pattern, the initial dress was conceptualised as a corset, and that dress became the standardised design that she replicates from memory. She uses needles in varying sizes to construct her sculptures over a two-week period, with the repetitious act of knitting central to her work. Inspired by artists who have ‘used labour intensive repetition or the methodical processes of domestic skills such as knitting, sewing and repair,’ the act of knitting not only establishes a visual record of this repetitious act, the nurturing associations connected to this craft also highlight the other themes embodied in the series. The dresses are sometimes layered and create a complex mesh that is hung against a wall. The wire is not bent into uniform stitches and the loops and curls create a haphazard arrangement of shapes."

▶ MELINDA LE GUAY: ARTIST STUDIO

The rows of delicate knit dress sculptures line the walls of Melinda Le Guay's dining room, a space that doubles as her studio. In her home shared with her family, Le Guay painstakingly creates the ethereal sculptures for her upcoming solo exhibition, 'Conflict' on view starting the 10th of May. Surrounded by her art, one could say that she literally lives, eats and breathes her work day in and day out.

There will be 10-12 works in the exhibition for which Le Guay has created around 20 dress forms using recycled wire and thread, some of which she has then coloured red or yellow. Each work will start with a base dress form that is then wrapped with gauze that she may have stained blue or an orange-pink with an iodine solution. Over the gauze, additional dresses will be layered creating depth and density.

In her previous exhibitions, Le Guay used paper as her medium - drawing on it, sewing it by hand or machine and by using the paper itself, gathering it in repetitive lines and designs. These earlier works alluded to foot binding, female corsetry and the like - some of the physical methods used in the control of women across the ages and among different cultures.

However in this series Le Guay employs simple, hand knitted dresses as the ideal form to describe the domestic. Furthering her investigation into the repetitiveness of 'women's work,' she uses the process of knitting - often considered a nurturing activity associated with femininity - but uses wire instead of the soft material expected. Through the use of wire, she introduces a conflict between protection and exposure in the seemingly simply beautiful dresses. Le Guay uses the wire to give the dress structure and to create an armour-like garment of protection but at the same time it also displays an ethereal translucency through the gaps in the wire which may in turn expose the wearer to danger.