Quintet: five southern Sydney artists
QUINTET: Lee Bethel, Matt
Bromhead, Christine Druitt
Preston, Nicole Kelly, Kerry
Toomey
10 September - 13 November 2022
Curated by Carrie Kibbler and
Naomi Stewart
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery Gymea, Sydney
Quintet is the collective title of five solo exhibitions by leading southern Sydney artists Lee Bethel, Matt Bromhead, Christine Druitt Preston, Nicole Kelly and Kerry Toomey. The cross-generational group of mid-career artists who grew up or live in southern Sydney have diverse practices which include painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, drawing, printmaking, photography and paper cuts. Hazelhurst Arts Centre has a long history of supporting artists from the region and each artist has been commissioned to develop significant new bodies of work for these exhibitions, which come at pivotal points in their careers.
Each artist has produced unique and personal works, yet common threads can be drawn across the five exhibitions. Each body of work has a relationship to the home and domestic life – Bethel and Toomey explore ideas of women’s domestic life and craft traditions, Druitt Preston delves into the history of Hazelhurst cottage and its owners, and Kelly examines the aftermath of the destruction of south coast residents’ homes from bushfires. While for Bromhead, his domestic duties around caring for his young family shapes his current studio practice, where works are developed in short bursts.
The physical nature of each artist’s chosen medium – whether it be paper, fabric, paint or clay – also informs their works, which employ detailed, repeated and painstaking techniques such as cutting, layering, carving, moulding and stitching.
Lee Bethel is interested in the materiality of paper and how it can be cut, pricked, folded or arranged to create an array of forms, shadows and complex patterns. Her works often explore the relationship between object, place and memory. Her new conceptual body of work A way with words examines women, feminism and the domestic environment using song lyrics, names and significant feminist quotes.
QUINTET: Lee Bethel, Matt
Bromhead, Christine Druitt
Preston, Nicole Kelly, Kerry
Toomey
10 September - 13 November 2022
Curated by Carrie Kibbler and
Naomi Stewart
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery Gymea, Sydney
Quintet is the collective title of five solo exhibitions by leading southern Sydney artists Lee Bethel, Matt Bromhead, Christine Druitt Preston, Nicole Kelly and Kerry Toomey. The cross-generational group of mid-career artists who grew up or live in southern Sydney have diverse practices which include painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, drawing, printmaking, photography and paper cuts. Hazelhurst Arts Centre has a long history of supporting artists from the region and each artist has been commissioned to develop significant new bodies of work for these exhibitions, which come at pivotal points in their careers.
Each artist has produced unique and personal works, yet common threads can be drawn across the five exhibitions. Each body of work has a relationship to the home and domestic life – Bethel and Toomey explore ideas of women’s domestic life and craft traditions, Druitt Preston delves into the history of Hazelhurst cottage and its owners, and Kelly examines the aftermath of the destruction of south coast residents’ homes from bushfires. While for Bromhead, his domestic duties around caring for his young family shapes his current studio practice, where works are developed in short bursts.
The physical nature of each artist’s chosen medium – whether it be paper, fabric, paint or clay – also informs their works, which employ detailed, repeated and painstaking techniques such as cutting, layering, carving, moulding and stitching.
Lee Bethel is interested in the materiality of paper and how it can be cut, pricked, folded or arranged to create an array of forms, shadows and complex patterns. Her works often explore the relationship between object, place and memory. Her new conceptual body of work A way with words examines women, feminism and the domestic environment using song lyrics, names and significant feminist quotes.
The Rain has hung the leaves with Tears
Encaustic on hand ripped paper on board
LEE BETHEL | Taught by Time
The Egg & Dart
15 - 30 July Opening Friday 15th July 6pm
Shop 2 / 175 Keira St
Wollongong NSW 2500
info@egganddart.com.au | +61 402 932 647 www.egganddart.com.au
Mon - Tues | By Appointment
Wed - Fri | 11am - 6pm
Sat | 11am - 4pm
Hope is the thing with feathers Watercolour on hand cut paper 200cm x 110cm
Finalist Hazelhurst Regional gallery Art on Paper Award http://www.sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/Community/Hazelhurst
Finalist Hazelhurst Regional gallery Art on Paper Award http://www.sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/Community/Hazelhurst
The Garden's Curtain Finalist Banyule Works on Paper Award Banyule Regional Gallery Victoria
Watercolour on hand cut paper
Watercolour on hand cut paper
MATERIALISTICS @the Egg and Dart Gallery Gabrielle Adamik Lee Bethel & Aaron Fell-fracasso
egganddart.com
At this Point in Time
The Egg and Dart Gallery
egganddart.com
2/1 Raymond Rd Thirroul +61 2 4268 4885
The Egg & Dart emerges with a new collection of work from Lee Bethel, At This Point In Time. There is a grandness to the scale in these pieces but the engagement between body and surface remains time-based and intimate. There are few gestural or performative movements. We have a slippery sense of materiality here. Rag paper and wax is worked hard to evoke concrete formwork, circles punctuating the paper irregularly. In other pieces, the paper feels like stacked and undulating strips of calico. There are surfaces suggestive of layers of shale that might cut the skin, but these too are paper with pigmented wax applied.
Bethel has a motto: “Draw it first to know it,” and many of these works are established via the grid which then dissembles through process and layering. Some grids disappear and then one work re-establishes it in a punkish gesture with thick white brushmarks crossing a jagged ash grey. (It is a revisiting – a new magnification of the crossed line pattern from her father’s handkerchief.) The edges of the works are resilient but feel delicate and workable. Take a note of the engagement between work and edge and frame and wall. Some surfaces float, others suggest monolithic forms, housing, containment, a floor or a wall thoroughly worked over.
In lockdown, Lee Bethel returned to reading The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard’s inquiry on the home as phenomenological site. Bachelard proposed the house as “a nest for dreaming, a shelter for imagining”1. I saw in Lee Bethel’s home studio a more condensed version of that: a space for the collection of fragments, projects and contemplative sensibilities. The natural light in her studio also seems to emanate from these paintings. A cream white encaustic grid piece glows from within like the skylights that illuminate her studio.
There is sculpture too. A construction of encaustic on paper with bamboo supports is the most direct nod to Bachelard’s poetics of the home. The folly is a design intended to look like a romantic ruin, but Bethel brings us the Folly as an ambiguous dreamscape structure.
All the works are named. (Lee would feel cheated if a work didn’t offer a name.) The titles provide a little attachment to language that we might use to enter these surfaces. Then we go under and find a slippery materiality where rag paper and wax suggest something much heavier. What is also exciting now is the sustained investigation of luminous grids at a larger scale. The new scale is evocative of construction and transformation. As Bachelard might wonder, “How, in these fragments of space, did the human being achieve silence … the various retreats of solitary daydreaming?”2
-Melody Willis
The Egg and Dart Gallery
egganddart.com
2/1 Raymond Rd Thirroul +61 2 4268 4885
The Egg & Dart emerges with a new collection of work from Lee Bethel, At This Point In Time. There is a grandness to the scale in these pieces but the engagement between body and surface remains time-based and intimate. There are few gestural or performative movements. We have a slippery sense of materiality here. Rag paper and wax is worked hard to evoke concrete formwork, circles punctuating the paper irregularly. In other pieces, the paper feels like stacked and undulating strips of calico. There are surfaces suggestive of layers of shale that might cut the skin, but these too are paper with pigmented wax applied.
Bethel has a motto: “Draw it first to know it,” and many of these works are established via the grid which then dissembles through process and layering. Some grids disappear and then one work re-establishes it in a punkish gesture with thick white brushmarks crossing a jagged ash grey. (It is a revisiting – a new magnification of the crossed line pattern from her father’s handkerchief.) The edges of the works are resilient but feel delicate and workable. Take a note of the engagement between work and edge and frame and wall. Some surfaces float, others suggest monolithic forms, housing, containment, a floor or a wall thoroughly worked over.
In lockdown, Lee Bethel returned to reading The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard’s inquiry on the home as phenomenological site. Bachelard proposed the house as “a nest for dreaming, a shelter for imagining”1. I saw in Lee Bethel’s home studio a more condensed version of that: a space for the collection of fragments, projects and contemplative sensibilities. The natural light in her studio also seems to emanate from these paintings. A cream white encaustic grid piece glows from within like the skylights that illuminate her studio.
There is sculpture too. A construction of encaustic on paper with bamboo supports is the most direct nod to Bachelard’s poetics of the home. The folly is a design intended to look like a romantic ruin, but Bethel brings us the Folly as an ambiguous dreamscape structure.
All the works are named. (Lee would feel cheated if a work didn’t offer a name.) The titles provide a little attachment to language that we might use to enter these surfaces. Then we go under and find a slippery materiality where rag paper and wax suggest something much heavier. What is also exciting now is the sustained investigation of luminous grids at a larger scale. The new scale is evocative of construction and transformation. As Bachelard might wonder, “How, in these fragments of space, did the human being achieve silence … the various retreats of solitary daydreaming?”2
-Melody Willis
Spreading wide my narrow hands to gather Paradise
Encaustic paint on ripped paper on board 100 x 100cms
Finalist in the 2020 RAVENSWOOD WOMAN'S ART PRIZE
Encaustic paint on ripped paper on board 100 x 100cms
Finalist in the 2020 RAVENSWOOD WOMAN'S ART PRIZE
'Hybrids'
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Exhibition
21 Sep 2019 - 17 Nov 2019
Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery Talara Rd Gymea, NSW
Watercolour on hand cut paper
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Exhibition
21 Sep 2019 - 17 Nov 2019
Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery Talara Rd Gymea, NSW
Watercolour on hand cut paper
Quilt
Watercolour on hand cut and folded paper
Flow Contemporary Watercolour Prize
Wollongong City Art Gallery
Kembla Rd Wollongong
17th August - 10th November
Watercolour on hand cut and folded paper
Flow Contemporary Watercolour Prize
Wollongong City Art Gallery
Kembla Rd Wollongong
17th August - 10th November
Radiolarians
Watercolour on handcut and folded paper
Banyule Works on Paper Prize
Hatch Contemporary Art Space 14 Ivanhoe Rd Ivanhoe Victoria
Watercolour on handcut and folded paper
Banyule Works on Paper Prize
Hatch Contemporary Art Space 14 Ivanhoe Rd Ivanhoe Victoria
REGENERATION
Solo exhibition at the Egg and Dart Gallery
3 Raymond Rd Thirroul
Opening night Friday 8th March
6-8pm
The Egg and Dart
Solo exhibition at the Egg and Dart Gallery
3 Raymond Rd Thirroul
Opening night Friday 8th March
6-8pm
The Egg and Dart
A Piece Torn from the Morning
Oil and Encaustic on Board 95 x 95 cms
Oil and Encaustic on Board 95 x 95 cms
Collection
Seeds,sticks and watercolour on hand cut and folded paper
Finalist 2019 North Sydney Art Prize
Seeds,sticks and watercolour on hand cut and folded paper
Finalist 2019 North Sydney Art Prize
Komon Watercolour on hand cut and folded paper is a finalist in SPLASH McClelland Contemporary Watercolour Prize
Opening 1st December 2108 running till 17th March 2019
at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery
390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin, Victoria
www.mcclellandgallery.com
Opening 1st December 2108 running till 17th March 2019
at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery
390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin, Victoria
www.mcclellandgallery.com
DETRITUS
Seed caps,wire, graphite and wax on timber
Finalist in the Greenway Prize, Marrickville NSW
Seed caps,wire, graphite and wax on timber
Finalist in the Greenway Prize, Marrickville NSW
Sylvan Watercolour, seeds and encaustic on hand cut paper on board
Mixed Bag
Mixed Bag
- Wednesday, August 1, 201810:00 AM
Saturday, August 25, 20183:00 PM - The Egg and Dart Gallery 3 Raymond Rd Thirroul www.egganddart.com.au
Finesse
Exhibition at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery www.shoalhavebregionalgallery.com.au with Nicole Ison Sat 9th Jun till Sat Aug 4th 12 Berry St NowraOpen Tues-Fri 10-4 and Sat 10-2
Exhibition at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery www.shoalhavebregionalgallery.com.au with Nicole Ison Sat 9th Jun till Sat Aug 4th 12 Berry St NowraOpen Tues-Fri 10-4 and Sat 10-2
'In Paradiseo' wax encaustic and seeds on hand cut paper on board, Finalist in the 2018 Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize will be exhibited in McLaren Vale at the Stump Hill Gallery and the Fleurieu Arthouse and in Goolwa at the Signal Point Galleries from 16 June to 22 July 2018.
Florish opens at the Egg and Dart Gallery
Raymond Rd, Thirroull on Friday the 13th October and runs till 4th November. Opening night drinks Friday 13th 6-8pm
Raymond Rd, Thirroull on Friday the 13th October and runs till 4th November. Opening night drinks Friday 13th 6-8pm
Abound
Seeds and rust on hand cut and folded paper
20 x 20 cms
2017
Seeds and rust on hand cut and folded paper
20 x 20 cms
2017
Maze Seeds, watercolour and gold leaf on hand cut and folded paper 35 x 45 cms
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 'Fortresses for Trees' Watercolour, gold leaf and sticks on hand cut and folded paper. Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre 782 The Kingsway Gymea NSW
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 'Fortresses for Trees' Watercolour, gold leaf and sticks on hand cut and folded paper. Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre 782 The Kingsway Gymea NSW 20th May-16th July open 10-5 daily
My Mother's Tablecloth Detail Watercolour on hand cut pages from The Commonsense Cookbook.
Between the Sheets Gallery East Perth
EXHIBITIONS: THE EGG AND DART ON EXCURSION@ CASULA POWERHOUSE
15 Oct - 4 Dec | 10.00am - 5.00pm
Artists: Aaron Fell-Fracasso, Lee Bethel, Leonie Watson, India Mark, Nick Santoro, Christopher Zanko, Frank Nowlan, Gabrielle Adamik, Marie J. Engelsvold (DK), Sofi Lardner Häggström (SWE), Rebecka Bebben Andersson (SWE).
The Egg and Dart Gallery finds inspiration and provocation in being a gallery outside of the large cities that, historically, have been perceived as the most important centres of art. The gallery is located in Thirroul, a village on the coast between Sydney and Wollongong. The area has a distinct history that inflects the practices of artists that work in the area, but has also, historically, looked to the north for sustenance. However, this model of dependence is being thoroughly challenged.
Since at least the nineteen seventies, Australian artists have confronted the tyranny of the distance between them and the perceived centres of art in European and American cities, especially New York. This is a global pattern of “centre” and “periphery” that we have seen repeated at the national level. But, in our increasingly mobile and mediated contemporary world, it is no longer a useful distinction.
Contrary to the idea that artists must always (physically and/or conceptually) move towards the “centre”, the Egg and Dart Gallery is both a point of origin and a destination. It initiates projects that engage regionally, with Illawarra artists, nationally, with artists from other similarly “regional” areas, and internationally, including a productive relationship being forged with a number of Scandinavian artists since the arrival of our Swedish gallery manager.
The Egg and Dart Gallery blurs the distinctions between commercial gallery, artist-run space and artist collective. It is a focal point, a site for solo and group exhibitions, as well as a point of origin and a place of exchange for art and ideas. Its collaborations conceptualize distance, modes of communication and the creative potential of translation across time and space.
www.theegganddart.com.au
Between the Sheets Gallery East Perth
EXHIBITIONS: THE EGG AND DART ON EXCURSION@ CASULA POWERHOUSE
15 Oct - 4 Dec | 10.00am - 5.00pm
Artists: Aaron Fell-Fracasso, Lee Bethel, Leonie Watson, India Mark, Nick Santoro, Christopher Zanko, Frank Nowlan, Gabrielle Adamik, Marie J. Engelsvold (DK), Sofi Lardner Häggström (SWE), Rebecka Bebben Andersson (SWE).
The Egg and Dart Gallery finds inspiration and provocation in being a gallery outside of the large cities that, historically, have been perceived as the most important centres of art. The gallery is located in Thirroul, a village on the coast between Sydney and Wollongong. The area has a distinct history that inflects the practices of artists that work in the area, but has also, historically, looked to the north for sustenance. However, this model of dependence is being thoroughly challenged.
Since at least the nineteen seventies, Australian artists have confronted the tyranny of the distance between them and the perceived centres of art in European and American cities, especially New York. This is a global pattern of “centre” and “periphery” that we have seen repeated at the national level. But, in our increasingly mobile and mediated contemporary world, it is no longer a useful distinction.
Contrary to the idea that artists must always (physically and/or conceptually) move towards the “centre”, the Egg and Dart Gallery is both a point of origin and a destination. It initiates projects that engage regionally, with Illawarra artists, nationally, with artists from other similarly “regional” areas, and internationally, including a productive relationship being forged with a number of Scandinavian artists since the arrival of our Swedish gallery manager.
The Egg and Dart Gallery blurs the distinctions between commercial gallery, artist-run space and artist collective. It is a focal point, a site for solo and group exhibitions, as well as a point of origin and a place of exchange for art and ideas. Its collaborations conceptualize distance, modes of communication and the creative potential of translation across time and space.
www.theegganddart.com.au
Brenda May Gallery 2 Danks St Waterloo Opening Saturday June 11th at 3pm OP ART
'Ode to Bridget ll' Watercolour on hand cut paper part of OP ART @Brenda May Gallery A group show including Marion Borgelt, Debra Dawes and
Sophie Egachos
Sophie Egachos
ROGAP Rockdale Outdoor Gallery Art Prize Sculptures by the Bay. Cook Park Kyeemagh
'Fortress' Found timber, wood, plastic soldiers, wax and string.
10th - 24th April
'Fortress' Found timber, wood, plastic soldiers, wax and string.
10th - 24th April
'HYBRIDS'
23rd October - 27th November
OPENING NIGHT 23rd October 6pm at the Egg and Dart Gallery
Raymond Road Thirroul
'Rosea' Watercolor seeds and encaustic on hand cut paper 38 x 38 cms
Spore Watercolour and seed on cut and folded paper
Finalist in the Hutchins Prize Long Gallery, Salamanca Place Hobart from Tuesday 8th September -Sunday 20th September 2015
Finalist in the Hutchins Prize Long Gallery, Salamanca Place Hobart from Tuesday 8th September -Sunday 20th September 2015
Lee Bethel FORAGE
The exhibition runs April 26th.
The new Moran Gallery in partnership with Hazelhurst Regional Gallery
29 Sylvania Rd, Sylvania
The exhibition runs April 26th.
The new Moran Gallery in partnership with Hazelhurst Regional Gallery
29 Sylvania Rd, Sylvania
BRENDA MAY GALLERY paperworkslll DRINKS WITH THE ARTISTS SATURDAY 18th April 3-5 pm Paper Works III is the third edition of our biennial
series featuring Australian artists who use paper in innovative ways. This year
we are exhibiting the work of Lee Bethel, Daniel Chant, Glen Clarke, Todd Fuller, Lisa Giles, Nicci Haynes, Bettina Hill, Therese Kenyon, Melinda Le Guay, Jo Meisner, Louise Morgan, Nicola Moss, Helen Mueller, Al Munro, Mylyn Nguyen, Janet Parker-Smith, Pamela See, Liz Shreeve, Lezlie Tilley, and Elizabeth Willing.
Dispersal Seeds on cut and folded paper 2014 Part of Fractured Beauty Exhibition Wollongong Art Gallery
photograph by Bernie Fischer
Bunyah Watercolour and bunyah seeds on cut paper exhibition at The Jean Bellette Gallery, Hill End, NSW through Bathurst Regional Gallery
photograph by Bernie Fischer
Bunyah Watercolour and bunyah seeds on cut paper exhibition at The Jean Bellette Gallery, Hill End, NSW through Bathurst Regional Gallery
