A record number of Sunshine Coast artists have contributed works to Present Tense, the annual exhibition of members’ artworks at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery.
“Members are the heart and soul of the gallery, and this year is our biggest Present Tense exhibition yet,” said gallery vice president Carol Carr-Andersson.
Works by more than 140 member artists are displayed for a month-long period. They range from incandescent abstraction (like Bill Lowe’s acrylic work Neuron Pathways, a paroxysm of fluorescent intersections) to tactile reflections of wilderness, as in Bruce Edwards’s Found in the Woods: a tree’s cross-section with a painted keyhole at its centre that reveals a world beyond.
“I create as a student of beauty,” wrote Edwards, “moved by a sense of awe. There is joy in knowing. I will never say, ‘I know how to paint now.’ Learning is wonderfully endless.”
Over 100 people attended the show’s opening reception on June 28, including the wife and son of the late artist Gordon Halloran. Caitlin Hicks and Jaz Halloran presented a work by Halloran titled Early Ice Exploration, evoking the mammoth frozen installations for which the Roberts Creek-based artist received global acclaim.
The geography of the Sunshine Coast is reflected in photography like Vene Parnell’s Howe Sound Sunrise, in which a reflected sunburst transforms anchored vessels into inky daubs of silhouette. Meghan Spence’s Shoreline renders the liminal atmosphere of forest and surf into upwelling stalks and swirling umber ovoids. Kim LaFave’s Davis Bay uses acrylics to capture the play of light and shadow on architectural angles, capturing a mood that is vaguely Mediterranean. Kathy O’Brien’s Roberts Creek is a study in both convergence and nuanced greenery: the creek extends into lush boscage, simultaneously drawing and soothing the eye.
Carr-Andersson credited the gallery’s four-member installation crew, who arranged the works in ways that reveal sometimes-tacit thematic connections. A pensive pastel portrait by Gloria Chambers-Cowan (Elderly Wisdom) hangs near whimsical bas-relief figurines by Coralie Swaney (Uncle Willis & Aunt Beatrice), both offering perspective on perspective itself. Nearby, the subject of Suzy Naylor’s Sun Day at the Park doffs her hat to relish the rays. The careworn eyes of Hermione Green’s imperturbable Peruvian Lady reveal themselves on close inspection.
Sometimes the connections are more overt, as with Betty Ackroyd’s sculpture Green Man — Guardian of the Forest and Ellen Heale’s painting The Green Man. One face is somnambulant, the other vigilant; both embody the winsome character of creation.
During the opening reception, photographer Ines Tancré carefully adjusted her work Silenced Letters to extrude its substrate into the room, echoing the appearance of its rough-hewn subject matter. On the opposite wall are politically charged works by Signy Bjarnason (a portrait of Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestine territories) and Allyson Clay (her arresting digital print Clack is anchored by urgent verbs: clack, heave, galvanize). Rubble, a brush-and-ink memento mori by Maurice Spira, is accompanied by the artist’s warning: “If you want to grow the economy, mass murder and rubble will give you no trouble.”
The show features a generous quotient of sculpture and carving, including the exuberance of Maureen Bryce’s ceramic Oxblood Cowboy Boot Vase and Dennis Fafard’s anthropomorphic Chorus, made of reclaimed and burnished cedar. In a mixed media construction by Wendy Harford (Magic Mirror IV), metallic bric-a-brac garlands a portal to self-examination. (“I consider myself an eco-artist doing my best to recycle and use natural materials as a medium,” Harford writes, “or at least to depict natural concerns.”)
The Joe’s Lounge gallery features miniature works from member artists like Jess Hart (richly textured colour harmonies, surging with momentum) and Allie Rose Bartlett (polaroids that depict outdoors scenes with stark candour). Across the show’s vast array of mediums, nature’s influence is ubiquitous: whether in felted works like Ursula Bentz’s Arbutus Tree Blowing in the Wind, or Louise Mcara’s watercolour depiction of rebirth: Spring Magic.
The 140+ works of the 22nd annual Present Tense exhibition remain on display at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until July 20.
