Singleton Arts + Cultural Centre Exhibitions

Explore a vibrant showcase of creativity at Singleton Arts + Cultural Centre with four upcoming exhibitions that promise to captivate and inspire. Each exhibition offers a unique perspective and experience. Exhibitions on show August 24 2024 – November 3 2024

Opening Event: Fri 15 August | 6pm

This exhibition brings together four artists who work abstractly in different media, but who are connected in their quest to investigate the subtle relationships of shapes in space. Here, connections and collisions are bold and intangible, and weighty moments often pause unnoticed. The works mingle and harmonise in a space where individuals and ideas unite.

NEILTON CLARKE

Neilton Clarke was born in Sydney and undertook his training at UNSW – COFA, majoring in painting & printmaking. Widely travelled, he has undertaken artist-in-residence programs in France, Canada, and Thailand. In the 1990s he undertook a half-year studio residency in Tokyo as a Japan Foundation invitee, subsequently based there for a two-decade period.

MICHAEL MCINTYRE

Michael McIntyre is a multi-disciplinary artist working in the areas of painting and craft.  He has a BFA in textiles from Edith Cowan University in Perth and a BFA with honours in painting at the National Art School in Sydney.  McIntyre’s work is concerned with history, nature and interconnectivity.

WILL MAGUIRE

Will Maguire is a traditionally trained blacksmith based in the Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia. Here, he focuses on re-imagining forged ironwork with care and consideration in the hope it will, in its own small way, make the world a better place.

KARA WOOD

Kara Wood is a Newcastle-based artist specialising in ceramics. Her work frequently incorporates text, using it to deepen the dialogue between form and meaning. By merging sculptural elements with language, Kara explores the interplay between individuality and collective harmony.

Cohesion is a concept that most artists are aware of on quite an intuitive level. In basic terms, it can be described as a sense of unity or harmony that is either sought or rejected during the process of creating artwork in any media.  It applies both to individual works and how groups of artworks interact together to make up a unified whole.  If cohesion is not the objective, an artist might actively strive to create tension through disunity, leading viewers to experience a level of discomfort or agitation. That said, a degree of tension is also desirable in works that are ultimately cohesive. Here, the constructed balance of individual elements is key, creating interactions between form, space, colour, line, shape, value and texture. The interplay of these elements often draws on principles of repetition, proportion, emphasis, and rhythm to both disrupt and unify within individual works or bodies of work.

The artists selected for this exhibition are all adept in creating both unity and tension in their works. Kara Wood reflects on the ‘dance’ of grouping her ceramic objects, recognising the overall strength of balancing discordant elements. Will Maguire is conscious of the inherent complexity of his materials, their states of change, and the impact of forcing them together. The interconnectivity of things and the tension between them forms a basic field for the rhythmic studies of Michael McIntyre. The bold printmaking of Neilton Clarke positions shapes, textures and colours in space to create unique works that are both fragmented and seamlessly unified.

Literary scholars note that cohesion does not necessarily promise coherence, and forming a single narrative is not the objective of this exhibition. Cohesion aims to create an overall sense of suspended harmony, uniting the works of four impressive artists who work in distinctly different media. The German term ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ meaning ‘total work of art’ is useful in this context - it refers to an overall artwork that is formed to completion through the combination of disparate art forms, creating a unified and congruous whole.