October 2004
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Kathryn Weedon - Exhibition: SPIKE
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Artist's Statement:
This body of work explores the space between the common place and what we constitute as art. I am interested in the blunt, the here and now, and the everyday. In attempting transformations of readily available materials I have a passion for possibilities that the eye ignores - the pet food cans in the recycle bin or the bag of concrete mix in the hardware shop. For some years I worked in the building industry, so construction and a nice neat finish interest me. Currently I am working in the mental health industry as a consumer advocate so issues of madness intersect, for me, with influences from outsider art. Perhaps I do trash art, or maybe it’s just trash! As always, the viewer must decide.
Kathryn Weedon - October 2004
Yangzi Sima - Exhibition: Imaginar
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Artist's Statement:
I am really delighted to see people standing in front of my paintings, carefully looking at them, ‘reading’ them. The reason I named my exhibition ‘Imaginar’, is because I respect and admire greatly the power of imagination. I feel fortunate to be able to paint my inspirations, fascinations, thoughts, and unexplainable feelings. The most amazing thing about painting however is that even though created by the artist, it can be interpreted in infinite ways by the viewers. After finishing my paintings, I love sitting down with others and listening to their thoughts. Their words make me smile, make me laugh, make me ponder. In this way my artistic creations become much more alive, colourful, and fulfilling.
Most of the artworks in this exhibition are portraits. Renaissance giant Da Vinci, if I recall correctly, once said that ‘inside every man there is a world’. Humans are complicated beings and I cannot paint enough of them. I incorporated them into the ‘landscapes’ I have generated and am amazed at how they can become part of my dream, become the carriers of sensations.
Many years ago during a Chinese class, my teacher told me that the world is not objective, and that our moods and emotions make us see the world in particular ways a rose is lovely in a lover’s eye, and the same rose would seem distressing if the viewer is melancholy. This belief of humans as the centre of the world has motivated me to create certain paintings. There is no correct interpretation of them, every comprehension is a possibility. Artworks are short questions, not multiple choices, and every person gives a unique answer. We are free to indulge ourselves in art, where subjectivity and irrationality are ESSENTIAL in order to see others and ourselves, as well as out state of existence.
I consider painting an intimate process of talking to myself and others, a magical process where even I as the narrator can get lost sometimes. However, this is where the charm of art lies, nothing is definable.
The flamboyant colours, the smell of paints which are freshly out of the tubes, the texture of dry paints, the strokes… creating an artwork is somewhat like cooking. But unlike cooking, the artworks which reflect on my thoughts and state of being in particular times can exist forever. I prefer to describe painting as writing a diary, with blank canvases not papers, with paints not words, with wild imaginations not memories. Only the diary written is so powerful and intangible in its meaning, that everyone who reads it may get a different story.