Currarong Encounters
Kurt Brereton
Shoalhaven City Arts Centre (Nowra)
June 6 - July 4, 2015
Launch Sat June 6 at 12 - 2pm East Gallery
Multimedia installation - incl. painting, drawing, photos, sculpture, video
This multimedia exhibition is concerned with how we encounter a place: that is, make sense of, a new physical and cultural environment – in this case, the seaside tourist village of Currarong, near Nowra, NSW.
Through a series of walks (Honeysuckle Walk, Bosom’s Beach Walk, Lobster Beach Walk) the artist aims to build a series of creative responses, by extending and expanding traditional singular representational temporal images. The installation seeks to reconnect and immerse us in the experience of engaging with Currarong’s network of tourist hotspots.
Brereton draws on French/Italian philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s critical model of the rhizome – to construct a legend of decentered interconnected artworks or rhizomaps. The gallery space is transformed into an installation viewing machine utilising walls and floor space to project an assemblage of multipanel paintings, performance videos and sculptures. Read together, the show creates a unique alternative tourist map of Currarong’s bush walks.
For Brereton, the day-to-day experience of being in Currarong, is a history of such creative encounters, that constantly transform/rewrite and even overturn comfortable aesthetic recognitions. For Brereton, a major reason to open one’s self up to new encounters - in art exhibitions – or foreign lands, is to rethink and feel differently about the world, ideas and our actions – that is, how we walk the walk.
preview of selected works below
Honeysuckle Walk, oil on canvas, hand dyed cotton rope, rubber mat, 215cm x 300cm, 2015
Bosom's Beach Walk (2 parts), oil on canvas, 76cm x 160cm, 2014
Beecroft Headland Vines (2 parts), oil on canvas,137cm x 180cm, 2014
Currarong Walk, oil on canvas, 133cm x 153cm, 2014
Currarong Creek Bridge, oil on canvas, rubber mat, 137cm x 274cm, 2014
Beecroft Forest Vines, oil on canvas, 70cm x 95cm, 2014
Bosom's Beach Twigs, graphite on canvas, 90cm x 90cm, 2014
Anna at Beecroft Headland, oil on canvas, 120cm x 90cm, 2014
Currarong Mangroves, oil and linocuts on canvas, 90cm x 90cm, 2014
Fishing in Currarong Creek, oil and linocuts on canvas, 90cm x 90cm, 2014
Beecroft Headland Track, oil and pastel on canvas, 90cm x 90cm, 2014
A True Map of Beecroft Headland, oil on canvas, 137cm x 183cm, 2015
Tree Study, acrylic on plywood, 50cm x 65cm, 2015
Marion's Walk No1, oil and wax on canvas 32cm x 38cm, 2015
Marion's Walk No2, oil and wax on canvas, 32cm x 47cm, 2015
Marion's Walk No3, oil and wax on canvas, 37cm x 52cm, 2015
Marion's Walk No4, oil and wax on canvas, 32cm x 37cm, 2015
Marion's Walk No5, oil and wax on canvas, 62cm x 91cm, 2015
Marion's Walk No6, oil on canvas, 90cm x 130cm, 2015
Marion's Walk No7, oil on canvas, 70cm x 70cm, 2015
