Two new exhibitions launched at NERAM on Friday night: the print exhibition Deep Cuts and the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award (JADA), an exhibition of contemporary Australian drawing put together by the Grafton Regional Council every two years. Armidale was the last venue on the tour of the 2016 display.
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Three of the Jacaranda artists – Rowen Matthews, Sarah Mufford, and Michael Riley – were present.
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ROWEN MATTHEWS
Rowen Matthews called his painting of a windy afternoon in the Wollomombi gorge country Fast Clouds.
”The clouds were moving low and fast, late in the afternoon,” he said. “I draw the afternoon light a lot, because it's dramatic, so here you're getting big shadows and a lot of light. I had to work fairly quickly, and then work it up in the studio.
“I liked the sense of movement, and also the sense of movement in the landscape.
”It is about the motion of the day's activity in the sky and the clouds, what they're doing in displaying the cliffs, but also the sense of motion displayed over time. Even though it's thousands and thousands of years of time that have formed these shapes, you can see the history.”
Rowen Matthews has been a painter since 2001. He lived in Armidale for a long time, and works part-time in art education at UNE. These days, he lives in Quirindi.
He was awarded the Calleen Art Prize in 2009, the Blackheath Art Prize in 2010, and was granted an Australian Postgraduate Award in 2012 for his PhD studio practice study.
SARAH MUFFORD
“I’m interested in the interplay of geometric shapes and hard-edged abstraction, with painterliness,” Sarah Mufford says.
Her Lotfollah was inspired by a design she found on a trip to Iran, southern Spain, and India in 2016.
“It has references to tiling and tessellations of being in a mosque, surrounded by pattern.”
With its alternating circles and straight lines, it has a hypnotic Op Art effect. The drawing is one in a series of eight – which reach a massive 140 by 140.
“I’m really trying to overwhelm the viewer!”
Sarah grew up in Coffs Harbour, and recently returned there from Sydney.
MIKE RILEY
“It’s not actually a map or a diagram, it’s more like a poem,” the Dorrigo-based artist said of his Seven Days to Marengo Falls.
It describes a bushwalking expedition to the waterfalls on the edge of the tablelands.
“First time we didn't make it; we only got halfway. So we came back another time and made a bigger effort at it. It ended up taking seven days, so it had a Biblical quality by the time we got there.”
Intriguingly, there are different times and points-of-view in the same painting. The sun and moon are in there a few times to show different days, as well as storms, rivers, trees, and flocks of birds.
Mike Riley has worked as an artist for 20 years, and held regular exhibitions throughout northern NSW.