LISA WOOLFE
 Coppice 4.0
19 January - 15 February 2014

Lisa Woolfe lives on the edge of the Manly Dam catchment area in Sydney - 270 hectares of dense bush abutting her home. It has been the persistent landscape of her everyday, her memories and her inspiration, as she says: 'I am interested in looking at my subject from the inside out, exploring the experience of being in it, how it moves and does not, how it sounds, smells, its scale and textures.'

As an artist who holds drawing at the heart of her practice, the sense of hand and gesture in this delicate installation of kozo (rice paper) with ink and wax fuses an Asian aesthetic with one that is quintessentially Australia.

Lisa added, 'The work explores the relationships between the elements, the spaces between adn the rhythms of the bush landscape.'

CAMILLE SERISIER 
Fringe Dwellers
29 December 2013 - 18 January 2014

These photographic works by Camille Serisier investigate our connection, or lack there of, with the natural environment. Made last September during a residency at Laughing Waters, 30 kilometers outside Melbourne in bush land, it was a landscape that reminded her of growing up in Wollongong on the South Coast, describing 'the bush was where you went to get away from adults and explore personal freedoms'.

Her works ask: "Are we merely stage players in this grand environment? Where does mythology and reality meet?" Camille sets about exploring narrative construction and interpretation, taking the traditional gendered narrative of the Australian bush and applying an eco-feminist critique.

Here a figure is inserted into a painterly landscape, masked with abstracted or deconstructed fragments that add to the dramatic 'stage craft' of the image.  It is not surprising to learn Camille trained as a scenic painter at Scenic Studios in Melbourne and Opera Australia in Sydney following her fine arts degree.

This exhibition comes to SLOT as part of the Dispatch project linking seven window galleries across Australia.

CHARLES COOPER

Sea Change
10 - 28 December 2013

My 'Sea Change' paintings can be seen as the material of future archaeology. The fragmented road surfaces allude to damage caused by storm surges, floods, land slippages etc. the increasingly familiar results of extreme weather events. The shattered assemblages are intended to evoke the sublime, the sense of awe in the face of nature's wrath.

The title 'Sea Change' refers not only to coastal damage brought about by rising sea levels, but also to a global shift in attitude regarding the future. (Charles Cooper)

Charlie's paintings are typically graphic in impact, and what appears at first glance to be a composition in abstraction, turns out to be a long interest in the vernacular of the road - signage, bitumen, road markings - aptly shown at SLOT, located at one of Sydney's busiest intersections.

Charles is represented by Annandale Galleries.

IDA LAWRENCE + EKO BAMBANG WISNU 
Nge-kost
12 November - 7 December 2013

Translated as a room in a boarding house, the kost is popular with students in Indonesia, functioning as a complete living ecosystem: bedroom, living room, eat-in entertainment zone, storage space. When faced with the proposition of making a work for SLOT, Ida and Eko - who met in Yogyakarta in such a kost while studying art art school - realised that SLOT mirrored almost the same floor dimension of the average boarding room.

Responding to the site, they have created this urban kost for living; its bower bird-like collection of objects and make-do aesthetics  of furniture reflect both Indonesian kost living and slot's neighbourhood as furniture is often recycled and reloved, and boarding houses jostle with gentrification, blurring objects between places.

Eko said, ' Working in the window is not so dissimilar to living in a kost where everyone sees and knows everything.' Both artists work in a range of materials and this is their first collaboration in Australia.

HERMISANTO + TONY TWIGG2003 = 2012
20 October - 9 November 2013

At the time SLOT opened in 2003, Tony Twigg was in Manila. Having spoken about the project with artists there, upon leaving the Philippines Hermisanto handed Tony a tightly rolled wad of drawings to carry on the plane. It was the first project that fully realized the ethos of SLOT: to have a conversation with our neighbourhood outside the conventional constraints of freight and the kind of  exchange routes reliant on institutional endorsement.

For our tenth anniversary, Tony has revisited Hermi's piece.

Original 2004 installation of Hermisanto's "Firedancer" 

 

Detail of revisited artwork now on show at SLOT

 

MEGAN HANSON
Meg & Co.
6 - 19 October 2013

Curated by Alex Bellemore, this exhibition combines photography, sculpture and light. Central to the installation is a collection of eight blow-up travel pillows that Megan has cast in concrete and stacked. Titled: Zachary, Jackson, Levon and Elijah, Joseph, Daniel, Furnish and John (2013) the objects become animated in themselves, and sit in conversation with a small looped video.

 

In her installation Megan plays with perspex sheeting, text and rope, the window cast in pink and green light - volume and weight become an enigma.

DIOKNO PASILAN 
Ballarat I.D.
18 September - 5 October 2013

This suite of portraits are made from iron dust. It cuts to the core of our contemporary sense of landscape, and the impact this mining boom has on us all.

Filipino artist Diokno Pasilan lived in Western Australia for 16-years, recently moving to the Victorian town of Ballarat, a place with its own history of resources. Built on gold mining at the turn of the century this is a portrait of the town today.

Diokno is in town for Sydney Contemporary, where his work will be presented by The Drawing Room. SLOT it delighted to present this satellite exhibition.

 

Installing exhibition with SLOT co-director Tony Twigg