10 September 2022 to 13 November 2022
Images (clockwise from top left): Michelle Cawthorn Pony 2015 (detail), pen, graphite, watercolour, gouache, pastel, coloured pencil and acrylic paint on Hahnemühle paper; Marc Etherington You can run but you can’t hide 2015 (detail), acrylic on canvas; Leahlani Johnson Wait & See 2015 (detail), Paper Daisy petals; Paul Williams Cars girls palmtrees holidays milkshakes tequila 2015 (detail), gesso, acrylic and oil stick on poly cotton.
4 Solos is the collective title of four solo exhibitions by southern Sydney artists Michelle Cawthorn, Marc Etherington, Leahlani Johnson and Paul Williams.
The artists all grew up or live in southern Sydney and have diverse practices which include painting, sculpture, textiles and drawing. Hazelhurst has a long history of supporting artists from the region and each artist has been commissioned to develop significant new bodies of work for these exhibitions which come at pivotal points in their careers.
Each artist produced unique and personal works, yet common threads can be drawn across the four exhibitions.
Michelle Cawthorn: Bittersweet
Michelle Cawthorn’s Bittersweet explores both pleasant and painful memories of her experiences in life particularly around the death of her mother. The image of birds also feature largely in this exhibition as it links to memories of a time spent on family holidays.
"Our notion of self derives from our ability to form memories both pleasant and painful. The person that I know myself to be is an amalgam of all of my experiences. Because of this, my resultant artworks are often bittersweet."
The drawing, sculptures and paintings which Cawthorn makes are external expressions of her inner world. Her work invites the viewer to infer their own meaning. She is particularly interested in the little triggers which take us to our own inner landscape – an old teddy bear, a song, a scent. One of her works in this exhibition is a ‘memory tent’ which invites the viewer to enter and recall past experiences and events evoked by the light and smell present.
Marc Etherington: Little Dramas
Marc Etherington’s new works for Little Dramas centre around his everyday life as an artist and father. His witty and laugh out loud paintings and hand carved sculptures take their cue from contemporary popular culture, 80s nostalgia and the movies of his childhood like Jurassic Park, Back to the Future and Ghost Busters which he spent hours watching while growing up.
Marc is now a rising star of the Sydney art scene. This new body of work showcasing 20 sculptures and paintings is a reference to the dramas of daily life. Etherington is also known for his absurd and humorous titles like Our neighbours hated us and we weren’t sure if it was our house design or the chemicals we burned every evening in the fireplace. This exhibition is also the first time Etherington has exhibited large scale paintings on canvas which were given to him by fellow artist Del Kathryn Barton after he painted her for this year’s Archibald Prize.
Leahlani Johnson: The certainty of this
Leahlani Johnson’s work for the certainty of this uses moving image, floristry, paint and sculpture which engage with the idea of distinct places and moments of time or ‘parallel time frames’ as imagined through digital media and virtual online worlds.
Each work was developed independently at various speeds, periods and at different locations in Sydney and Paris (during her recent AGNSW residency at the Cite International Des Arts) becoming a record of a present experience whether that be ‘stillness’, ‘temporality’ or ‘flux’.
Paul Williams: One day, Painter, you will die
The title of Paul Williams’ exhibition One day, Painter, you will die is a reference to Memento mori, which translates to ‘remember (that you have) to die’, a Medieval Latin theory and practice of reflection on mortality.
This exhibition sees a shift in his practice, away from the traditional wall hung canvas to this new work which combines paintings on bed sheets with ceramics. Mud today is his first in this new series on bed sheets. The once-fitted, cream and brown spotted sheet began life as one of Williams’ bed sheets from his childhood. It then became a drop sheet in his studio 5 years ago before making its way to the studio walls and now to the gallery walls for this exhibition. Williams explains that ‘mud today’ is a reference to being in the studio when the work isn’t coming together, "it feels like mud" he says.