She is the Aphrodite of South Africa’s street art scene. He has splashed his paint on galleries and walls all throughout the world. She is Faith 47. He is Dal East.

Separately, his paint coils and whirls in 3D manifestations and her engravings plunge deep into the wood to evoke her images with pure emotion…

Together they break down how we interact with our environment. Shying away from starched new canvases they favour pieces of wood, old doors, and shutters, all in the interest of exploring life through the past and joining it with the future. 

How honoured I was to cross paths with the duo and exchange words with two heavy weights in the art world.

At their opening at the RTIST Gallery, they spoke of how they scoured vintage furniture stores for the wood they used as their canvases.

Flying into Australia with not a painting in hand, they crafted each piece exclusively for the exhibition. It was digging into and painting over the once used doors and panels that inspired them.

 It was an inspiration that etched out landscapes of nature and the chaos of the forgotten in the modern age. Dal East spun his images around the chaotic energy. Fatih 47's hushed simplicity was an ode to the forgotten times when we mingled more quietly with nature...

Transmitting street art into the confines of a gallery is a hard-won task. Yet, RTIST skilfully spreads open its four walls to flawlessly explore the world of its artists. Leaves were swept along the floor and an entire wall was garnished with paint for the exhibition. It was beautiful and effectual and an exhibition I wished I gotten around to writing about a little sooner…

But, I do invite all to explore and view Fatih 47 & Dal East while the work is still on exhibit until May 13^th…

It’s a post apocalyptic world where two enemies must come together to fend off an enemy of even larger proportions…

There is BEAR. There is RABBIT. And there is a city under siege by squirrel goons zombibified by an  alien acorn…

 In the modern age where contemporary art is all the rage and often the words are more appealing than the actual installation, a few art forms have been brushed off. So, how nice it is to see one gallery, Art Boy, picking up the cartoonists, graphic and street artists, and all the other artists who give you more BAMB than intellectualized prose, and gathers them all together in one bright white hub…

This past week Craig Bruyn invaded the Art Boy Gallery, emblazoning the walls with a dozen different paintings, sketches, and even stamping the walls, door, and window with his graphic story of Bear VS Rabbit. 

Craig Bruyn has to be the archetype of what we can all accomplish in our spare time. He mentioned the exhibition as being a ‘hobby’. By day he designs popular toys such as Battleground and Skanmaster and even dabbles at creating video games. In his leisure time he creates several dozen paintings to be displayed at art galleries…

And these paintings weren’t just hanging over his pillow or bathroom sink; all were custom made exclusively for the Art Boy Gallery.

I am enviously impressed…

As a child who relished her allotted time of 2 hours of cartoons per week, I luxuriated in the joy of seeing painting after painting of the artillery clad heroes at the Art Boy Gallery. Vibrant reds jumped out as Rabbit leapt through the air and black paint dripped from buildings as zombies drugged through the city…

Now, I love my intellectualized installations, but they don’t curdle my senses or excite my eyes as this genre of art does.

We’ve been viewing cartoons for decades, since Mickey first tooted his horn in 1928, but glancing throughout the history of art, cartoons are still fairly new. And, for galleries to exhibit this genre; well I just don’t see that all too often. So, when I come across it, I absorb it, relish it, and invite others to experience it too…

Like a coming of age tale, Katherine Gailer’s ‘Womanly Extended’ heralds the tune of self exploration and realization. Monochromatic women sway to an uplifting rhythm amongst vibrant splashes of magenta, cobalt, and red-yellow. Flowing along the slopes of a woman’s breast, throat, and spine, Gailer’s vision is one that is overtly feminine and pinpoints various stages of womanhood.

“I will expose female identity beyond the parameters of what we already know.” ~Katherine Gailer

 “‘Womanly Extended’ is a project that explores the female body as a holding place of experience.” ~Katherine Gailer

Freedom. Self Consciousness. Idealized Beauty. Sexuality. Motherhood.

Symbolic gestures mimic feelings that expose the female body as a playground for life experience. Gailer’s cryptic use of color to lay open or shelter the women in her paintings adds sensual notes that are a crosscurrent throughout the series. Boldly, Gailer explores sex as a carnal desire, inhibited shyness, or the birth of motherhood all through a tour of the female body.

Her images mirrored much of my journey through womanhood and I have to admit…it was startlingly confronting. Many artists give you a beauteous visual experience or redefine cultural questions, but few ever question your identity. To touch on the journey I have, am, and will go through in life as a female…I commend Katherine Gailer for her boldness. 

Gailer’s exhibit will be on view at The Brunswick Street Gallery alongside other notable artists in a joint showing that I strongly recommend experiencing and absorbing for yourself…

Bulging from a skeletal cave, dreary eyes peer at you. A group of raw boned girls fawn together, each in a colored shift dress resting on their ashen bones…

“These are my dreams.” ~Rachel King

Few can remember their dreams. And of those who do, few can etch with such penetrating detail the visions that cross their mind at night. Rachel King is one of those very few and welcomes you to ‘Phantasms.’  

 Macabre damsels haunted the red walls at Brunswick StreetGallery with a subversive creepiness that spoke of the corpse and beauty. As though in a dream waltz, I was pulled further into the little red room by the Twiggy smiles and svelte frames that were as innocently girlish as they were ghoulish. The drawings peered out from a world all their own, captured and framed with wasted smiles that held a longing to escape…

 Dreams of dystopian beauties might cloud the character of some, but Rachel King mirrored nothing of the sullen faces from her drawings.  Rather, she was fun and blushing at the joy of showcasing her work in her first solo exhibition. 

It is a collection of work that is commendable with all the minute symmetrical lines and the hair-rising feeling it releases. Like a good actress, I suppose Ms. King can evoke a mood with her drawings, while maintaining her own separate sense of self. 

She was by far my favorite artist of the joint show at Brunswick Street Gallery and I urge others to experience her work themselves, which will be on view until the 12^th of April.

Sweet Dreams…

Gold American Apparel Leggings sprawled on the floor.

A junction of mirrored cubes rising like an irregular stepping ladder.

An open window with the curtain posed in the middle of the floor.

It was at Sarah Scout Presents that I stopped in front of this display.
Claire Lambe is the artist. I am the viewer and I am asking, 
"Claire Lambe what are you trying to convey?"

Lambe’s sculptural display of inflated buttocks gripped in a shiny gold material showcases the erogenous zone with a touch of pop culture glamour. But, like last night’s now forgotten ‘treats’ Lambe shows the same indifference, discarding them in the corner on the floor.

“We are living in an age of overt sexualization,” Lambe seems to be saying, “Different parts of the women’s body become glamorized as the new ‘it’ zone all to be overlooked the next day…or when we become old…”

Flirting with sexually tinged themes and distortion, Claire Lambe stops the viewer.

 I stood in front of her layers of glass cubes. Gazing down, I realized the mirrors were arrayed in such a way that no matter how I turned my head, my reflection was always distorted.  

And, the curtain standing amidst it all, covers a woman’s breasts from the peering eyes beyond the window.

With themes of glamorized sex, physical distortion, and modesty, the artist plays with the viewer's psyche.  

Titled ‘Lazy Boy,’ Claire Lambe’s exhibit will be on view until April 28^th at Sarah Scout Presents. One of the featured artistic spaces in Van Haus, SSP is worth the walk up Crossley Street for a view of the featured international artists and a chat with the owners, Kate and Vikki.