Tara Cook

TARA COOK, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Media Living, Mixed Media Installation, 29cm x 14cm x 14cm, 2011.

Tara is a contemporary artist born in Canberra, who has recently relocated from Sydney to Melbourne. Tara creates interactive, temporal, expanded and embodied works. Theoretically centred around relationships with technology, Tara transforms the broken, outmoded and unwanted towards the actualisation of unforeseen potential, reflexivity, transmateriality and poetics.

Tara is also the Director of New Low, an artist run initiative on Swanston St holding monthly exhibitions of contemporary art.

Until December 31.

Tom Polo & Charlie Sofo

TOM POLO & CHARLIE SOFO, Parliamo!, digital image (A photo taken on Tom's recent trip to Calabria in Southern Italy, collaged with a picture of his mother's homemade biscotti), 2011.

Parliamo! (Let's Talk!) is a new collaborative project between artists Tom Polo and Charlie Sofo, who regularly 'chat' online. In their solo practices, both artist explore ideas about conversation and together they will discuss their shared Calabrian heritage through a series of recorded chats, small sculptures and food.

Until November 30.

Cougar Flashy + Champion Boy

LIGHT PIECES, Cougar Flashy Vs The Innernet, collage on paper, 2010

Cougar Flashy and Champion Boy are collaborating in a series of weekly installations for the month of October in a project titled GUYSTAR PICTURES.

GUYSTAR PICTURES is based on the ethic of transbetterfying themselves into the corporate powerhouses that would be to create a suggestion of films one may have longed to see since the dawning of midday movie credits upon children unready for the limitations of processing and refining a dream to the point of physical manifestation. The minor emotional explosions or ideas evoked by these empty boxes may include disinterest, the abundant meaninglessness in popular entertainment, weird dude energy, analysis paralysis and general cultural collapse.

Cougar Flashy and Champion Boy are Melbourne based drawers, internet enthusiasts and members of the art collective Hyper Color Castle.

Until October 31

Coming Soon: Tom Polo

Coming Later: Tara Cook

Cal Watson

CAL WATSON, ‘Royal Coral’, Polystyrene, Concrete, Spray Paint, 2011.

For the first time in history the potential for civilization to collapse by its own causing produces questions about what the earth may look like after humans are gone. How long will it take for cities to degrade and what will these hybrid structures begin to look like as they merge with the natural environment? Through this piece, Cal Watson aims to incorporate man made materials such as polystyrene and concrete to produce contemporary artifacts that may or may not be left to linger as landfill for hundreds of years. Abandoned cities such as Chernobyl and Angkor Wat prove that the environment's ability to reclaim land is quick, producing a post-apocalyptic world where once indestructible buildings ultimately become overgrown and barely visible.

Cal Watson is a Melbourne based artist.

Until September 30.

Nicola Page

NICOLA PAGE,‘Never be afraid to ask for love’, Acrylic on Perspex, 2011.

‘Never be afraid to ask for love’, continues Pages exploration into sustainable architecture and contemporary landscapes. The work is inspired by a recent trip to New York and reflects a personal experience of the city’s recent development ‘The High Line.’ The disregarded train line running above the city streets has been now donated to the local community in the form of an urban parkland and public space. The landscape has been elaborated on as a private physiological and emotive space of wild bushlands sitting among the city’s back drop of billboards and condemned housing estates.

Nicola Page completed a MVA at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2008 and has shown in solo and group exhibitions across Australia, Asia and Europe. She has been the finalist and recipient for several visual arts awards and residencies including Artist-in-residence at Level ARI Brisbane 2011 and a support stipend for residency at Can Serrat International Art Center Spain in 2011.

Until August 31.

Alyshia Boddenberg

ALYSHIA BODDENBERG, 'A' ā, hydrostone plaster, matchsticks, balsa wood and wax, 2011.

TwentybyThirty space is proud to present Alyshia Boddenberg in a simultaneous installation with Rearview Gallery in Fitzroy. The title; ʻAʻā, meaning 'stony rough lava' in Hawaiian, is now the scientific definition and is the contrast to Pahoehoe, title of Rearview show, which is smooth lava.

Alyshia completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours in 2008 at the Victorian College of the Arts. Since that time she has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions throughout Melbourne. In 2010 she spent four months as an artist-in-residence at the Beijing Studio Centre, Beijing and 943 Studio, Kunming, China.

Until July 31.

Coming Soon: Nicola Page.

Daniel Dorall

DANIEL DORRALL, Lot's Wife, cardboard, sand, plastic, hydrocryl, 17 x 17 x 23 cm, set of 4, 2011.

Lot’s Wife continues Dorall’s exploration of the maze and the miniature.The narratives in Dorall’s work have often dealt with tragedy, dark humour, social and urban issues, sexuality and religion. The narrative of Lot’s Wife work surrounds the biblical tale of Lot – the last righteous man, asked to flee the city of Sodom before it is destroyed. He escapes the city before the destruction, but his wife, in defiance, looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt.

The experience of the work itself consists of the miniature object within the gallery space and starts as the visitor turns the corner into Little Collins Street from Swanston Street. This journey, from the open skies of Swanston Street, turning into the narrower, less chaotic Little Collins Street and then again into the covered arcade of Howey Place, in itself forms an installation; one which gives the visitor an experience of walking through a maze-city. The visitor also experiences the panoptic sense of being watched and monitored from the windows of the buildings towering over the increasingly narrow alleyways. Finally as the visitor turns into and meanders down the darkened and winding Presgrave Place they discover the gallery, and the maze-object. The experience of the journey is then used as a framework to better understand the maze object. The visitor or the viewer now becomes a god-like watcher, peering into and monitoring the lives of the figurines within these miniature creations.

Daniel Dorall completed a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne in 2005 having previously earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with honours at the University of Malaya in 2002. He has since held numerous solo exhibitions and been curated into group exhibitions in Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand.

Dorall was awarded the New Works Grant by the Australian Council in 2008 and received the Bombay Sapphire Arts Project Grant in 2009. He is currently a candidate for the Master of Fine Art in Sculpture at Monash University. He is also currently preparing for a major solo exhibition of installation and sculpture in September which has been funded by the Melbourne City Council and the Monash University Research Publication grant. In August, his profile and works will be included in the new British publication Microworlds, featuring profiles of international artists creating works surrounding the miniature.

Daniel Dorall is represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne.

Until June 30.

Coming Soon: Alyshia Boddenberg.

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Rebecca Delange

REBECCA DELANGE, nineteethnervousbreakdown, Plasticine, hair, wax, wood, salt, sugar, paint, rubber, feathers, sequins, 2010.

Nineteethnervousbreakdown is an accumulative sculpture produced from the debris of past sculptures and installations. An imagined body part. The material embodies the histories of its past incarnations, a collage of different points in time.

Rebecca Delange aim’s to make tangible in sculptural assemblages and spatial interventions immaterial things such as dreams, thoughts and subconscious manifestations. She seeks to produce work that embodies these things rather than merely representing them. Her practice is structured around an investigation into manipulating and transforming materials and processes to articulate these ideas, a dialogue between controlled making and uncontrolled action. She see’s the work as continuous project existing in a state of flux that never finds a static and definitive resolution.

Until December 31.

Shannon Reed

SHANNON REED, satan oscillate my metallic sonatas, 2010.

Shannon's recent sculpture, satan oscillate my metallic sonatas, communicates failure between objects, bearing the combination functionless or appearing so until a further time.

He is interested in a rebirth of ideas, re using order to create chaos samples, packaged up in corporate identity, spinning coca cola sneaks around and around with out the faintest sound of a pin drop. Reverse the record to hear satan wallowing in his very own private dream channel.

This work is documentation of right now, a time without myth. The perfect time to re create order.

Shannon is in preparation of his MFA at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.

He also co runs The Russian Frost Farmers artist run space in Wellington.

Until November 30.

Coming Soon: Rebecca Delange

Coming Later: Lauren Cross

Charles O'Loughlin

CHARLES O'LOUGHLIN, 2010

Charles O'Loughlin's practice verges on performance. His paintings and sculptures visually document information gathered from his life, who he meets, where he is, and how often.

Charles O'Loughlin completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at RMIT in 2002 and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at VCA in 2007. Charles O'Loughlin is a Melbourne based artist.

Until October 31.

Coming Soon: Lauren Cross

Coming Later: Rebecca Delange

Julian Smith

JULIAN SMITH, 'An Indefensible Curiosity', Gouache and Acrylic on Paper, 2009.

What are the machinations that enable a deferment of empathy? What is it that allows one person's grief or distress to be offered as entertainment when doing so to another is unthinkable? Is the accepted disdain and ridicule of a celebrity's breakdown the start of a slippery slope towards a general and lasting desensitisation to the pain of any person?

These are the questions that brought about the work An Indefensible Curiosity at TwentyByThirty Gallery.

Julian Smith is a Melbourne-based artist with an upcoming solo exhibition at C3 Contemporary Art Space in Abbotsford from September 1, 2010.

Until August 31.

Coming Soon: The End of TwentyByThirty

Coming Later: Charles O'Loughlin

Darcey Arnold

DARCEY ARNOLD, Indigo-Child, Citrine, Rhinestone, Plastic, Wood, 2010

The ascendancy of the eye, a universal symbol shared by primordial and contemporary science, pseudo-science, art and religion. The disembodied eye, speculative and observational, the unblinking eye of the fixed gaze, forever opened window to the soul, “this me-that is, the soul by which I am what I am-is completely distinct from the body: and is even easier to know than is the body”.

Arnold’s work reflects on the analysis of the maternal, as the ground for subjectivity. Society considers mothering as an extension of growth, but it is clear that pregnancy and motherhood is not a useful archetype for maternity at all. This marks the split between nature and culture, intellect and body.

The eye imagery of the work is loaded with symbols of orifices, eggs, testicles, the sun, sperm, and breasts. The eye retains the "time-honoured function of the penetrating gaze, able to pierce appearances to 'see' essences beneath”. A displaced, stagnant or disembodied eye is most common in Arnold’s practice, a symbol for the origin of subjectivity. Her work retains a disembodied stillness, which takes from its Surrealist tradition in the iconic action of sadistically terminating vision. Through hyper-real mediation of materials it locates itself within the supernatural environments of science fiction, as her work often seduces the viewer into an uncanny environment, the seduction of horror, seen here in the seduction of the resplendent red chakra adorning the alien Indigo-Child.

Her forms are organic yet mutilated; the surfaces are plastic and glossy; rhinestones luminous and shimmering; synthetic skin white and glowing.

Until July 31

Coming soon: Julian Smith

Coming later: Cougar Flashy

Simon Pericich

SIMON PERICICH. 'PIXSELLS', .gif promo for youtube video 4;57min, 2010.

(CLICK HERE FOR A LINK TO THIS VID ON YOUTUBE)

In 2009 a third of all websites on the Internet were of a porn content. Porn is basically responsible for every advance in communication technologies through its constant demand and the creative freedoms allowed by its revenue. Today 89$ is spent on porn every second- that works out at around $28 billion every year.*

Simon Pericichs' hysterical, dark brand of makeshift art production is concerned with the terrifying awareness that humanity and its current actions are irrationally selfish and detrimental. Traversing large- scale installation, video and image his dystopias are often nihilistically humorous, acting like an epitaph and harbinger for a future that seems out of the control of its population. Sometimes stemming from the autobiographical, sometimes from the stance of a detached trend consumer, Simons’ practice forms transitory bonds between audience members and acts as an invitation or platform to participate. Simon tends to recycle found or commonplace materials and techniques to create obsessive topical products that point toward a dark future.
*(from the book; SEX, BOMBS AND BURGERS. Peter Nowak)

Until June 30.

Coming Soon: Darcey Arnold

Coming Later: Julien Smith

Al Ouchtomsky

AL OUCHTOMSKY,'Growls Garden', paper, card, foam core and hot glue, 2010.

Alexander Ouchtomsky’s work is formed by the collection and recombination of found images and objects. He finds the construction and composition of his work an instinctual process. The act of hunting for hard rubbish and digging for picture books informs the work's adventurous and journey like qualities.

The work presents potential ideas of an imagined universe. Hybrid creatures and imagined primitive beings are reincarnated through dissecting and stitching together existing earthly specimens. Within these fictional environments the work reflects on the evolutionary adaptation of the inhabitants. Questions are raised about the found objects previous origins and how they reflect on both the imagined and existing environmental contexts. Alexander Ouchtomsky is currently hanging out and playing Nintendo.

Unitl June 1.

Ramona Lola Angelico

Ramona Lola Angelico, "Sinkhole', Mixed Media, 2010

We have reached a turning point in history, and the beginning of a new era. The tensions and dreams of progress and the realities of emerging disaster are now plainly apparent. The system of progress we once clung to has collapsed; it is thoroughly ‘ruptured’ from within and riddled with contradictions. We are now navigating a discontinuous and uncertain world.

Ramona Lola Angelico is an artist whose work in sculpture, installation, collage and video, explores ideologies of survivalism, apocalypse and neo-spiritualism. Ramona’s work often reveals a dual preoccupation with annihilation and salvation, suggesting the clarity these states might potentially provoke, whilst reflecting on humankind’s awe-inspiring resourcefulness, inclination for destruction, and precarious relationship to nature.

For Twenty by Thirty Ramona has constructed a miniature model of a sinkhole. A sinkhole is a natural depression or hole in the surface topography. Sinkholes can form gradually or suddenly. They are often human-induced and have been correlated to land-use practices such as construction, and development. The manipulation of scale, means that the sinkhole exists in a world where time is arrested; it’s stillness emphasizes the activity outside of it’s borders, the scale of the sinkhole has the capacity to create transcendent time, allowing us a transcendent godlike vision.

Until April 30.

Coming Soon: Al Ouchtomsky

Kate Rohde

Kate Rohde, Tiny Geology, polyester resin & glitter 2010

Kate Rohde’s recent sculptures and installations utilise an extensive range of craft and hardware materials including silicone, expanding foam, fake fur, various resins and rice paper. With these she creates a collection of zoological, botanical and geological specimens.

Tiny Geology shares Kate's fascination with the notion that natural history museum displays must appear inviting, almost artful, functioning to inspire the viewer's appetitie for sensation, rather than representing a naturalistic setting.

Her work at Twentybythirty gallery incorporates numerous imitation crystals made from cast polyester resin, suggesting that inside the walls of a city a mysterious colony of crystals flourishes.

Until March 31

Coming Soon: Ramona Angelico

Coming Later: Al Ouchtomsky

Brendan Huntley

BRENDAN HUNTLEY,"One of the Gang", Glazed Ceramic, 2010.

"Huntley’s work makes me think that things really are as simple or as complex as you make them. Look around. Some things don’t need to be explained. Perhaps everything is already here, right in front of you."
Olivia Radonich.

Until Feb 28.

Coming Soon: Kate Rohde
Coming Later: Ramona Angelico

Sergei Ignatievsky & Wanda Gillespie

Sergei Ignatievsky & Wanda Gillespie, The Book Of Levitation, 2010.

In the second collaboration between artists Sergei Ignatievsky and Wanda Gillespie, the artists reveal a levitating book. ‘The book of Levitation,’ will literally float in space for a month in the world’s smallest gallery. The authoritative gothic font alludes to something pious, while the mysterious nature of its levitation suggests an otherworldliness.

Sergei Ignatievsky is a Melbourne based artist interested in kinetic sculpture, illusion, and the humorous in art. His background as an electrician has led him to creating kinetic art works.

Wanda Gillespie is a Melbourne based artist interested in materializing the immaterial through quirky or wondrous means. Fiction or prose often plays an important role in grounding her works. Wanda recently finished a Masters of Fine Art by Research at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Until February 1.

Coming Soon: Brendan Huntley
Coming Later: Kate Rhode

Belle Bassin

BELLE BASSIN, Balancing The Tides, Digital Drawing, 2009.

Peeling away the layers

Vomiting in the pool

I heard them in the garden

Breathing out in all directions

Then snapping back into one

Belinda Bassin’s art practice peers into the secret, hidden and rejected aspects of reality. Her drawing based practice also takes the form of video, sculpture and collage with an emphasis on me ditative repetition. Drawing from alternative historical cannons her works explores creation theories, alien races, conspiracies and the occult.

Until December 31.

Coming Soon: Wanda Gillespie
Coming Later: Brendan Huntley

Julia deVille

JULIA DEVILLE, Funerary Urn, Jarrah, Sterling SIlver, Bronze, Black Garnet, 2009

"...but who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whether they are to be scattered?"

Funerary Urns have been used by many civilisations to collect a person's ashes after cremation. Sir Thomas Browne, in his 1658 work 'Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial' poetically uses the funerary urn to discuss man's struggle with mortality, the changes wrought with time and eternity, and the uncertainty of his fate and fame in this world and the next, to produce a funerary meditation tinged with melancholia.

Julia deVille's funerary objects, as well as her taxidermy, are a celebration of life and a preservation of something beautiful. DeVille's work deals with the process of mourning, and the communication between life and the afterlife.

Until November 31

Coming Soon: Bell Bassin
Coming Later: Wanda Gillespie

Tai Snaith

TAI SNAITH,Who’s the Boss?, Mixed Media, 2009

Presently in Japan there is a whole spate of adds kicking around with Tommy Lee Jones’ wrinkly tanned face looking old and withered and sad next to a rainbow can of coffee called ‘Boss’. Think Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, only older, more tired and more disillusioned.

This coffee is only available from vending machines usually on the way to or home from working for ‘the man.’ The complex messages in this product and its advertising is a constant source of entertainment for me. First of all, its’ logo is an old man smoking a pipe placed over a bright shiny girlish rainbow and secondly Suntory has now somewhat inappropriately chosen the ugly mug of Tommy Lee for its proud new mascot. Deliciously odd.

One can’t help but deduce that the coffee is the Boss.

One thing I have learnt about Japan and subsequently about advertising and commercial culture in general is that the subject matter does not always have to make logical sense to communicate an idea. These surreal clashes are everywhere you look. This tiny dream machine diorama I have made for 20x 30 explores some of the visual reality clashes that I have noted in Japan during my stay; the old living alongside the new, handmade objects by machines, animals treated as humans and fake nature masquerading as ecology.

Until October 31.

Coming Soon: Julia DeVille

Coming Later: Belle Bassin

Reiko Miyazawa

REIKO MIYAZAWA, Testtubes 1-6, mixed media, dimensions variable, 2006-09

"Testtubes 1-6": A series. An ongoing sequence of meanings. Documenting and connecting work that was, into what it is now, to what it may suggest. A collection informed by sight, insight, free reflection and association. A multi-layered and sensorial compulsion to glean information and meaning from daily life. Panning for Gold in the debris of life.

I've always been a gatherer, of many things.

Form, colour, texture; organic and manmade.

Laying them silent, for a while dormant, back in my studio, my experimental lab. Listening for the right moment to put things together; allowing materials to play off one another, the play of interactions: forms and suggestions. I know to sit back and wait; reflect. Do they reflect? Have I captured the threads from then to now? These are points, in the collecting sequence. These are questions.

Until September 31

Coming soon: Tai Snaith
Coming later: Julia DeVille

Nicole Breedon

NICOLE BREEDON, Frozen In Time, Acrylic ice cube tray, epoxy resin, glass, dimensions variable, 2009

Frozen in Time is a simple yet interesting paradox. The concept of "frozen time is enacted continually in science fiction, and occasionally comedy, the protagonist often playing out trite and predictable fantasies, which have no doubt been contemplated many times throughout history. Frozen in time is a rather banal manifestation of the nature of time, contradicting the persistent laws of physics. The ice will remain, solid, for all eternity.

Nicole Breedon is a Melbourne based artist who employs painting, carpentry and video among others, to explore the esoteric nature of our cosmos and the human psyche, such as the mind, the origins of the universe and creation, the future, time and space. Her work examines mankind's infinitesimal position within the orders of magnitude, in contrast to the profundity of the human experience.

Until September 1.

Coming Soon: Reiko Miyazawa
Coming Later: Tai Snaith

Steve Bishop

STEVE BISHOP, Meanwhile...., Digital vidoe loop (5:05), 2008

Twentybythirty Gallery is proud to present Toronto born, London based artist Steve Bishop for his first Australian exhibition in July. Bishop has exhibited light installations, sculpture, photography and video throughout Europe, US and Russia, often inviting us to re-examine familiar objects and situations.

Steve Bishop’s Meanwhile is intentionally frustrating. An exploration of the ‘establishing shot’ – television series speak for the image of the outside of Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment block, or the steps of Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment – Meanwhile grounds (and grinds) the audience into the streets of New York, but never provides the familiar faces behind the apartment windows that we are yearning to see.

Alternating between various camera-angles to focus on various recognizable sites in New York City, the video moves soundlessly from non-descript shots of the city’s skyline to uncomfortably close frames of particular apartment’s windows. The sense of frustration is aligned, in one sense, with that of a voyeur, creepily hanging out outside Serena Van Der Woodsen’s apartment block from morning until night, zooming in right up to the glass of the apartment window in a manner too predatory even for Gossip Girl.

At first glance, Meanwhile…seems a far cry from Steve Bishop’s other works, such as the mystical Behold a Pale Horse (2007), which extends and merges motifs from movie studio logos, such as Universal’s glowing earth and the beacon of light emanating from the hand of the Columbia Picture lady. The dream-like sequence gives the audience a fuller and thus more satisfying visual experience than the effect of the original advertising material. By contrast, the Meanwhile…delays the moment of satisfaction by forever ‘setting up’ the audiences’ recognition of Manhattan, but never delivering the comfort of narrative that we have learnt, over many years, to expect.

It could be said that the function of both of Bishop’s videos is to deliver the exact opposite of what it is that the viewer expects. This dissonance draws forth, after the initial confusion, a criticality of the power of contemporary media. For this consumer at least, it is sad that any image of the Manhattan skyline will forever by framed by the title of Mad About You.

Anusha Kenny, 2009.

Until July 31.

Coming Soon: Nicole Breedon

Coming Later: Tai Snaith

Andre Piguet

ANDRE PIGUET, Helstar 89, Digital video,3.35min loop, 2009.

Taking a singular experience of the once gaudy and excessive 1989 performance of Texan black metal band Helstar and transforming it into and endless cyclic experience; a kind of hyper-present – an endless now - one that uses the disintegration of information to descend into a sublime, melancholic chaos.

Andre Piguet has exhibited throughout Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and is a finalist in upcoming 2009 Metro5 Awards. He currently spends long nights chasing the weird echo and processes a silken head of downy fur.

Until June 31.

Coming Soon: Steve Bishop
Coming Later: Nicole Breedon