27/05/2021 – 17/06/2021
27/05/2021 – 17/06/2021
Tuesday – Friday, 10am – 4pm
Tuesday – Friday
10am – 4pm
ECU Galleries
Building 10, Room 122, 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley WA 6050
ECU Galleries
Building 10, Room 122, 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley WA 6050
Tarryn Gill / Carla Adams / Nicola Kaye and Stephen Terry + Lyndall Adams + Marcella Polain / Paul Uhlmann / Roderick Sprigg / Mary Moore / Sharyn Egan / Anna Nazzari / Stormie Mills / D’Arcy Coad / Tyrown Waigana
Curated by Ted Snell
Artists make sense of their world through their work. This can be through an examination of the external world or an interrogation of their internal world and it is most often in an attempt to find balance. Everybody has a dark side, a place of fear and dread they go to voluntarily or not. Managing that part of our lives is crucial to health and well-being, as Covid-19 has highlighted. However, it requires self-awareness, courage, and resilience to confront that aspect of your psyche. Artists have always worked in that penumbral space, on the cusp between dark and light.
Artists understand that the dark side is a counterbalance in life and provides the richness and complexity that defines us as individual human beings. This is not to underestimate the impact of severe mental illness or to suggest that the arts are a panacea, merely to stress the therapeutic benefit of engagement with the arts as a tool to nurture well-being.
The artists in the Dark Side exhibition have all found ways of making sense of their world and marking out a space for themselves by confronting their fears and then externalising them in artworks. Their creative practice is a mechanism that allows internal narratives to unfold in the controlled environment of the studio. While so much else is under sway by external forces, the practice of art-making remains singularly the practitioner’s domain. The artist has ultimate and sole control over the outcome. This security and grounded-ness enable artists to share their insights, provide reassurance, and offer a safe space for their audience to confront the collective concerns of their communities.
The exhibition features works by a diverse group of contemporary Western Australian artists, from the well established to emerging practitioners, including, Carla Adams, Nicola Kaye & Stephen Terry + Lyndall Adams + Marcella Polain, D’Arcy Coad, Sharyn Egan, Tarryn Gill, Stormie Mills, Mary Moore, Anna Nazzari, Roderick Sprigg, Paul Uhlmann and Tyrown Waigana.
Opening Event
Thursday 27 May
5–7pm
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