EXHIBITION NOTES
Sculpture in the Botanic Gardens and Watt Space Gallery
Nineteen artists explore, challenge and interrogate the dialogue that has long existed between architectural sculptural form and the natural environment for this exhibition at the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens. Choosing their own site within which to work among the 130 hectares nestled on the lower reaches of the Hunter River at Heatherbrae, site and its specifics are at the core of the developed work for the 2023 response to the unique forest landscape of the gardens.

The primary inspiration from the external large-scale work extends the visual narrative from the sculptures nestled in the dense natural terrain to those in the mediated gallery environment. Each artist was invited to develop interventions into the vast external spaces and these have been wrought into domestic scale sculptures as maquettes or companion pieces to the in situ works for exhibition at Watt Space Gallery.

Text: Gillean Shaw - Art Curator
University Galleries I University of Newcastle

Exhibition locations:
Watt Space Gallery +
Hunter Region Botanic Gardens
Exhibition dates: 21 July - 10 September 2023
Launch 01: Watt Space Gallery: Friday 21 July 5.30 pm
Launch 02: Hunter Region Botanic Gardens: Saturday 22 July 1 pm

Standing lamp with analogue live-stream obscura image. V2
2023. Painted steel, sandblasted acrylic and lens
Edition number: 2/2
Size: 149 x 70 x 70 cm

Description
Rather than casting light in an interior space, this modified domestic standing lamp placed in a bush setting (and replicated in a gallery setting) is itself being illuminated. Constantly changing natural light is not only ‘lighting the light’ but is also being focussed on a translucent textured acrylic screen placed within the lampshade.

This inverted image of a scene is typical of a ‘camera obscura’, a term first coined in 1604 AD to describe an object of this nature. Using such devices allowed artists to trace an accurate image of the perspective and structure of a complicated scene.

Currently many of our observations of the world are mediated by digital screens. The image on the screen in this object is not the result of a digital translation or transmission: the viewer must place themselves in the natural environment of the object in order to witness the scene ‘live’.

Exhibiting Artists:
Tracie Bertram :: Andy Devine :: Michael Garth :: Tom Ireland :: Kelly Lees :: Fiona Lee :: Louisa Magrics :: Will Maguire :: Megan McCarthy :: Brett McMahon :: Edwardo Milan :: Vlase Nikoleski :: Greg Salter :: Kris Smith :: Shellie Smith :: Andrew Styan :: Peter Tilley :: John Turier :: Patricia Wilson-Adams

Curated by:
Rodney Cones-Browne