Chapter House Lane project space: 136 Johnston
Eller installation at 136 Johnston St and Chapter House Lane invitation
About Naomi Eller
Organic forms emerge, protrusions force their way from a centre point and turn the work in on itself. Eller deposits layers – clay, wax, shellac – combining influence and intuition; for her approach here, unlike in the fields of history or philosophy, is decidedly un-academic. She seeks the story – our story, your story – and plants that seed in her work.
Her ceramic sculptures go beyond the figurative and look at the body through a biomorphic lens. Though influenced by the legacy of classicism, in particular historical works from the Roman/Greco Empire and Etruscan sculpture, Eller uses a variety of coloured clays to push the boundaries of form. Combining iconography from across the natural world, Eller rounds out the physical with emotional elements allowing for assorted reactions to her ceramic pieces.
Benwell’s Chapter House Lane invitation and his studio, 2014
About Stephen Benwell
Stephen Benwell (born 1953) is a visual artist living in Melbourne, Australia. His body of work, now spanning four decades, comprises ceramics, drawings, works on paper and paintings. He began his career in the mid 1970s after finishing art school (VCA) in Melbourne.
Whilst not having any formal training in ceramics, this medium forms the basis of his art practice. His work marries studio based investigations of the ceramacist with the painterly and sculptural concerns of the contemporary artist. For the last decade Benwell has focussed on a series of ceramic statues — the body of work first approached through an investigation of 18th century figurines and later developed to incorporate the poise and grandeur of Greco-Roman statuary.
Benwell’s figures subtly illustrate a forlorn image of the male nude, happenstance of contemporary desire, situated within the ballast of statuary tradition and images of masculinity—these bodies are enlivened by a painterly touch, illuminated by chalky pastel hues. This multifaceted approach to ceramic is the bedrock of Benwell’s practice, it is the place where traditions of sculpture, ceramic and painting converge in delicate harmony.
Exhibiting regularly since 1975, Benwell has been represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne since 2001. In 2013, a career survey of the artist’s work, Stephen Benwell – Beauty, Anarchy, Desire, A Retrospective, was installed at Heide Museum of Modern Art. Also in 2013, Benwell was selected to exhibit in Melbourne Now, the National Gallery of Victoria’s survey of contemporary practice. During 2010 Benwell was the recipient of the Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award. For this award, Shepparton Art Museum commissioned and installed Collection, a series of perspex boxes with ceramic components. In the same year he was a finalist in the Hobart Art Prize and the Fletcher Jones Art Prize at Geelong Gallery, Victoria. In 2009 Benwell was awarded the Inaugural Deakin University Small Sculpture Award and an Australia Council Visual Arts Board New Work Grant.
For the second show for the second space for Chapter House Lane, 136 Johnston welcomes Stephen Benwell with his exhibition ‘3 Vases’.
Stephen Benwell’s exhibition runs from 14 August to 7 September 2014 and we encourage you to walk, cycle, bus or drive past at some point during the month to see the small suite of new works.
Benwell's current practice sees his St Kilda studio filled with familiar forms: the vase, the male nude, jugs. Unusually, one is finished with what looks like an elongated dorsal fin – its adornment rubbish from surrounding streets. Benwell likes rubbish, “it’s small” he says, “to hand, and far from grand”.
He doesn’t liken his work, his subjects to anything political – likes instead the angle in a chest in relation to the legs, a cheekbone to the neck, the vase mouth to its depth. Comfortable with beauty, either painting flowers or sculpting their partnering vase, he brings a happy simplicity to his work.
Habitual research has made him an expert, bright eyes, experimental still, and after a long career and shows at Shepparton Art Gallery and Heide Museum of Modern Art, he continues to delight.
Stephen Benwell is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne where he’ll exhibit a forthcoming solo show.
For more on the artist see: http://stephenbenwell.com/.