Group Show / MASS
September 18, 2024 - September 28, 2024
Curl Curl Creative Space
The third in a trilogy of sister shows that included MATERIALITY (2023) at DRAW Space and MATTER (2024) at Woollahra Gallery, MASS continued to cultivate a cohort of ecological mark-makers.
Water was the dominant theme that flowed through the exhibition. Each artist responded to the coastal suburb of Curl Curl; from the waterway that stretched from Greendale Creek downstream towards Curl Curl Lagoon and the ocean. MASS responds to the sheer density of our climate crisis.
Artists: Penny Coss, Kristy Gordon, Joyce Lubotzky, Emma Pinsent, Chrystal Rimmer, Brigitta Summers, Sarah Yaacoub, and Mei Zhao
Daniel Press received the 2024 Northern Beaches Emerging Curator Award to develop MASS. Public programs included artist talks and an intertidal walk-shop.
Mei Zhao, Garden C series, 2024. Acrylic, pigment, and concrete, on hessian stretched on wood frame. Each painting 61cm x 61cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Mei Zhao, Garden C IV, 2024. Acrylic, pigment, concrete, and mixed medium on hessian stretched on wood frame. 112cm x 91cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Mei Zhao, Garden C V, 2024. Acrylic, pigment, and concrete on hessian stretched on wood frame. 112cm x 97cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Mei Zhao, Garden C VI, 2024. Acrylic, pigment, concrete, and mixed medium on wooden board. 61cm x 53cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
MASS install shot at Curl Curl Creative Space, 2024. Photography by Richard Trang.
Emma Pinsent, If you could return, 2024, edition of 2. Ground recycled soda lime bottles, and resin. Each work approx. 50cm x 73cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Emma Pinsent, If you could return, 2024, edition of 2. Ground recycled soda lime bottles, and resin. Each work approx. 50cm x 73cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Brigitta Summers, The image is the thing / the image precedes the thing, 2024. Hand-drawn CMYK separations screen printed on acrylic. 89 x 117cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Penny Coss, Underfoot detail, 2024. Iron rod, painted textiles, found objects. Approx. 450cm x 300cm x 180cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Penny Coss, Underfoot, 2024. Iron rod, painted textiles, found objects. Approx. 450cm x 300cm x 180cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
MASS install shot at Curl Curl Creative Space, 2024. Photography by Richard Trang.
Brigitta Summers, Fig tree series, 2024. Kozo paper. Approx. 23cm x 27cm each. Photography by Richard Trang.
Chrystal Rimmer, Absence series, 2024.Reclaimed plaster. Dimensions variable. Photography by Richard Trang.
Penny Coss, Dead Tree Island still, 2024. Colour video with sound. 5.24mins.
Sarah Yaacoub, no green eden here, but a restless expanse of multihued contaminations (sign), 2024. Found sign, screen print, pole, and concrete. 175cm x 20cm x 20cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Sarah Yaacoub, no green eden here, but a restless expanse of multihued contaminations (artist book), 2024. Tarp, acrylic paint, plastic thread. 27cm x 40cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Sarah Yaacoub, no green eden here, but a restless expanse of multihued contaminations (soil bag), 2024. Soil bag, cyanotype of garden hose, 100cm x 60cm x 30cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Sarah Yaacoub, no green eden here, but a restless expanse of multihued contaminations (sign) detail, 2024. Found sign, screen print, pole, and concrete. 175cm x 20cm x 20cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Chrystal Rimmer, (left) Farewell Warning, 2024. Reclaimed plaster, wood, beeswax, petroleum wax, and flannel flower. 122cm x 45cm x 35cm; (right) Drifting, Drifting, Drifting, 2024. Beeswax, petroleum wax, and crayweed. 62cm x 13cm x 15cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Chrystal Rimmer, Drifting, Drifting, Drifting, 2024. Beeswax, petroleum wax, and crayweed. 62cm x 13cm x 15cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Kristy Gordon, Water Drawing, 2023. Digital drawing on hand-cut acrylic sheet. 20cm x 22cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Kristy Gordon, Water Drawing detail, 2023. Digital drawing on hand-cut acrylic sheet. 20cm x 22cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Kristy Gordon, Shallow Dive, 2024. Acrylic on carved ply. 202cm x 190cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Kristy Gordon, Shallow Dive detail, 2024. Acrylic on carved ply. 202cm x 190cm. Photography by Richard Trang.
Joyce Lubotzky, lost and found, 2024. Coastal trash and drawing table. Dimensions variable. Photography Samuel Cui.
Joyce Lubotzky, lost and found, 2024. Coastal trash and drawing table. Dimensions variable. Photography Samuel Cui.
MASS / Mei Zhao in conversation with Daniel Press
Mei Zhao depicts the underrepresented history of Chinese market gardens along Greendale Creek in Curl Curl. The market garden was located on the corner of Abbott Road and Harbord Road, opposite where Manly Selective High School is today. Here, during the 1930s, Cheung Lee and his Chinese workers lived and worked on their market garden. Their house was a tin humpy with hessian bags for doors and kerosene lamps. Market gardens like these dominated the production and distribution of vegetables in New South Wales from the 1880s to the 1930s. Zhao's conscious material choices map this history, using acrylic, pigment, and concrete on hessian stretched on wooden frames.
MASS / Briggita Summers in conversation with Daniel Press
Briggita Summers explores the construction of parkland environments through the axes of fig trees planted in Hyde Park, Sydney Park, and the parklands surrounding Curl Curl. These triangulations between sites look at the multiplication of planted trees. Summers depicts these through the angular layers of a CMYK print and rice paper mould imprints on trees. They follow Summers' preoccupation with "talking with trees" exploring alternative relations between human and non-human entities that emphasise dialogic and reciprocal entanglement with the world.
MASS / Joyce Lubotzky in conversation with Daniel Press
Joyce Lubotzky invites the audience to draw her “found object” collection taken during coastal walks. The “lost and found” drawing table allows close engagement with the material journey of each object, questioning notions of object agency, nature/culture entanglements, and the material stewardship of ecofeminist praxis. Lubotzky seeks new ways of representing the items we throw away as a mirror to ourselves and our behaviours as consumers and human beings. Each object is a souvenir of an intimate human experience, a memory, a memento, or a reminder. The coastal foreshore is littered with human desires, met and then forgotten, lost or discarded.
MASS / Kristy Gordon in conversation with Daniel Press
Kristy Gordon draws the immersion of bodies in water (breath), and bodies of water (wave motion). This is a slow way of being, where time loses structure and gains texture, and where this texture can be understood as a register of ambient atmospheric influences. For Gordon, slowness is a practice in presence and perception, promoting space to linger; to bathe in the atmosphere. Her practice engages with the aesthetics of atmospheres, drawing a glimpse of the slippery indeterminacy of objective and subjective encounters. The drawings respond to the extraordinary beauty of sun rays slicing through water, the fascination of watching one's breath rise as bubbles, and the satisfaction of slipping under a wave. The works also express the pleasure of diving, the calmness in weightlessness, and the surrender to water movement.