APTOS CRUZ - Key Persons
Avital sheffer is a ceramic artist based on the North-Coast of NSW, Australia. She creates large ceramic vessel forms, strong in presence and refined in detail. From her native country of Israel she brings a deep engagement with multi- faceted Middle-Eastern cultures, history and design - complexities and dilemmas she explores in her work. She has developed a unique aesthetic language - at once intimate and universal. While speaking of ancient civilizations, the idiosyncratic forms and intricate surfaces of the vessels ground her work firmly in the contemporary. Sheffer employs hand-forming techniques along with a unique printing practice to which she brings her life experience in working with other mediums. The earthenware clay forms are created by coils, they are repeatedly glazed with engobes, slips and dry glazes, printed and multiple fired. Her forms are contained and voluptuous, architectural and anthropomorphic, layered with detail and meaning. Since 2004 Avital had been exhibiting extensively in Australia and the US. She was a finalist in numerous competitions, juried and invitational exhibitions and won several awards including the Josephine Ulrich prize for excellence at the Gold Coast international Ceramic Award in 2005 and The Border Art Prize in 2008 as well as Australia Council Grants for New Work. She was recently selected as a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. Her work is represented in public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Sydney Powerhouse, Manly Art gallery & Museum, Gold Coast City Art gallery, Art Gallery of Ballarat as well as corporate and important private collections.
Ben Sando first exhibited at Aptos Cruz in 2006, having his first solo exhibition in 2008. He is now a regular artist at Aptos Cruz Galleries. His paintings have rich surface qualities that display strong composition and considered mark making. The works are warm and inviting.
Ben seeks an implicit presence with his works. With earlier work there was a deliberate aim to not over ‘clutter' his paintings to allow the viewer to also contemplate notions of emptiness, erasure and quiet. More recent work utilises a kind of over-abundance, becoming almost clamorous in its effect.
While the paintings remain abstract, there is a consistent probing of how we look and what an image actually is and what it does. In his early exhibitions, Sando's paintings emphasised the material qualities of the paint and ground; images emerged from the process of painting and the gestural movements of the artist, producing organic forms whilst shunning representation. From there, Sando made a body of strikingly large paintings on paper that investigated geometric abstraction with an emphasis on ideas of repetition, erasure, signage and non-natural forms. These works had a particularly direct impact on the viewer. He continued to evolve his work, using techniques such as chance procedures and application of simple systems, resulting in paintings that were visually decentred and flickering, creating a kind of thrill or pleasant agitation in the viewer. The most recent work shows a renewed interest in deletion and replacement whilst examining the internal formal structures of imagery. These vibrant, visually tangled paintings seem to propose themselves as zones of play and wonder.
Throughout these changes in Sando's work over the years, there is constantly an exciting and dynamic visual energy at play; the work is always bold and matter-of-fact. His paintings enliven the viewer and ask for an equal and direct exchange.
David Reid has had the compulsion to make art his whole life and as many artists would tell you it was never a matter of choice. For David learning about making art happened not through formal study but years of developing applied knowledge through experimentation and observation.
Fundamentally his art practice revolves around his interaction with the world and his expression of responses he communicates through painting. The giants of Australian Modernism including artists such as Ian Fairweather and Tony Tuckson have influenced him as an artist. He has also worked along side the likes of John Olsen, John Firth-Smith and Tim Storrier.
For a long time David has been interested in Chinese art. He recalls that in year 12 his focus was on Chinese Art. Over the years opportunities within his artistic and working life have enabled him to develop a relationship with Shanghai. He first exhibited his works at Shanghai Art Fair in 2005 and was invited to return in 2006 when he was also awarded a grant by the government of South Australia.
It was most fortuitous for his art practice that he was introduced to the beautiful texture of Chinese handmade paper; a natural progression with his interests in Chinese art and paint.
The deeper his relationship grows with Shanghai, the more he is able to mirror these visual and emotive responses within his works. He employs some of the major ideas and explores many of the materials found in Chinese art but he never seeks to imitate them. Instead through spontaneity, layering colour and aesthetic simplicity David takes the traditional art form and gives it a contemporary edge.
His latest work employs inks on Chinese handmade paper. The outcomes of his layered processes have produced unique and visually emotive paintings.
Ed Douglas came to Adelaide 45 years ago with an international reputation as an artist to create and head the first BA level photography course in this state at the SA School of Art. Notable graduates of this course include Nici Cumpston, Mark Kimber, Deb Paauwe, Alan Cruickshank, and Kate Breakey.
Ed's art is in public and private art collections in the US, England, France and Australia. He has numerous works in Australian collections including the Art Gallery of SA, the Art Gallery of NSW, Parliament House, Canberra, and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
EMILIE HEURTEVENT is a Melbourne-based abstract artist. Landscapes, classical elements and cycles of decay & renewal are Emilie's recurring subjects. Like in nature, she believes changes are necessary, serving as an invitation to savour this precious life and a way to experience a sense of growth and purpose. Her work shows landscapes, movement, light and darkness. It is evocative of another place and time and questions what lies beyond our sight.
Emilie works with black and white paints, ochre, Chinese ink and gloss. She consciously creates layers upon layers of marks, drips and abrasions to show the imperfection of nature and how deconstruction and reconstruction are intrinsically linked.
Gerry King is a pioneer of Australian Contemporary Glass. He commenced working with glass while undertaking postgraduate studies in the USA during the early 1970's. His works are exhibited, collected and published internationally and held in some twenty public museum collections worldwide.
In 2009 he was honored by the Australian National Art Glass Collection as the first living artist invited to present a retrospective exhibition. In 2011 he was awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Australian Association of Glass Artists. He is currently engaged as a consultant in planning an international glass studio for PhD candidates in Boshan, China in conjunction with Shanghai University. Periodically he teaches at the Glass Furnace School Summer School in Istanbul. His international activity includes guest lectures, assessment of postgraduate candidates and judging major awards in addition to exhibiting.
Originally trained as a glassblower he now works with a wide variety of techniques. His artistic ability, broad experience and technical knowledge have lead to frequent engagements as a consultant, author and commissioned designer of architectural applications of his works. In his Adelaide studio he has been a mentor to artists from Australia, Japan, France and Austria.
His many academic awards culminate in a Doctorate of Creative Arts, [1993]. Gerry has contributed his insight and knowledge to government departments, tertiary institutions, churches and corporations. In the 1980's he was instrumental in the development of the Glass Studies courses at the University of South Australia. He is a regular feature artist at Aptos Cruz Galleries.
Guy's practice has involved modelling in clay and then casting in various stone aggregates, with steel reinforcing, or, carving directly into stone- mainly local marbles or in hard woods. His forms are attractive for their aesthetic simplicity and solidness of structure. Whether modelling or carving, Guy likes to start with a very basic idea that is able to develop, as the techniques and processes of making are put into play. This aspect of the production Guy believes allows for the development of a seemingly infinite range of visual ideas.
Using the natural beauty of the material he is manipulating, Guy is able to create sculptures that are not only aesthetic pieces, but that have a tactile quality. Sensuous or geometric forms are used to best set off the natural grains and knots of the material used. Each sculpture than is a very unique piece in both conceptual and emotive manifestation.
Guy has exhibited at a number of Galleries in and around Adelaide and completed study in both Life drawing and Sculpture in New Zealand and North Adelaide. Guy MacAndrews is a regular artist shown at Aptos Cruz Galleries.
James Cochran, aka Jimmy C, played a key role in the development of the underground graffiti movement in Australia during the early 1990's, and after working on numerous mural commissions and community arts projects, went on to complete a Masters degree in Visual Arts at the University of South Australia with an interest in urban realist and figurative oil painting. His two interests in graffiti and oil painting converged, leading to the development of Cochran's signature aerosol pointillist style; portraits or urban landscapes painted entirely from dots and dashes of spray paint. This technique developed into what he called the ‘drip paintings' and the ‘scribble paintings', composed of layers of coloured drips or energetic lines to form vibrant and poetic cityscapes and portraits. Cochran now lives in London and his canvases and walls can be viewed in cities across the world.
Mincham's prolific career as a leading figure in Australian ceramics, spanning more than four decades, has been characterised by a complex relationship with landscape. Strongly influenced by his childhood home in the Coorong and his current home in the Adelaide Hills, his work is the product of a constantly evolving relationship with his medium. His long and varied relationship with the capricious traditional Japanese Raku aesthetic has forged a distinct style in which the landscape is not so much viewed, as experienced; continuously re-evaluated through the complex contemplations of a master of his craft.
Mincham's attraction to the mutability of the landscape [and] the constant changes around him, has led to over 80 solo exhibitions around the world since 1976. His artwork is held in thousands of private collections, over 100 permanent public collections and all major state and regional galleries in Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and Parliament House, Canberra. His international collecting bodies include the Australian Chancery, Saudi Arabia; Aberyswyth Arts Centre, Wales; National Galleries of Malaysia and Taiwan; State Collection of Hawaii; and the Silber, Stephen Alpert and Johnson Collections, USA.
"I've always thought of myself as living in a landscape, perhaps because I've never lived in a city or even a town for longer than a few months. The events of the landscape draw me towards it. My works explore my engagement with its moods, its changes and dramas. They speak of harsh, dry, windswept lands, of the shimmering distance beneath brooding skies. A passing moment of mystery and wonderment captured by the eye and embedded in the memory."
John Lacey is a self-taught artist, who began painting as a hobby around 1980 whilst working as a Motor Body Design Draftsman. He then went on (after more study) to work for himself as a Graphic Designer until 2004. During this twenty year period he continued to paint and gained a reputation and a following, which afforded him the pleasure of being able to become a professional artist in 2004. John has an absolute passion for painting and has spent countless hours at the easel, not to mention ten years of life drawing to hone his skills. His work is about self expression of the landscape and the occasional portrait.