CATHERINE CLAYTON-SMITH
b.1983, Christchurch, New Zealand Lives and works in Sydney, Australia
Clayton-Smith’s painting practice encompasses the boundaries between representation and ab- straction. Clayton-Smith draws from mediated images and personal observations, layering and deconstructing visual data to a state of faltering permanence. Her work investigates the way in which observation and memory interact, mirroring the way in which weinterpret images through the combined spaces of the digital and the real.
Clayton-Smith completed a BFA in Painting at the National Art School in Sydney in 2014. 2015 marked her first solo exhibition, Spirit Level at Alaska Projects. In 2016 she staged subsequent solo exhibitions Obscle Course and Studio Wand Grooming at Alaska Projects, followed by Intensive Care at Alaska Projects in 2017 and Root Channel at Bartley and Co. in 2018. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at; the Art Gallery of NSW, Te Uru Waita- kere Contemporary Gallery, The London Art Fair, Goulburn Regional Gallery, Louis Vuitton, Coma Gallery, TCB, The Honeymoon Suite, Blindside, Alaska Projects, Gallery 9, Cross Art Projects, Ng, Dog Park Projects, Spring 1883, Sydney Contemporary, Sydney Children’s Hospital, St Vin- cent’s Xavier Art Space, Auckland Art Fair and the Study Centre for Drawing. She is a recipient of the National Art School’s Parker’s Sydney Fine Art Painting Award, Studio W Exhibition Prize, Blank Canvas Award for Painting and John Olsen Prize for Figure Drawing and was a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize in 2018. In 2019 she was awarded a residency at Waverley artist studios.
Her work is held in several public collections including; Artbank, The Wallace Trust, The Consulate of Sierra Leone, and the National Art School Collection as well as numerous private collections in Australia, New Zealand, U.S.A. and the UK
PHILJAMES
b.1976, NSW, Australia
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia
Philjames received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Printmaking) from the The National Art School, Sydney in 2002. He has been a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (’05,’06), the Dobell Prize for Drawing (‘04), The Blake Prize (’05,’14,’18), The John Fries Memorial Prize (‘12), The Kings Art Award (‘16), and the Sir John Sulman Prize (’17, ’18, 20). In 2020 he was awarded the Waverly Art Prize and The Allan Gamble Award (Mosman Art Prize).
Group exhibitions in public institutions include Conquest of Space: Science Fiction & Contempo- rary Art, curated by Andrew Frost, Galleries UNSW, Sydney; The Future’s Knot, curated by Peter Johnson, The Lock Up, Newcastle; Wondermountain, curated by Joanna Bayndrian, Penrith Regional Art Gallery; and The Boondocks Experiment: Off the beaten track, Hawkesbury Regional Art Gallery, and most recently participated in “The TV Show”,Woollongong Regional Art Gallery (curated by Daniel Mudie-Cunningham), “Course Stories” at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery (curated by Gina Mobayed) and “Caught Stealing” at The National Art School (Curated by Jaime Tsai)
Philjames is represented by Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney, and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne
KAT SHAPIRO WOOD
b. 1980 Sydney, Australia
Lives and works in Mullumbimby, Northern NSW
Kat Shapiro Wood’s practice is centred around the medium of encaustic (based on beeswax and natural resin), and spans the disciplines of painting, sculpture and ceramics, often drawing on the form and materiality of found objects and substrates.
Through the minimal framework of abstraction, her work will often draw on such parameters as the repetitive stripe or colour field, within which she may tease out the nuances of the medium and harness a luminosity that gives substance to space. In reaching towards the complexities of human experience, choices are made that may viscerally and intuitively define the elusive yet essential nature of those observations. Colour, however restrained, is a potent consideration in the process. Gesture comes into play in painterly application and form, in an attempt to distil an emotive state of being to its simplest form. There is a constant investigation into materiality, and into the sensorial potential of surface, tactility, translucency, opacity, depth, weight and light; the painting then asserts itself as something more akin to an object in its physicality.
I’m interested in pushing the level of refinement and subtlety while exploring the medium’s inevitable rawness and sensory aliveness; the potential of stillness and quietness to contain a rich and evocative dynamism is endlessly exciting.
Shapiro Wood has held solo and group exhibitions at Chalk Horse Gallery, in the Byron School of Art Project Space in Mullumbimby, the Tweed Regional Gallery, ArtState Lismore, Flinders Lane Gallery, and as an invited artist to the International Association of Ceramics 47th Congress in Barcelona in 2016. She lived and worked in Amsterdam and Berlin in 2016-17. She teaches sculpture, ceramics and drawing at the Byron School of Art, and has taught sculpture in studio schools over the last 15 years. She is a 2006 graduate of the National Art School majoring in Ceramics, where her work with encaustic became a strong part of her focus.
SAIRI YOSHIZAWA
b.1991, Japan
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia
The woven sculptures of Sairi Yoshizawa hang weightlessly; they are translucent and lithe. They exude an aura of stillnes and light reverberates amidst their spaces. Yoshizawa works with natural dyes – sourcing their pigments from leaves, roots, plants, herbs, and spices. Every dye bath always varies in tone because the same leaf will produce a different hue when foraged on a different day. Her practice flows with the seasons, allowing them to shape and shift each series. Yoshizawa composes her forms through kasuri/ikat resist technique. Although repetitive, unique patterns transpire as the fibres are woven, yielding a number of textural outcomes that cannot be replicated. Using a double weave structure, her three-dimensional pieces are elaborate and ethereal but robust in their construction. In the two dimensional works, Yoshizawa uses the techniques of knotting and twisting to create spiralled pieces from the ends of innumerable warps.
Yoshizawa studied textiles design arts with honours at Australian National University. She continued her studies at University of New South Wales Faculty of Art and Design where she completed her Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership. Yoshizawa has exhibited in a number of group shows including Wangaratta Art Center, Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery E3 Space, Gosford and North Sydney art prizes. She is a recipient of Canberra Spinners and Weavers award, Australian Decorative and Fine Art award, ANU Research School of Asian Pacific award and Alliance Francaise award in 2011. In 2014, she was an artist in resident at Sturt Australian Design and Craft Centre, in Mittagong. In her recent work, she seeks to explore and express the concept of everyday life in art and culture, through showcasing fragility of colours and materials made by plants and land. The exhibition Susurrance was her first solo show at the Incinerator Willoughby Art Space in 2017 and her second solo show Residue will be from 9th – 20th October 2019 at Art Space Concourse Chatswood during Craft Week NSW. She recently had solo exhibi- tions Amidst at Chalk Horse Gallery and Lithe at Delmar Gallery in 2020