Vegas Spray was founded in 2009 as a Brisbane-based online gallery space which promoted and presented emerging arts practice. The online gallery was created to extend Brisbane’s arts sector on global networks and to instigate opportunities for local emerging artists.
Vegas Spray Artist Run Initiative has continued to develop and change its organisational structure to adapt strategically to the circumstance and need of Brisbane’s arts sector. The continuing purpose of Vegas Spray has been to create significant arts infrastructure to maintain a strong creative industry in Queensland.
Below is a list of previous online exhibitions and Vegas Spray projects.
For Us By Us was a collaborative project between 24 fashion design students and 6 local emerging artists. Inspired by the work of each artist, the designers created garments from recycled clothes over a term length, with the outcomes exhibited in fashion film. The premiere of the works took place on the 29th of October, 2010 at the Tribal Theatre in Brisbane.
The collaboration was documented through film exploring the themes of (1) creative capital and popularity in fashion and art and what cross-disciplinary collaboration offers in this respect, and (2) the viability of a raw creative economy in underdeveloped cultural hubs like Brisbane.
This project was created by RaraCurio and Vegas Spray, in cooperation with QUT Creative Industries and numerous other central figures to the local and national creative sphere.
Art collectives Clark Beaumont and Ok Yeah Cool Great utilised Vegas Spray’s online platform to create new and experimental work. The artists responded and developed new works via online mediums to establish a network and a visual art collaboration.
Over the four week period the artists produced works which were uploaded at Vegas Spray.Com for the public to view and engage in different approaches to making work for an online platform. The website became a dedicated art space which facilitated unique visual art networks and relationships between the artists and the viewing public.
Joe Biel is a visual artist working primarily in two dimensional media. He received an MFA in Painting from the University of Michigan and is currently on the faculty at California State University Fullerton. He was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award in 2003 and again in 2008. He lives and works in Los Angeles
Michelle Knowles is a Brisbane based, emerging contemporary artist. Her practice explores notions such as the uncanny, the fetishisation of objects, performance and ritual, the otherworldly and imaginary spaces. A curiosity in belief systems and broader spirituality is the catalyst for experiments in both video and photographic works that utilise objects, including handmade artefacts, as tools for transformation.
It’s all about finding the best way to create volumes of light and shadow by using oil paint on a canvas, telling short stories in a painting which would otherwise need many words to be told.
The ideas I develop in my works have a broad thematic range. These many times include gender based issues, question themes such as the expectations on sexual behaviour, the struggle to achieve happiness, or the perception and reconsideration of social values in general. All are linked to the subject and its position in society. Being an artist I also question the attitude towards art itself and its value in social contexts.
In my work I many times use humorous, ironic or even sarcastic elements. I also take advantage of different types of media to present my ideas. They range from video and painting to including new media. Lately, however, I have been shifting my focus to the body and performance.
Danny Ford is a multidisciplinary artist, working within self imposed parameters of Painting Projects, Sculpture Projects and Image Capture Projects (video, film, photomedia). Ford’s artwork is process based, and concerned with the application of tactics and procedures to existing forms. Within this ongoing investigation, Ford’s practice operates as enquiry into the historical role of the art object, and the function of the contemporary artist.
‘Uros Island’
Lighting Sculpture Installation
LEDs, diffusion material, vinyl, custom lighting sequence, electrical hardware
Dimensions: 13 ft 7 in length x 11 ft 2 in width x 26 in depth La Biennale di Venezia, 54th International Art Exhibition
Future Pass is a collateral project of the 54th International Venice Biennale curated by Victoria Lu, Felix Schoeber, and Renzo di Renzo. It takes place at the Fondazione Claudio Buziol, a non-profit, private instution based in two venues at the center of Venice. After the Venice Biennale this exhibition will also tour to Rotterdam’s Wereldmuseum, the National Taiwan Art Museum in Taichung and the Beijing Art Museum in China.
Brianne extends her practice through the structure of primary and secondary information adopted from the curatorial practices of Seth Siegelaub in the 1960’s, establishing a ‘tertiary-level’ of artistic enquiry. Her current investigations focus on the use of historical appropriation through both material and process.
Adrián Navarro seeks to expand the vocabulary of the visual arts, investigating new mechanisms of intervention in the pictorial medium, which include tools borrowed from architectural practices. His paintings describe implosions of colour trapped inside virtual volumes that float weightlessly in the pictorial space. Navarro´s work explores the paradox between the physical confinement and the expansive freedom inherent to the organic painting, and by extension to the human being.
Navarro started his artistic activity in New York in 2001, after graduating from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, School of Architecture. From 2006 he establishes himself in London, where he has completed his art studies in Central Saint Martin´s College of Art & Design.
I’m essentially a painter who also works in performance. I come from a visual art background and not “live art” or theatre, and this is very important to me as it informs the way my work is read. In the last 20 years or so I have developed ways of working to suit my need at that particular time, in terms of strategy and context, by using painting, installation, sculpture, video and sound.
“I am interested in how we perceive space and form. How from the macro scale right down to the micro, certain forms visually reoccur throughout the universe. Similar to this idea of space and materiality, I’m interested in experimenting with the visual paradox between imagery that is digital and geometric yet organic and raw. The actual process of digitising a physical piece of material via the use of a scanner further perpetuates the conceptual boundaries between the tangible and the digital.”
Born in Manchester, England, 1975.
Lives and works in London, England.
‘When locating the clothing, I take on the role of explorer. That is not to say I wear a pith helmet; more that when I am alone in an environment which I sense has a furtive history –what I term a “fertile ground” – the clothing becomes totally coded in its context and ceases to be mere clothing. The humans who once occupied it become alien and I am left to piece the clothing together based only on a sense of its charged.’
David Theobald is a video artist who creates animations structured from rendered objects, photographs, scanned images or single frames extracted from video footage, blending these together to create a familiar yet alien environment. These may be structured as conventional films or as continuous loops with no discernible beginning or end.
BLASCO uses digital photography and common building materials to assemble three-dimensional constructions that reconstruct interior spaces and outdoor environments culled from the artist’s personal New York cityscape.
BLASCO combines architecture, photography and installation to explore themes of vision and perception in relation to physical experience. His work often references the realm of private or domestic space. Normally his work begins by selecting one angle in a room or outdoors and then constructs a new space from the perspective of that vantage point.
Emma Godfrey is a Brisbane based contemporary artist. Her practice explores the construction of poetic forms that are abstract and dream like. Creating an objective position forcing the viewers to interpret the work for themselves. Organic and natural forms investigate her practice as she enhances the serenity of the world through purity and innocence.
Powerful thoughts are stimulated through her work, which are seen aesthetically pleasing as she emphasizes beauty through gruesome ideas.
This is done through molding materials with intricacy and structure in mind. This allows the work to stand strong, powerful and speaks for itself.
Emma’s practice is developed through play as she allows her imagination to break free, embracing her creativity, allowing it to be removed from her mind and to be viewed in society through her artistic works.
Colours of the void, 1400 x 900mm, timber and acrylic paint
Controlled chaos … In life, I am fascinated by how on one level chaos reigns, but when you look closely enough at something, each element is completely controlled, planned and perfectly imperfect.
The Brisbane Emerging Art Festival aims to make a significant contribution to the development of contemporary visual art in Brisbane and engage with communities nationally and internationally. The concept and premise of the festival is to promote our local emerging talent and provide multiple artistic platforms to showcase both artist and arts worker.
!Metro Arts
1/109 Edward St
Brisbane, Australia
Emerging Art Showcase - CHECKIN
Curated by Courtney Coombs.
Artists :
Nat Koyama
Michelle Knowles
Alex Cuffe
Rebecca Smith
Timothy P. Kerr
Erika Scott
Jason Fitzgerald
Anastasia Booth
Richard Stride
Sue Beyer
CHECKIN focuses exclusively on new work and seeks to create a platform to promote the most exciting visual art being made in Brisbane. The exhibition presents artists within a dynamic and critical discourse, with a purpose of creating an arena for the public to view, study and critique new modes of art practice being developed locally.
As a sculptor I am interested in the convergence of everyday found materials and communication through the construction process. The materials I select for my work are collected from the streets of Brisbane suburbs where they have been discarded from domestic or renovation sites and industrial areas. I am attracted to and utilise materials that contain painterly and worn characteristics as a way of not only translating painting and drawing into real space but evoking a sense of time and place. The work itself is created spontaneously depending on the materials and objects found at the time. The composition is largely developed intuitively.
Incorporated within the use and transformational process of these materials, are various perspectives and motivations that stem from social, cultural, economical, historical and aesthetic values. These aspects coincide with the way various components of memory are used to relate and associate with everyday materials.
Through the investigation of material, construction, placement and space the dichotomies of internal and external, decay and rejuvenation, presence and absence, durability and fragility become evident. These characteristics become a device for response, imagination and memory, which correspond with the projection of one’s own experience onto the work.
My work is about space. Physical, emotional and psychological. It explores how I move around the world, what I do and what I experience. From the mundane to the extraordinary. Mainly autobiographical, it investigates history, memory, identity, construction and process.
Currently my work questions the validity of organised religion in contemporary society, the propensity towards violence that is inherent in the system and the correlation between catholic dominated countries and fascist dictatorships in the 20th century.
The inspiration and subject of my art practice has evolved as a result of the new concept that fuels the creation of my recent artwork- a subjective interpretation of fleeting thoughts and hierarchies within relationships.
Within the process of creating artwork, the physical attributes to my work encompass the idea of scattered or fleeting thoughts through the spontaneity of the unplanned initial drawing on the canvas, and adhering to the contradiction that these momentary thoughts may linger on the canvas. This idea is heightened by the immense use of negative space, exaggerating the image centred within each work.
When I work with my camera at night, my photographs capture a surreal beauty, a new perspective on light and shadow to that of the world under sunshine.
The subject matter of my night photography portrays natural moonlight and artificial light sources such as neon signs, street lamps and room lights. I choose to remove any human presence in the photographs; however, the pictures depict all things man-made.
When I am in the act of taking my photographs, I am filled with a sense of humanity, beauty, harmony and silence. When people see my work, I’d like them to be conscious the universal scenes that are around us.
Michael Candy is a new and emerging kinetic artist who burst onto the scene in early 2010. Michael approaches kinetic sculpture with an organic aesthetic, often using fallen branches, leafs and even living plant life within his sculptures. His works often aim to provoke thought on the balance of nature and technology, and the conflicts between the two.
Michael is currently studying a bachelor of fine arts and industrial design at QUT.
Anna Jacobson is an emerging Brisbane based visual artist, who captures old
areas and brings their imagined narratives to life through photography,
experimental video and soundscapes. She graduated from the Queensland
College of Art with a Bachelor of Photography with Honours in 2009. Anna has
a preoccupation with abandoned spaces, memory, diaspora, old objects and
the possible stories surrounding them.
