The Capitals Project: Works On Paper From Seoul

Friday 29 June – Saturday 28 July 2007

ART INTERCHANGE

A Cultural Response From Sydney To Seoul and Back Again

The Capitals Project is a collaborative project established by the Printmaking Departments of the National Art School, Sydney, and Hong-Ik University, Seoul. The exhibition represents the third stage of this ongoing exchange, which began in 2004 between these two major institutions. The partnership stimulates an important cultural dialogue between eminent and emerging artists from these two cities.

The Capitals Project builds on the success of two previous collaborative enterprises Interchange 1 and Interchange 2 initiated by Simon Cooper, Head of the National Art School’s Printmaking Department, and Professor Song Dae Sup, Head of Printmaking Department, Hong-Ik University. The Interchange project is the direct result of artists working in two distant locations, seeking to establish a dialogue that extends beyond their own cultural boundaries and serves to reinforce the communicative capacity of the shared language of printmaking.

Printmaking’s capacity to generate multiple images represents an enduring power to disseminate ideas and images to a broad and diverse audience which is so specific to this medium. Within this area of the visual arts, printmaking also has the capacity to embrace a diversity of media and techniques that utilises traditional methods and the latest technology, from etchings, lithographs, silkscreens, to web-based projects.

This third collaborative project involves 70 participating artists (staff, students and alumni) from each institution who will produce a print based art work in response to photographic images of the capital city that is the geographical home to each respective institution. The images selected range from tourist kitsch to historical documentation. The source images are supplied by the participating artists in each city and represent an act of self-portraiture that is offered for re-consideration by their counterparts.

70 artists from Sydney will produce artworks in response to 70 images of Seoul which will be exhibited in Seoul / 70 artists from Seoul will produce artworks in response to 70 images o Sydney.

The Capitals Project provides a forum for cross-cultural dialogue within the more specific context of the visual arts and seeks to identify a convergent contemporary vision and understanding in the Asia Pacific region that draws upon two significantly different visual arts heritages.

In a contemporary sense printmaking represents a language in a state of continual development where many of the time honoured crafts of a cultural tradition are preserved not simply for their historical curiosity but rather for their inherent ability to continually reflect and address the concerns of a contemporary community.

THE CAPITALS PROJECT is an important international event at the National Art School Gallery and will open to the public on Friday 29 June and run until Saturday 28 July 2007.
Public Programs

Artist Floor Talk 7 July, 2pm
Christopher Hanrahan and Nigel Milsom’s conversation around painting, drawing, sculpture and video continues in this forum providing audiences with the opportunity to discuss aspects of the exhibition with the artists.

Exhibition Talk, 21 July, 2pm
Organised in connection with The Capitals exhibition on view in Gallery One, Rachel Kent, Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, will consider the various modes of contemporary portraiture that are articulated in these two exhibitions.

Living On Luck: Christopher Hanrahan and Nigel Milsom

29 June – 4 August May 2007

Living On Luck: Christopher Hanrahan and Nigel Milsom examines the connections between these two artists who share many aesthetic and conceptual concerns though their work is separated by form and material. The exhibition, which will consist of paintings and drawings by Milsom and an installation work incorporating sculpture, video, sound and drawings by Hanrahan aims to demonstrate how our understanding of each artists’ practice is enriched in proximity to the other.

Living on Luck combines the work of Hanrahan, a former National Art School student, with one of his artistic peers. Working concurrently critiquing and occasionally collaborating, Hanrahan and Milsom’s material differences have served to feed their continued artistic conversation. Their shared interest and ongoing communications about process and the thematic presence of portraiture in their work stimulated the idea of staging this collaborative project. The works are made individually by the artists, however the collaborative aspect is experienced through questions of representation, metaphor, the use of materials, and the use of the gallery space to create narrative structures.

The exhibition examines conventions of portraiture and its engagement with literal and non-literal representations of the self and subject. Part psychological, part expressive Hanrahan and Milsom propose a series of questions that elucidate the dichotomies inherent within representation. Their work considers the complex mechanisms through which our personal and public identities are constructed.

Hanrahan’s practice focuses on a type of self-portraiture that mines his personal archive utilising drawings, prints, sculpture, text and video. Hanrahan’s displays place an emphasis on proliferation and incorporating materials that are generally perceived to have little or no value such as plywood and household lamps. Christopher Hanrahan attended the National Art School in 2002 receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts. In 2003 he received a BFA (Honours, First Class) from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.

Working as a figurative painter and drawer, Milsom is not unaware of the history he is working from. The challenges of painting today are a vital area of exploration for the artist. The paintings are often tightly cropped, expressionist in style and composed with a limited colour palette. The images emerge out of dark backgrounds and are muted and distorted creating psychologically powerful portraits. The drawings also focus on a singular subject, but portray buildings that represent physical spaces that have had a profound impact on the artist. Nigel Milsom received a Master of Fine Arts in 2002 from College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.
Public Programs

Artist Floor Talk 7 July, 2pm
Christopher Hanrahan and Nigel Milsom’s conversation around painting, drawing, sculpture and video continues in this forum providing audiences with the opportunity to discuss aspects of the exhibition with the artists.

Exhibition Talk, 21 July, 2pm
Organised in connection with The Capitals exhibition on view in Gallery One, Rachel Kent, Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, will consider the various modes of contemporary portraiture that are articulated in these two exhibitions.