Methods for Making Eye Contact
Amber Boardman & Teelah George
Opening 02.11.16 6-8pm
Artist Talks 25.11.16 6-7pm
Methods for making eye contact is a two person painting show featuring Sydney based, American born Amber Boardman and Perth based Teelah George.
The exhibition of new work will bring together two different approaches to portrait painting through the dialogue that emerges during the development process.
Both artists use painting as a way to manifest imagined characters. Boardman invents and exaggerates personalities, influenced by friends, family, celebrities and associates. These new characters are placed in ironic, sometimes baffling situations that subvert narrative thresholds. George uses painting as a way to laminate history and mythology with present day experience, building layers of material through a process of adding and removing. Often initiated by oral and written stories, the portraits seek to parallel the ambiguity of historical record with visual art.
Both artists manipulate notions of portrait painting as a means of representation, introducing characters that are slippery, confronting and open-ended. The materiality of paint becomes an important vehicle that may bridge the relationship between the imaginary and physical.
During the process of developing the work, George and Boardman will communicate via Skype and email, sharing progress and responding to each other’s work. They will also begin 10 paintings each and send them by post to the other to complete. The portraits become way to develop a network of painted characters.
Biography
Amber Boardman’s mythic depictions of human fates and foibles prove her to be a subtle trickster. She seduces the viewer by improvising with juicy wet-into-wet paint, eye-catching jewel-like hues and earthy, fleshy tonalities. Her imagery – at once desirable and wryly repugnant – taps into the ‘universal toddler’ in all of us by flagrantly testing our attitudes to the boundaries of acceptable behavior, and then – with evident sympathetic fondness for her characters – offers comforting distance through cartoon-like form. Her pictures skew and flatten perspective into fabulous patterns and impossible angles to propel narrative’s capabilities.
Boardman (born 1981, Portland, Maine) has exhibited her paintings and animation throughout the US, Australia and internationally. Her work was included in Sydney Contemporary (2015) and BAM’s Next Wave Festival (2010). She is represented by Edwina Corlette Gallery (Brisbane). The recipient of multiple awards, most notably Most Provocative Award (Atlanta Biennial), the Australian Post-Graduate Award (University of New South Wales) and the Dame Joan Sutherland Fund Visual Arts Grant, she holds an MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA in Studio Art from Georgia State University. Her works are held in numerous public and private collections.
Teelah George (b.1984, Perth) is a visual artist, working primarily in painting, drawing, print and installation, employing archives and collections as a point of departure and questioning within her practice.
Recent exhibitions include: New Strokes (Gallery 9, Sydney), All-Seeing Eyes by the Beige Garden Bed (Pet Projects, Perth) both 2016. Epic Narratives (PICA, Perth), Face Vase and Rag Painting (Bus Projects, Melbourne), Getting Things Done (Fontanelle Gallery, Adelaide) all 2015. George was selected as the non-acquisitive winner of the Fremantle Print Award 2015, overall acquisitive winner of the City of Joondalup Community Invitation Art Award 2014, has been a finalist in the Guirguis New Art Prize 2015, Rick Amor Drawing Prize 2014, Fremantle Print Award 2013, and a semi finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize 2013.
Her work is held in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Collection, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art and the City of Joondalup Collection.