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Australia and New Zealand have produced notable contemporary artists from both Western and Indigenous artistic traditions. Enriched with these influences, some of the finest contemporary visual art, where the importance and sacredness of the land, the power of ancestral art as well as modern artistic joy and technique become a uniting theme. In this art exhibition of exception, not only art collectors but also art lovers of all sensitivities will discover a wealth of enigmatic forms and lush symbolism imbued with drama and originality.
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Maznah Ahmad
 
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To achieve the affect of her flourishing paintings, Maznah Ahmad seems to call upon some deeper notion of the elements. The collage-like texture of her work jumps from the wall. Using mixed media, dyes and paints, her abstract art stretches across the canvas, an eruption of color, freckled and scribbled designs, reminiscent of stained silk, the ocean floor, or a universe full of vast, red stars. Born in Singapore to Indonesian-Malaysian immigrants, her rich background informs her work to the extent that her art becomes the telling of it.
Currently residing in Australia and working on her doctoral research in fine art, she is far from her family, but still carries out tradition in her art by questioning that which she has inherited and what she owns; she struggles also to find a balance between Western and Eastern philosophies. The process of painting, to Ahmad, is a metaphysical journey. She possesses, and hence produces, a sensory knowledge that far surpasses our expectations. Representing the texture of her heritage, and the inner world the self inhabits, Ahmad eases the viewer into a landscape of abstraction with substance – the result of which is poetry.
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"11.1"
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"7.1"
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Kerry Cannon
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Educated through his international experiences rather than formal art training, American-Australian sculptor Kerry Cannon's hodge-podge of global influences coalesces with a biting sense of humor in his figurative bronzes. His series features archetypal and mythic characters with very minor coloration in more or less clearly defined settings. He manipulates scale and narrative continuity within his works, certain figures appearing multiple times as their actions unfold while others seem disproportionately small or bulbous. Meanwhile, others pose self-consciously, as if playfully showing off to the viewer.
The effect of Cannon's scenes is akin to glimpsing a stylized version of the world, an alternate version of our universe turned askew. Comedy is generally the dominant theme, pointing to the banality and absurd decorum of ritualistic everyday activities. There is also a tinge of tragedy to many of his characters, sad faces and lethargic postures that intimate self-awareness but also a lack of motivation to change. In such eloquent works, Kerry Cannon suggests we appreciate what is often taken for granted.
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"Haystack Alpinas"
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"2 & a Half Stars"
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Ji Chen
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I was born in Shanghai, China and naturally Chinese art and culture has always influenced me. I always sought to stylistically blend Western and Chinese art culture throughout my works. The strong emphasis on brushstrokes in my artwork is a testament to the influence of Chinese calligraphy. My most profound memory was the time when the Russians threatened to attack China during the cold war. It was a terrifying experience, and as an artist and a person it taught me what peace really meant. My personal experience of first discovering the Australian landscape had a big impact on me. The unique earthy landscape that Australia possesses made me believe I was living on another planet. I don’t create my artworks for display, but for people to appreciate and find the time to understand what I convey through my creations. I believe that combinations of cultures generate inspired and ingenious art.
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"Dreamscape of India Ocean"
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"Bushfires of the North"
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Wendy Cohen
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I love to paint, I find it to be so much fun to create and explore my imagiation, inspired by all my travels and life experiences. This delight in my work spills over into the paintings themselves in the colour and the passion that appear there, and also in the energy and sense of freedom that I intend to convey. I experiment with a variety of mixed media and the surfaces of my canvasses are thickly textured, multi-layered with a strong technique of fearless brushstrokes and a broad spectrum of interesting colours that are uniquely mixed and interlaced with each other. The main theme of my work is the face which I use as a sculptural tool to symbolize the face of the illusion of life.
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"Emerging Transformation"
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"Coffee, Cupcakes and Cookies"
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Lisa Dalla Rosa
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Taking inspiration from her surroundings' landscapes, Australian painter Lisa Dalla Rosa creates sensuous topographies with a mix of acrylics, inks and other media. Existing outside specific geographic contexts and scales, her compositions evoke microclimates: the two-dimensional spaces call to mind misty dew-soaked hills, meagerly irrigated desert outposts, blistering heat waves and a calming watering hole oasis. Yet Dalla Rosa's paintings aren't exactly landscapes, working on a more abstracted, expressive level. She evokes heat and humidity as much through representation as with the connotations of color and texture.
Manipulating paints and inks, Dalla Rosa's surfaces crackle with fissures that suggest heat and dryness, or seem washed over with the glimmering green and blue veneer of deep, soothing tropical waters. From these geological departure points, she uses the universal lexicon of nature to create moodscapes where brilliant yellow expanses can evoke youthful ambition and deep purple ravines suggest brooding melancholy. Revealing her local landscape to international art audiences, Dalla Rosa mines nature's universal expressiveness that speaks across languages and borders.
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"Outcrop"
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"The Big Chill"
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Ross Franzi
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Australian wildlife painter Ross Franzi’s formative experiences are nearly as complexly layered as his hyperrealist pastorals. His father, a professional photographer, and art teacher Vikki Harvey cultivated his multifaceted understanding of art, reflected in the composition and style of Franzi’s paintings of animals in wild and farmland settings. After suffering an injury in the Royal Australian Air Force he turned to art for its therapeutic benefits, a gift he now shares with his art students.
Franzi’s ability to teach and aid understanding is implicitly present in each of his works, which train viewers’ eyes to different ways of seeing and looking at nature. He creates a visual vocabulary with meticulous, lushly colorful symbols, sceneries and characters rendered with a mix of acrylic and gouache paints. The resulting aesthetic nears magical realism, revealing a delicate, fleeting field of beings, activities and objects parallel to our own. Franzi’s environmentalism pervades his rural wildlife scenes, imbuing his sensibility for nature’s subtleties with an endearing sense of community.
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"Friend or Foe"
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"Taping on the Window"
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Josephine Guida
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Josephine Guida’s oil paintings freely traverse the range of textures and colors that distinguish the South Australian landscape. Guida imbues environments with bodily elasticity, causing rivers and roads to move like limbs. Her brush work accentuates both the delicate, fabric-like movements and the coarser qualities of natural terrains. Colors transcend their typical roles: pastels occasionally become muscular, while browns and blues become soft and subdued. She pushes surface and texture to their outer limits, sometimes capturing the diversity of space with uninterrupted patterning and sometimes with explosive viscosity.
Guida approaches painting as a journey that offers innumerable routes. She openly embraces new techniques and mediums because she knows they will pull her into unfamiliar visual territory. Her art is about intuition and intrigue; it is about allowing the emotions of the present to lead into unknown futures. Josephine Guida, who holds a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts and a postgraduate Teaching Degree from Flinders University, lives and works in West Croydon, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. She regularly exhibits with the South Australia Living Artists.
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"Reflections"
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"The Hill"
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Jools
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The colorful mixed media works by Jools, are a multi-layered pastiche of urbanism, pop culture and references to art history. Jools’ raw aesthetic is fascinating to explore as she arranges disparate images of inner-city iconography including graffiti, brickwork and signage among swaths of vivid color. “For me,” explains Jools, “every city street is a different visual feast and the combinations, interpretations and possibilities for them are simply endless.” Recently Jools has been combining her mixed media paintings with installation elements of film, music and neon lights in order to bring her visions out into real space and allow audiences to experience her creative world in a more tangible way.
An avid traveler, Jools has lived in France, Greece, and the Caribbean before settling down in her native Australia. Though raised in the city, she now works from her studio on a picturesque farm in rural Victoria. Jools’ burgeoning art career has been strengthened by private and corporate sales, and a solo show in Melbourne that opened in late 2008.
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"Go Go Girl"
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"Cirque Du Sexuelle"
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Leni Kae
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Leni Kae's rhythmic swirls of concentrated color explore human psychology as revealed through aesthetics. However, her artistic prowess is evident not only in her ability to adeptly mix shimmering shades of pigment, but in her dexterity in handling line and shape. The artist's richly hued oils on canvas attempt to examine the human mind's attraction toward and preference for certain colors and in doing so, merge Kae's understanding of the complex science of color with her unmistakable eye for design. The powerful effects of color, which can enhance and alter moods, trigger hormonal reactions, and awaken dormant memories, are vital to Kae's dually artistic and scientific mission. Therefore, although each painting is undoubtedly a beauty to behold, it is also a continuing experiment in color science, constantly interacting with new viewers, eliciting emotions, choices and preferences.
The child of a master mathematician, Leni Kae naturally discovered the unbreakable link between art and science. As a trained color therapist and artist, Leni Kae lives and works in Australia and exhibits internationally.
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"Her Mental Landscape"
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"The Spirit of Resurrection"
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Ruth le Cheminant
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Ruth le Cheminant's lively abstract acrylic paintings on canvas engage the eye with their vivacious energy and powerful colors. Incorporating an international palette of influences to her stylistically sophisticated works, le Cheminant draws on the work of diverse cultural groups including Asian, Oceanic and contemporary Aboriginal art. Le Cheminant employs a free and confident brush stroke whose movement possesses an almost musical quality, as brilliant hues dance across the canvas in a harmonious symphony of color, texture, and abstract form. The eye, in turn, follows this enticing rhythmic movement, continually enthralled and entertained by each beautiful work of art. As a result, le Cheminant's paintings call to the emotions, lifting the spirits, and for a moment, transporting the viewer to a world enrobed in pure aesthetic wonder.
Born in Australia, Ruth le Cheminant holds a graduate degree in painting from the University of New South Wales. The subject of numerous favorable reviews, the artist exhibits her paintings in Sydney and New York.
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"Climbing Towards Heaven"
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"Journey"
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Rosalie Rigby
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Fondly pushing scenes of rural life towards abstraction, Rosalie Rigby gathers just enough detail and perspective before setting viewers loose into imaginative landscapes. Her works emerge in yellows, greens and blues set within grey and brown surroundings. Though her fondness for Paul Cézanne is self-evident, the incredible variety of brushstrokes, paint build-ups and tonal shifts present in Rigby's work mark her truly individual style. From one canvas to the next she traces winding lines between stylized representation and the diffuse cloud forms of an uncanny dreamworld.
More than subconscious explorations though, Rigby's work reconciles her affection for the beauty of her native Australia with the broad variety of physical and emotional experiences provoked by different landscapes under shifting circumstances. The result of preliminary studies and visual forays into each locale, every expressive painting draws viewers in with a strong detail surrounded by abstracted settings and spaces. In so doing, Rigby lures us with a familiar vision of nature before revealing a truly original perspective on our environment.
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"Moonbi Hills 2"
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"Along the Lake Highway, Tasmania"
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Sally Smith
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Sally Smith creates quietly eloquent mixed media works that explore the flying creatures of her New Zealand homeland. With realistic precision, her art portrays the native insects, butterflies, but mostly birds as dark silhouettes against softly toned, nearly white backgrounds. Smith presents each of her subjects as separate entities, with no overlap between them; we are offered a view of the various phases of flight from numerous perspectives.
In some works, the silhouettes appear in random clusters while in other works they’re arranged in horizontal or vertical linear compositions suggestive of a more scientific presentation. In both cases, the contrast between the realism of the individual silhouettes and the openness of the abstract ground on which they appear creates a rich visual experience that is tied to its New Zealand origins yet universal in its appeal.
New Zealand’s Maori people believe that all things of this world partake of a singular spirit that is itself universal. This vision is the origin and spirit of Sally Smith’s art.
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"Flock"
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"Small Flock"
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