FLORA a Group Exhibition, The Corner Store Gallery.
FLORA - A Group Exhibition
Exhibiting Artists: Misha Harrison, Zoe Sernack, Fleur Stevenson, Natasha Townsend, Liz Wickramasinghe and Madeline Young.
FLORA is a group exhibition curated by Gallery Director Madeline Young to celebrate the arrival of Spring. This collection brings together a fantastic group of unique, colourful botanical artworks of all mediums, shapes and sizes.
These contemporary artists use wonderfully diverse techniques and approach experimentation with mediums and materials and throughout their practices.
Misha Harrison, The Corner Store Gallery.
Misha Harrison
Misha Harrison explores materiality and process through intricately cut and assembled plywood artworks. Still life, portraiture, and abstraction are rethought and reimagined into contemporary formats. Each work comprising of carefully cut and layered plywood, painted with vibrant colours juxtaposed and highlighted with textile inlays and stitching.
Harrison transforms mundane materials like plywood and wool into vibrant assemblages of shapes and forms. Cutting, carving, sanding, painting, gluing, and stitching are some of the labour-intensive exercises involved in her process. The artist is forever developing her familiarisation with the plywood and textiles, allowing her to push these mediums further, challenging the boundaries of materiality.
Reminiscent of a jigsaw puzzle, every different piece of the artwork has been drawn onto the wood, painted, cut and finished to fit in its place. The woodblock artworks represent the journey coming together and aesthetics in the chaos.
Zoe Sernack, The Corner Store Gallery.
Zoe Sernack
Zoe Sernack is an artist who lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Zoe holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The National Art School and works on a full time studio practice. Zoe has exhibited throughout Australia since the beginning of her professional practice in 1999. Practicing for over 25 years, Zoe has had over 20 solo exhibitions, close to 50 group shows and has also been a Finalist in a number of major art prizes.
“As a keen observer of the natural environment, I want the viewer to understand my visual language through an inbuilt desire to constantly engage. My paintings are multi-layered, being as much about the medium of paint and the process of painting as with experience I have with Australian botanicals. This series doesn’t depict particular plants rather an accumulation of abstracted botanical forms that I work and rework to find balance and pleasing compositions.” - Zoe Sernack.
Fleur Stevenson, The Corner Store Gallery.
Fleur Stevenson
Fleur Stevenson is a New Zealand-born, Sydney-based emerging artist. Fleur creates layered, textural works which investigate the compositional relationships between negative space, form and colour, from the social and physical environments she visits.
Working intuitively with a sense of curiosity, Fleur enjoys playing with the process by often drawing directly on the surface and observing and responding to what she sees around her. She also draws studies en plein air, which are used to create stencils, composed and layered with paint and spray paint.
The initial drawn image becomes inserted amidst the materiality of other mediums. The value of the process is visible, but the essence of the place or person still lingers, informed by the immediacy of the drawn marks and foundations.
“A recent trip to my hometown in New Zealand has inspired the latest collection of works, which respond to the exhibition’s theme of FLORA. In the small country town I grew up in, a number of the streets were named after native trees and in the native Māori language. The Totara, Kowhai, Rata and Rimu trees each have an important significance to New Zealanders, as their flowers are symbols which form part the nation’s cultural and historical identity. The flowers came to be a visual reference of where I spent my most of childhood years and looking back, they also featured in drawings throughout my early years.” - Fleur Stevenson.
Natasha Townsend, The Corner Store Gallery.
Natasha Townsend
Natasha is an award-winning senior creative and web designer living in Molong NSW on Wiradjuri Land. Since completing a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic and Web Design in 2004 she has worked in design agencies, state government, higher education, and now local government where she leads a creative team in Orange, working on major design, communications and engagement projects.
Natasha’s inspiration is grounded in the Bauhaus and Swiss Design movements - where design, fine art and craft intersect. Her evolving creative process reflects this cross over and finds her constantly experimenting and redefining her process with function, materials, colours and craft.
In this body of work, Natasha reflects on her Mum’s eagerness to be in the garden, searching for peace and practicing mindfulness.
“Mum always said I was good with my hands and it is a family trait that was passed down to her, by her Mum who was known for her sewing and craft work. This body of work is about my Mum and the peace she found whilst gardening. I’m not a green thumb but just like Mum, I’ve found peace by using my hands and creating.” - Natasha Townsend.
Whilst the palette is inspired by mum’s garden, geometric shapes are the basis of this collection. Each piece has been created, beginning with a square or circle. Shapes, composition and colour were explored digitally and then milled, sanded, painted and reworked again into unique and tangible compositions in response to the FLORA brief.
Liz Wickramasinghe, The Corner Store Gallery.
Liz Wickramasinghe
Liz Wickramasinghe is an early-mid career artist based in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
After completing a Bachelor of Design (Interior/Exhibition) in Melbourne, Liz worked at the National Gallery of Victoria for five years as an exhibition technician. She then completed a Diploma of Visual Arts, followed by a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT, majoring in Painting and Printmaking. During her time at art school, Liz developed her unique process of creating multi-layered artworks by combining both painting and printmaking techniques. Her themes of inspiration for her art practice also developed during this time; her interest in natural landscapes and botanical studies were combined with elements from her architectural design studies. Today, her artworks often explore both the interconnectedness and tension between human-made and natural environments.
After completing her art degree, Liz went on to complete a Diploma of Teaching at Melbourne University and taught art and design subjects at a secondary school for 4 years. After having a family, moving to Geelong and building an art studio in her backyard, Liz finally and officially began her art practice in 2019. She has since exhibited in a range of group shows and has had two solo exhibitions.
Combining her love of design, botanical imagery and incorporating her layered and complex art process, Liz’s works celebrate both imagined and remembered suburban gardens elements in a uniquely executed way.
Madeline Young, The Corner Store Gallery.
Madeline Young
As a child growing up in regional Australia, Madeline Young has always found solace in art—provided with an ever-inspiring landscape in her hometown of Orange, NSW.
Madeline completed a degree in Fine Arts at the University of Newcastle in 2009, majoring in printmaking and photography which has defined and shaped her unique colour blocking style. Since 2014, Young has devoted her time towards managing and curating The Corner Store Gallery in East Orange, working with Australia’s emerging artists from all across Australia.
Madeline’s abstract paintings are inspired by the unique beauty of the Australian bush; the way dappled sunlight filters through the canopy, casting long rays of light and shadow and the distinctive blue-green of Eucalyptus leaves filling the air with their familiar scent. Madeline simplifies and exaggerates the shapes she finds in nature and uses blocks of colour to create works that, like the Australian bush, are simultaneously vibrant and serene.