Blue Moons

Whether it be your iPhone calendar, your moleskine diary, or if you prefer the good ol’ fashioned writing on your hand, mark it down: This Wednesday night our friends at MAgallery connect four emerging artists from Sydney and Melbourne at the exhibition opening of BLUE MOONS. Featuring the works of Leon Hawker, William-Guillaume Saussay and Persistently Plastic (Phil Soliman and A. West). MA’s doors will be open from 7pm.

A. WEST // ARTIST STATEMENT:

My art is a creature. I love it, yet I abuse it and I am cruel.

My art is always a rebellion. Although morbid and cynical, I occasionally rejoice in a tiny scrap of carnal empathy.

I bathe myself in contrast and paradox.

Oil and blood splatters mirror the way we cover the natural with the manufactured. We use oil to destroy environments, societies, cultures and even our own skin.

I encourage viewers to touch the works.

PHIL SOLIMAN // ARTIST STATEMENT:

The works in this show reflect my interest in how photographs of humans are looked at and interpreted.

Millions of photographs of people are taken every day, and distributed all over the world. On social networking sites, on thumb drives, in pornographic magazines, in newspapers, on billboards. They evoke the whole spectrum of emotions, from love, desire and nostalgia, to hate, anger and intense adulation.

Photography is also a scientific tool, capturing images for research, engineering and other uses. Our understanding of ourselves and the Universe has been advanced immeasurably by photographs of horses in motion, milk droplets, distant galaxies, the surface of the earth, and the interior and exterior workings of human beings.

Our skin is such a wonderfully useful organ, incredibly complex and durable, yet we only think of it in terms of its appearance. Its colour, for most of us, is of utmost importance, appealing to our deepest political and aesthetic ideas. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to look at the surface of a human without thinking about the physical and emotional activity happening underneath. I wanted to examine this idea by capturing the surface of a man in a highly objective, scientific way, while imbuing the work with a sense of subjective beauty and sensuality.

BLUE MOONS opens THIS Wednesday, February 10 from 7pm – 9pm, MAgallery Sydney: 27 Dick St, Chippendale. (Also viewable from today through to Feb 15 by appointment only)