I'm not so great at updating this section, but if you're keen for more info you can email me or check out www.mayspace.com.au or look me up on Instagram: www.instagram.com/waratah_lahy

My new solo exhibition Hidden opens at Brenda May Gallery on Tuesday 7 May 2013. Opening drinks with the artist Saturday 11 May 4 - 6pm

My new solo show *not what it seems*opens on Tuesday 22 November at Brenda May Gallery. The exhibition runs until 24 December.

Natural Digression opening soon!

Tuesday 8 March, 6 - 8 pm

UTS Gallery

http://www.utsgallery.uts.edu.au/gallery/index.html

I Digress

The notion of x-raying a plastic figurine from a Yowie chocolate is plain wacky
but wonderful.

“I went to meet with a professor at the Australian National University, a serious scientist, and showed him what I wanted to x-ray and he totally understood. His team usually x-ray rock and fossils and look at the
microscopic substance of nature and our material world – and there I am asking them to x-ray a plastic toy!”

Canberra-based Erica Seccombe is one of seven artists featuring at the UTS Gallery’s exhibition Natural Digression (on display until 8 April). Her video projections have rendered plastic data into deceiving fossil-like shapes, complete with movement and colour. She hopes visitors will be taken on a similar visual detour with all the artworks before the truth of what they’re seeing is established. “We’re all interested in geeky things
like Darwinism, mathematics, theory, observation; basically how the world is
formed and how it’s seen. We love that sort of empirical identification and like to pull it apart and turn it into something more of a story, or take a different view of it.”

Though they come from traditional art backgrounds, in this exhibition Seccombe, Penelope Cain, Kirsten Farrell, Ellis Hutch, Waratah Lahy, Rose Montebello and Al Munro worked with alternative mediums – including needlepoint, video, animation, paint, hot glue and collage – to best express
their ideas.

“In my work, Nanoplastica, I’ve been using microscopic x-ray machines that take data of tiny plastic objects in 3D and visualise it through a unique scientific program that has been developed specifically for this art purpose. It’s a kind of play on how science looks at things and how it determines what
microscopic realities are.”

Munro is examining the various codes and patterns used to represent and construct our contemporary understanding of, and interactions with, the natural world. Seccombe says, “Al’s interested in the 3D structure of material as well, but is looking at crystallography and patterning and the
way the world is constructed. She’s doing her PhD in tapestry, in textiles, to look at how the stitch informs her practice. Each stitch is a unit. She’s doing these fantastic needlepoints with sequins and they’re all of crystal structures.”

In a case of ‘us observing the observer’, Lahy’s work looks at human beings
observing art. “Waratah took photos of all these people looking at the Mona Lisa and turned them into drawings of people observing, taking the art out. I quite like how that ties in with that idea of the way people are looking.”

Using images collected from second-hand nature books and children’s encyclopaedias from the 60s, 70s and 80s, Montebello’s work captures a moment of wonder in the animal kingdom. She explores the extremes of life –
procreation, survival and inevitably death. “Rose’s bizarre detailed cut-outs take hours and hours of work, and you can’t help but think they’re the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen,” says Seccombe.

With the exhibition included in the Sydneywide Art Month festival, Seccombe believes people will appreciate the unique and diverse subject matter.
“We’re all interested in pushing the boundaries of what we’re looking at. Science is such a large part of our lives now and I think that’s what we’re playing on – the world seen through science.

Katia Sanfilippo
Marketing and Communication Unit
I

8 March - 8 April 2011

Natural Digression

UTS Gallery | Level 4, 702 Harris Street | Ultimo Sydney NSW

curated by Yolande Norris

with artists Al Munro, Ellis Hutch, Kirsten Farrell, Rose Montebello, Waratah Lahy, Penelope Cain, Erica Seccombe

Winner and Acquisitions Announced 4 Dec 2010
Judge Geoffrey Cassidy Director , Artbank , made the following announcements of the winner of the $10,000 Stan and Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize and the additional acquisitions for Gold Coast City Gallery Collection.

Acquisitions
The following works were also acquired for Gold Coast City Gallery Collection

Waratah Lahy Photographing a work of art 2 2009
“ This work is a delightful comment on the way people now engage so completely with the world, and with art in particular, through their cameras. We no longer have an experience; we store it on our I-phone for later, never to be had.”

waratahlahy.com/artwork/1786429_Photogr…

Dane Lovett Oasis 2010
“ A Gen Y still life with a twist where superseded technology evokes an unexpected poignancy. The rate of change has accelerated to the point where we feel these technologies have barely been
given a chance. Yesterday’s heroes beautifully rendered and elegantly composed.”

Nerissa Lea Study for what remains behind 2009
“ Serious in intent and dark in humour Nerissa’s work is a dreamscape, a psychological landscape rich in history and portent. There is a real richness to the work that draws the viewer back again and again, trying to know the unknowable – what remains behind.”

Victoria Reichelt Last days 2010
“ Victoria Reichelt’s stacks of books are more than they seem. In precarious piles with doomsday titles, they foretell their own obsolescence. The painting delights with its technical ability while impressing with its conceptual strength and its humour”.

WINNER
Joe Furlonger Bridge to Bribie 2010 “A mature work by an instinctive painter, this work engaged me on a number of levels – the sophisticated palette and layering of paint, the confident sweep of the bridge and the evocative glow
of the distant mountains. Joe has developed a clear artistic voice and this work simply sings. It’s terrific that the structure of the prize allows works of this calibre to be entered. The most accomplished work in the exhibition” .
The artist receives a $10,000 cash prize. The work remains available for sale courtesy Ray Hughes Gallery Sydney.

Gold Coast City Gallery The Arts Centre Gold Coast
135 Bundall Rd Surfers Paradise Q 4217 www.theartscentregc.com.au
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Contact: Virginia Rigney Curator / Acting Gallery Manager
07 558165667 gallery@theartscentregc.com.au