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Beyond a Thousand Words – Experimental Slide Night at Verge Gallery

21 May

WHAT: Beyond a Thousand Words – Experimental Slide Night at Verge Gallery
WHO: Victoria Baldwin, Lara Barker, Eleanor Barz, Dylan Batty, Annika Elise Blau, Andrew Christie, Chanel Delahunty, Alex Dorohokuplia, Bec Eames, Nicole Eggers, Nicholas John Fahy, Samuel H. Foxkraft, Brigitte Gerges, Michael Gordon, Isabella Grace, Kraig Grady, Sylvia Griffin, Reema Hamdan, Verena Heirich, Herbie, Jack Hume, Tim Hunt, Zsuzsanna Domenika Ihar, Freia Kirkaldy, Olivia Kwarda-Tuivaga, Amanda LeMay, Flora Mavrommati, Goldman Moas-Dorit, Jacqueline N Olivetti, Axel Powrie, Leann Richards, Charlotte Richardson, Arzu Robatmeily, Esther Rolfe, Peter Rolfe, Jack Reilly, Slinky & Snudis, Cecilia White and Arina Zinovyeva.
WHEN: Friday May 24, 7pm or 8pm (two performance time slots)
WHERE: Verge Gallery, City Road, Jane Foss Russell Plaza, University of Sydney
CONTACT: Greg Shapley on 9563-6218 or vergegallery@usu.usyd.edu.au

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Join us on Friday May 24, at either 7 or 8pm for a multi-media experiment constructed especially for the Head On photography festival.

Beyond a Thousand Words – Experimental Slide Night at Verge Gallery

We all know the old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. Verge Gallery’s slide night will take pictures (submitted by the University of Sydney’s student body), combine narration, music, performance art and some theatre, creating a truly memorable event.

In the mix will be Zsuzsanna Ihar (with Brigitte Gerges), who will be sleeping throughout the show but not because it’s boring! She is inviting the audience to join her in ‘slumber world’ and interact between the two realities of consciousness and unconsciousness (visually enhanced with an overlay of surreal imagery).

Axel Powrie and Jack Reilly will be dueling with sound, using their own personal musical styles – Jazz and Indie respectively, to play off one another in a challenging battle for musical supremacy.

Also on the night, theatre writers, Tim Hunt, Dylan Batty and Annika Elise Blau, are scripting an experimental narrative that explores concepts of light and dark – good against evil – white vs. wholemeal, from humorous and complex perspectives.

Cecilia White will be exploring the light shed by knowledge and cultural awareness in her work ‘The Lover Circles Her Own Heart’.

This evening is FREE and food/refreshments provided.

Image provided by Brigitte Gerges.

OASIS Sculpture Prize

3 May

USU Oasis Sculpture Prize

University of Sydney students and alumni who are Access members are invited to submit for the USU OASIS Sculpture Prize. The winning entry will be exhibited in front of Verge Gallery in the Jane Foss Russell Plaza from February 2014 to January 2015. Entry is free. Size, durability and OHS requirements apply – see bottom of page.

Verge Gallery fronts on to Jane Foss Russell Plaza. Currently barren and windswept, it is something of a concrete desert. The winning sculpture should be a sight for sore eyes – something that will disrupt this landscape, being playful, entertaining and thought provoking. To this end the inaugural theme for the prize is “OASIS”.

Entries can be submitted from May 6 to June 30 2013 online. From these entries finalists will be announced on August 1 and given $200 each to create a to-scale table top size model of their work. These must be submitted by October 1. The finalists will be on display concurrently with the Verge Festival with the winner announced at the Verge Awards night, October 10. The winner will be awarded $2,000 and have until February 28 2014 to create the work, which will be displayed for up to a year.

Please note that your work must be suitable for the long term, weather-proof, able to survive in a robust public environment, and accord to OH&S regulations. It must be delivered in pieces no larger than 1 cubic metre, be secured on a concrete base and be immovable. We reserve the right to refuse unsuitable or dangerous works. The Judges decision will be final. No correspondence will be entered into.

Working Title: a collaborative exhibition between Eora College and Sydney College of the Arts students

11 Apr

WHAT: Working Title: a collaborative exhibition between Eora College and Sydney College of the Arts students
WHO: Teresa Gay Christine Blakeney, Timothy Williams, Cecil Bowden, Ernest Smith, Judy Beddoni, Aaron Vincent, Sharon Smith, Fiona Dorrell, Flora Mavrommati, Bridget O’Brien, Meghan Rheynolds, Nick Maurer, Stella Logan, Lorna Munro
Didgeridoo performance on opening night by Walangari Karntawarra
WHEN: Opening Thursday April 18, 6pm. April 19- May 3. Mon-Fri 10am-5pm
WHERE: Verge Gallery, City Road, Jane Foss Russell Plaza, University of Sydney
CONTACT: Greg Shapley on 9563-6218 or g.shapley@usu.usyd.edu.au

Stella
Working Title is a collaborative exhibition developed through partnerships between students from Eora College and Sydney College of the Arts. The artists present us with a shared expression of what is our varied and ever-changing contemporary Australian cultural identity. Participants have employed a variety of media including painting, sculpture and video.

Opening night is Thursday 18 April and the exhibition will run until 3 May.

On Opening Night Walangari Karntawarra will perform a Welcome to Country ceremony and play the Didgeridoo.

Image: Untitled, by Stella Logan, acrylic on canvas.

Bending the Truth: Reimagined Works from the SCA Degree Shows

8 Mar

WHAT: Bending the Truth: Reimagined Works from the SCA Degree Shows
WHO: Bryden Williams, Emilio Cresciani, Andrea Srisurapon, Hanadi Saleh, James Dickman, Suzan Faiz, Debbie Kim Nguyen, Ingrid van der Aa, Allana McAfee
WHEN: Opening Thursday March 7, 6pm. March 8-22. Mon-Fri 10am-5pm
WHERE: Verge Gallery, City Road, Jane Foss Russell Plaza, University of Sydney
CONTACT: Greg Shapley on 9563-6218 or g.shapley@usu.usyd.edu.au

BTT-sign-small
Bending the Truth: Reimagined Works from the SCA Degree Shows

‘Bending the Truth’ plays with the fluidic and plastic nature of art (is not an artful truth always bent?). Graduating students from SCA have been asked to rethink their works, originally created in solitude, in terms of collaboration with other artists. This exhibition presents a conversation – a social experience in place of a series of individual, pieces.

‘Bending the Truth’ – greater than greatest…

7 Mar

Greg Shapley

For the last few years, Verge has held a Greatest Hits show. Comprised of works from the previous year’s degree shows at Sydney College of the Arts, the idea was to have an exhibition that showcased the crème de la crème of student works. As well-intentioned as this was, the use of such terms as greatest to describe artworks didn’t sit well with many (myself included). The shear magnitude of the degree shows meant that works were judged with a cursory glance and then placed awkwardly beside other pieces that were a testament, not to some objective superiority, but to the whim, fancy and taste of a select group. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t some merit or inherent logic in the selection, just that there were quite possibly alternate Greatest Hits (perhaps happening concurrently in some distant quantum universe). Another reason for the change in name, and methodology was to give artists the opportunity, not just to re-present works, but to extend, transform, blend and (occasionally) move on from their tortured projects into a more collective, supportive and welcoming reality. Just because certain pieces were deemed great doesn’t mean that they work well with other artworks either. Getting on with other art requires different skills. Artists have to be aware of their environment, of other artists’ intentions and sensitivities. Collectively there should be a goal to move beyond individual works where the whole exceeds the sum of the parts.

Bending the Truth is this year’s attempt to present a more relative greatness, one that has been borne, not of divine selection, but of a sincere desire for connection and conversation with other artists, and, by extension, the audience. Works weren’t selected, per se: Verge invited all artists who exhibited in the degree shows to apply to exhibit. The only real criterion was a willingness to work critically and collaboratively with peers. The artists have met every week for the last few weeks. During this time, two overlapping nodes have emerged that seem to encapsulate everyone’s art.

The first is best described as non-representational (abstract)/psychedelic/surreal art. Suzy Faiz’s large, bright paintings and Ingrid van der Aa’s protruding, warped perspex sheets were a match made in heaven and, not surprisingly, the first connection to be realised. In the installation process Faiz decided to extend her works off the canvas and onto the wall, reaching out with coloured tentacles to van der Aa’s non-figurative figures. Other’s to be brought into this embrace include the playful, but cheekily impractical ceramic wigs of Allana McAffee and the fiery technological totem of Bryden Williams.

The other node (joined in part by the figurative usefulness of McAffee’s wigs) is art dedicated to cultural and social exploration and includes James Dickman’s distorted, (super-long neck) phallic beer bottles and RSL-style shrine to the Oz drinking culture and Andrea Srisurapon’s mediated exploration of her Thai heritage. Verses from the Quran feature prominently, perhaps incongruously, in the larger-than-life decorated lettering of Hanadi Saleh and Debbie Kim Nguyen’s organic clay figures complete this node with a grounded environmental message. Tenuously spread over the floor are the delicate aluminium can stalagmites of Emilio Cresciani, whose glowing photographic tributes to the repetitive nature of modern waste disposal look out over the courtyard.

Verge Gallery open by appointment only

17 Jan

Our air con is malfunctioning so we are closed until further notice. If you would like to see our current exhibition, ‘Queering the Body’, please call me on 0403 127 398 and we’ll give you a special tour.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

Greg Shapley
Verge Gallery Manager

University of Sydney Union is on the Verge of Exhibiting Award-Winning Talent

18 Sep

The 2012 Verge Awards celebrates the artistic diversity and distinction of University of Sydney students  with an opening gala on Thursday October 4 at 6pm. This year the theme: ‘Put yourself in the picture’ seeks to build a dialogue about student identities across an array of disciplines including visual art, music and literature.

Renowned artists, Susan Norrie, Australian representative at the 2007 Venice Biennale, and Zanny Begg, Director of the Tin Sheds Gallery, will be judging visual arts categories. Peers and patrons too will have their opportunity not only to view semifinalists but to participate in judging for the people’s choice award online.

Last year, one of the winning artists, Peter Rolfe, entered photographs taken with an enigmatic ‘Holga’ (a medium format plastic camera that distorts light in surprising ways). His entry entitled ‘Checkout’ captures the hazy black and white image of a self-checkout, propelling the everyday life of a student into the gaze of the gallery goer – transforming the commonplace into the spectacular. The light leakages and smudging inherent in the media turn the most humdrum of places into an ethereal wonderland.

Join the University of Sydney Union in celebrating creativity on campus. The evening will showcase the enormous artistic, musical and literary talent of our members, and feature live jazz, readings and ample libations (…and of course art from over fifty of our finest).

For more information please contact Greg Shapley on (02) 9563-6218 or Email: g.shapley@usu.usyd.edu.au

Peter Rolfe, Checkout

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Verge Gallery Student Survey – Help us improve your viewing experience!

4 Sep
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