Upcoming March Exhibition:

Ro Murray presents a window installation in the NANA gallery windows

 

YOU ME US

A UNITED WORLD AFTER PARIS

In December 2011, while staying on board a friend’s yacht, Sydney based artist Ro Murray recorded the international maritime signal flags on the cockpit wheel house, with the iDraw app on her phone. Consisting of 26 flags, this international system can be understood in 19 languages. Ro has adopted this code into her art practice so as to send her own message of: 

“You Me Us” 

(or in the phonetic alphabet): 

“Yankee Oscar Uniform Mike Echo Uniform Sierra”

You Me Us is a phrase coined by Ro which reflects on the recent terror events in Paris, and calls for a United World to stand together. 
Using chalk pens Ro has spelled / drawn this message in the language of the maritime signal flags on the NANA gallery windows, located on Perkins Street. The Flags stretch a 9 metre distance along the pedestrian sidewalk and reflect the industry  of Newcastle as a working port city with an active sailing culture in the cities busy waterway. 

Ro Murray is a visual artist with a sculpture and installation based practice that draws on her background in architecture. Her work responds to current stories in the media both environmental and social. This is her second show at NANA.

http://www.romurray.com.au/

What is CANDY ? An introduction by Ineke Dane

Squirm & Thrive 2015Acrylic on canvas 90x110cm

CANDY 

11 - 28 February 2015

NANA contemporary art space Newcastle

When I walked into Madeleine’s Islington studio, at the back of her house looking over a garden (giant jacaranda tree with chooks beyond), Candy reminded me of a saying: first there was the word, and the word was replaced by flesh, and it never healed. With flesh, without word, the world becomes infinite, un-bound by parameters of language.

Madeleine’s fleshy landscapes are just that, open wounds, no beginning, no ending, rather suggestions of infinite manifestations, a never ending morphing of worlds. Internal organs become the landscape, become external, as intestines become mountains as fertility eggs become reservoirs. Colour is indiscriminate, purple jacaranda by pastel pink by brown by indigo. At times awkward, calmer as eyes adjust, what begins as unnatural steers now to a norm and a world where branches can be yolk.

And what of the things that live in these landscapes? They oscillate between craving the artificial and being umbilical-bound to the natural, a mental tug of war to find place and peace in a world of manufactured candy-like temptations. These temptations border beauty but before long fall to the realm of the grotesque; an overindulgence that ends in decay, a melting return to an amoebic state.

With Madeleine’s Candy we see a peeling back and reduction to the point where reality and what once was meet: is the world today, was it the Archean.

Ineke Dane

ON NOW:

NANA contemporary art space warmly invites you and your friends
to the exhibition and opening event of CANDY
a solo exhibition of paintings by
 

MADELEINE CRUISE 

Evocative of real and imagined landscapes CANDY brings to life a luminous dream like state where the subconscious roams free. In a world of manufactured temptations beauty borders the grotesque and becomes an over indulgence ending in decay. 

11 - 28 FEBRUARY 2015

OPENING EVENT: SAT 14 FEB 1 - 4PM

NANA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE NEWCASTLE

NANACONTEMPORARYART.BLOGSPOT.COM.AU

Candy 2014 Acrylic on canvas 120x110cm $750

To find out more about the artist visit: madeleinecruise.blogspot.com.au