Can you remember how you were before the world told you how to be?
We live in an era of troubled thinking. A state of extreme restlessness and confusion. Like an animal peering out of a forest on fire, we’re putting very little trust in tomorrow.
The artists in Carpe Delirium seek to embrace the insanity of these days by seizing a moment in time and exploring its fragility, heartache and impermanence.
The voices in used things.
Landscapes of nudes, dancers, animals, and birds influenced by acute psychic states.
The transitory nature of demolition derbies, horse auctions and a brutal regional Australia now destroyed by fire.
The secluded bedrooms and bathrooms of Australia’s oldest homes in which women withdraw into themselves to reflect and dream.
The sad glory of streetscapes and abandoned buildings facing destruction.
The daily chaos of children, toys and mental noise in which a female body quietly declines…
Carpe Delirium invites you to enter through the broken windows of the lost, neglected and abandoned to discover the beautiful, haunting and erotic.
Join artists Jasmine Anderson, Renee Falez, Philip Ricketson, Melita Rowston, Jo Shand and Hiske Weijers in the back streets of St Peters among the towering warehouse walls of Tortuga Studios to celebrate the end of the world as we know it.
Embrace the chaos, seize your delirium, fuck the system!
Opening night – Friday 20 March, 2020, 6pm – 9pm
Vintage LP beats by DJ Anthony Allstarr
Live animated haiku projections by Jim Griffiths
Music from 7pm:
Peter Fenwick
Suburban Bukowskis Solo (AKA Benito Di Fonzo)
Huknee Puknee
Tortuga Studios
31 Princes Highway, St Peters, NSW
FREE
Gallery hours:
Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 March: 1-5pm
Friday 27 March: 3-7pm
Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March: 1-5pm
Saturday 28 March event: ‘Stories that never get told.’ An eve of performance poetry amongst the paintings, 6-8pm.
Sunday 29 March, Closing night informal drinks 5-7pm
Our artists:
Jasmine Anderson
“My work is a collection of visual poetry that expresses introspection and the realms of fantasy. Narratives are derived from my own life experience: fragility, heartache, feminism, madness, and self-growth. The naive, dream-like and imaginative qualities of my work are often combined with a dark edge of erotica. My work is sentimental and raw – a dichotomy of confidence and vulnerability, an expression of grunge purity. I seek to explore the transitory nature of life, loss and impermanence yet I still desire to make a mark that lasts.”
Jasmine is a recent graduate of the National Art School. She works across multiple mediums including ceramics, painting, video, performance, and photography. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Redfern Community Art Show’, 2015, ‘Moonlight Feminist Wine Club Group Show’, 2018, ‘National Art School Graduate Show’, 2018, ‘Gaffa Crimson Wave Group Show’, 2019, ‘Alpha House Solo Show’, 2019, ‘Zed Gallery Group Show’, 2019, ‘Freda’s Down Under Space Erythrophobia’, 2019.
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/jasmine_velvet__
@jasmine_velvet__
Tumblr:
jasminevelvetconcetta.tumblr.com
Renee Falez
“Stains. Memories. Erased. Scuffs. Tears. Dirt. Objects. Shadows. Linearity. Loss. Photocopies. Ideas. Words. Lyrics. Scraps.
I’m living between worlds, not always able to project a clear path. I write/make music/make art. Sometimes this comes from disparate cultural spaces including, punk/post punk music, catharsis, poetry, journaling, parenting, and the experience of daily functions suffering sometimes.
There are voices in used things. I’m interested in the cultural signifiers carried in objects and garments. Remnants, sounds, colours, and how these piece together to form a whole – like an imprint left on the psyche after a dream.
I revere the old, imperfect and damaged. Irregularities in machine made commodities may be objects in rebellion. I like it when wallpaper is stained. It feels like the end of the world sometimes. My art is my inventory of these interactions.”
Renee graduated from the National Art School in 2009 with Honours in Printmaking.
Recent exhibitions include: ‘Philip Ricketson, Renee Falez’, Alpha Gallery, 2018, ‘Dirty Slutz’, The Old Sign Shop, 2013, ‘Thee Arbitrarium of Disappointed Things’, INDEXspace, 2011, ‘Surface to Space’, Sheffer Gallery, 2010,
Facebook:
facebook.com/yellowagainstthegrey/
Philip Ricketson
“My paintings are about layers of meaning being revealed in the doing of them. I don’t know what my work is about until l paint it. I paint people occupied by their environment. Usually their space is shared with animals or birds and a psychic event. Gradually, over years, new things appear, like a black bird maybe. I try to fit everything in.”
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/ricketsonphilip
@ricketsonphilip
Melita Rowston
“The house even more than the landscape is a psychic state” Gaston Bachelard.
In 2019, I became intrigued with the strangely preserved and very feminine spaces of Australia’s oldest ‘living museum’ homes.
As I tiptoed through these gentile Colonial relics: Elizabeth Farm, Ripponlea House, Ayers House, (among others), I wondered about the women who once lived within these domestic spheres. Exiled over the oceans from very far away, how did they make sense of a hostile landscape, ripped from its true custodians, to which they knew they couldn’t belong?
Stepping into these women’s most intimate spaces, I felt compelled to paint the mirrors in these rooms and to reflect back real women I know. In many ways we are them and they are us.
Standing on the shoulders of Edouard Vuillard and Grace Cossington Smith, this series explores loss, memory, the conflation of woman/landscape/culture, and general white anxiety about identity and place.
Melita is a writer, director, performer, and painter. She holds a Grad Cert, Art and Design, Swinburne, BFA – Painting, VCA, Grad Dip – Directing, NIDA, MA – Creative Writing, UTS.
She held her first solo exhibition at The George Paton Gallery, Melbourne at the age of 21. In 1998, she put down the brush to follow her passion for theatre. In 2018, she picked it up again. Recent exhibition: Modern Nostalgia, Tortuga Studios, 2018.
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/melitarowston
@melitarowston
Jo Shand
Jo Shand explores themes of transition, loss and regeneration.
For over twenty years, Jo has shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions in independent and regional Australian galleries. Selected for many shows, including North Sydney Art Prize, Mosman Art Prize and S.H. Ervin Gallery’s Salon de Refuses, Jo was a finalist in the City of Sydney’s City of Villages Art Prize (where her work was shown throughout the city in large scale reproductions) and she won the St Stephens Newtown Art Award. A graduate of National Art School, she is currently based in Newcastle, NSW.
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/jo_shand_art
@jo_shand_art
Hiske Weijers
“I feel increasingly desperate about being ignored by this relentless tunnel-vision government. Since 2007, my studio has been based in St Peters. I have painted the character and beautiful colours of old walls and buildings in the surrounding streets –
abstract versions of houses and telegraph wires. I’ve then watched these places be destroyed for freeways, more cars…
In Berlin, I love to explore the sad old glory of abandoned buildings. My recent focus has been an abandoned ballroom in Grunau. I entered through a broken window to discover this derelict, rotting ballroom, its antechambers and dark cellars. The amazing beauty of the light shining on the grand piano as I played. They have now started to take it down…
My work comes from a connection I feel with the subject. Capturing these moments before destruction makes time stop. I seek that simple impression.”
Hiske Weijers lives between Sydney and Berlin. She was born in the Netherlands. She studied Fine Art at TAFE SA then returned to Amsterdam to study modern dance. Back in Australia, she graduated from COFA with a BA- Fine Art in 2001. During this time, she helped run Kilo Studios in Regent Street, Redfern. She then moved to the artist-run Mekanarky Studios in Turrella where she managed and curated their gallery space before basing herself in St Peters.
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/hiskeweijers
@hiskeweijers
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/HiskeWeijers/
https://www.facebook.com/events/3067087753342496/
Opening night – Friday 20 March, 2020, 6pm – 9pm
Tortuga Studios
31 Princes Highway, St Peters, NSW
FREE
Gallery hours:
Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 March: 1-5pm
Friday 27 March: 3-7pm
Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March: 1-5pm
Saturday 28 March event: ‘Stories that never get told.’ An eve of performance poetry amongst the paintings, 6-8pm.
Sunday 29 March, Closing night informal drinks 5-7pm