Kevin Meagher, Blood Kali Change
Here’s another energetic work by Kevin Meagher, from his recent show at Callan Park Gallery; a work dripping with death, time and transformation. From the Kali entry in Wikipedia:
The figure of Kali conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a “forbidden thing”, or even death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a vehicle of salvation.
Meagher’s work is, for me, a Yantra, a refined instrument of analysis, a conception of how Blood becomes Kevin becomes Blood, how Jesus / Kali /Venus / Mars is the facilitator for a deep and necessary internal reorganisation that must take place: a matter of life and death for the artist. Or it’s something else! Something so mysterious that we’re returned finally to the work itself as carrier of archetypal content that has no other means of exposition.
Tagged as:
Callan Park Gallery,
Kevin Meagher,
Outsiders
In May, Callan Park Gallery hosted an energetic exhibition of ceramics and works on paper by Kevin Meagher, an Outsider who’s been hospitalised for some time and who has developed his practice through the Pioneer Clubhouse in Balgowlah. He’s also taken an Artist in Residence role at Macquarie Hospital in North Ryde.
Kevin’s work is brimming with mythological and spiritual associations – and there is a real experience here of someone struggling to find where he fits into the vast staggering schemes of Norse, Greek, Slavic, Hindu, Christian and Egyptian myth. And the inquiry is conducted with an urgency that conveys its importance to him, and sucks the viewer in to his worlds.
(Left, Neal Hawke, and right, Ben and Tim at War.)
For me, Kevin is involved in the classic “Who Am I?” question, with a fury and commitedness brought on by obviously distressing and bewildering personal states. I love his disregard for artistic style, and also for his daring iconoclasm – I’ll post some more of his intriguing works over the next few weeks.
(Works on paper in the top image are Shiva the Bee, Jewel Tree and Super Bella; ceramics are Ra Uranus, Iris Mary, Dianna Venus, Neptune Lir and Ganga Ocean. )
Tagged as:
Callan Park Gallery,
Kevin Meagher,
Outsiders
Leo Cussen
Untitled (Dr Who’s Tardis),2005
Pastel on paper, 56 x38cm
Another work in the recent exhibition at Callan Park of a selection from Pearls of Arts Project Australia, a collection of works by Arts Project Australia (APA) artists that the collector, Stuart Purves, is giving to STOARC. This one’s an energetic pastel by Leo Cussen.
Quoting from the recent Home Sweet Home exhibition blurb (National Gallery of Australia):
It is has been remarked that Cussen has a deep fascination with aspects of popular culture including the ‘Dr Who’ character from the television series of the same name and has produced a strong series of works based on this theme: ‘His work has an obsessive quality resulting from repeated use of words or phrases or in his intensive use of media. ’
I love the energetic text and the insistent working of the windows in this piece. I wanna know what’s in that tardis!
Tagged as:
Callan Park Gallery,
Leo Cussen,
Outsiders
Anne Grgich
Madam Dussa, 2009
Bitten by snakes? Possibly. At the very least we can say they are slithering around… Here’s Anne Grgich‘s Madam Dussa, from the Callan Park show of last November. (You can download a PDF about Anne’s Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday exhibition here.)
Tagged as:
Anne Grgich,
Callan Park Gallery
