DANI Marti’s studio is near Cessnock. His monumental weavings are to be found in New York and his native Barcelona as well as in Sydney.
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Yet he has chosen to show recent work at the University Gallery until November 12, attracted by its long axis and open floor space.
One end of the gallery is dominated by Black Sun, a three-metre diameter mandala encrusted with dark reflectors, emanating energy; at the other end is an openwork wire cube, constructed of repurposed mattress springs studded with the bright spheres of mandarins and lemons.
Its inherent decay makes it a vanitas object, a lesson in mortality, but the human connection implied in the recycled mattress leads us directly into Dani Marti’s other, for him, equally important body of work, the videos and photographic studies of intimate moments shared with other male HIV sufferers.
This is confronting. We are unused, as gallery visitors, to long voyeuristic real-life sequences of middle-aged men touching each other in therapeutic sexual encounters or for plain comfort. A narrative here involves Bob, a blind gay man in New York, whose ultimate pleasure comes from hearing male singing as much as from touch.
The gallery reverberates with long breathed notes.
The primacy of touch provides a new path into the woven works, though they appear as completely abstract grids of cords and ropes from the ships’ chandler or hard-wear shop, harsh to the hand. We delight in the varied textures and colour changes as much as in the taut precision of the surface.
Does it help or hinder our response to these skilfully crafted grids to know that for the weaver they embody one of many carefully staged intimate encounters?
Isn’t it enough for the viewer to appreciate these spectacular objects without their metaphor of skin and confessional encounters? You decide.
Sterling creations
FELT is probably the oldest form of textile, predating weaving by thousands of years. It originated in cold northern regions where herding sheep has been a way of life, historically associated with the nomadic tribes of northern Asia. There are still felt yurts and felt boots in Mongolia. The transformation of fleece into fabric is hard physical work.
Polly Sterling is one of Australia’s pioneer felt makers, with 25 years of her innovative fabrics on view at Timeless Textiles until November 6. She is well known for developing techniques for bonding felted wool to lighter fabrics, creating garments that are less weighty and more supple. Everything she makes is designed to be used. Colour is subservient to the creative possibility of three-dimensional sculptural decoration.
Polly Sterling and her colleagues have spent many years experimenting with the nuno technique they pioneered and taught, which is now widely used by creative feltmakers.
The exhibition in Newcastle demonstrates many variants from a long and distinguished career.
Material rewards
STILL on a textile theme, the latest work by Olivia Parsonage at Gallery 139 until October 29 is a hybrid; she has painted outlines of faces on a padded base and coloured them in with loose skeins of embroidery.
It works.
This new project is part of a rewarding exhibition, with more adventures by Michelle Brody’s inscrutable peanut men, Ellie Hannon’s schematised forests, Julia Flanagan’s lively colours and the lackadaisical hanging sculptures of Vanessa Turton.
Students on show
IT is at least 20 years since The University of Newcastle art school last hosted the National Campus Art Prize, now showing at Watt Space Gallery until October 30.
Unlike PICA, works are submitted not by institutions, but by individual students, then rigorously culled.
Many local students have made the cut, including Cheridan Chard with one of only two paintings selected.
She is currently joint winner with Peter Gallagher of the valuable Carol Duval Memorial Prize at TAFE.
Among the highlights is an ambitious neon landscape from the Victorian College of the Arts, which might also be a phone number.
There is a stellar drawing by Carrie Frazer from The University of New South Wales.
Creativity survives the current round of funding cuts.
Prize boosted
MUSWELLBROOK Regional Gallery has just announced an increase in its annual painting prize to $50,000, with funds from the Bengalla Mining Company.
