A review of "TIME" art exhibition hosted by Belconnen Artists' Network, Belconnen, ACT, Australia.The artists have explored multiple facets of time in extraordinary ways through physical changes, analogy, symbology and philosophy; using a wide range of media such as photography, sculpture, painting, digital media and textiles. The meanings and impacts of time are expressed in personal ways reflecting how each artist responds to and interacts with time.
Belconnen Artist’s Network celebrates Canberra’s 100th birthday (March 2013) with an eclectic exhibition called “Time”. We all count our birthdays as we develop from a baby, grow and mature. But time is a lot more than simply counting the years and it does not stop with our death. Belconnen Artist’s Network explores many aspects of time that reveal nuances beyond our normal everyday experience. You will come away from this exhibition with a deeper understanding of how time impacts on us as people and society and how time affects other artefacts, the world and even the whole cosmos.
Artists have a role in articulating abstract concepts. Time is an ethereal concept that can be experienced in many ways. It seems to run fast when we are engrossed in some activity that engages our minds. An hour can go without us noticing. Yet time’s course seems excruciatingly slow when we are waiting to meet a long lost friend.
The artists have conveyed an extensive range of ideas about time in this exhibition.
Some of the ways the artists describe their work are: • Natural peaceful contemplation • Direction • Lost time • A moment • DNA • Aging process • Life is finite • Extinction/creation • Geological earth time
We all respond differently to the discipline and vagaries of time. The artists have explored multiple facets of time in extraordinary ways through physical changes, analogy, symbology and philosophy; using a wide range of media such as photography, sculpture, painting, digital media and textiles. The meanings and impacts of time are expressed in personal ways reflecting how each artist responds to and interacts with time.
The artists represented in this exhibition demonstrate a wide range of specialist skills and experience and have exhibited in Canberra, interstate and internationally. Here is a short overview of some of the artists’ work.
Nancy Hamilton articulates time ebbing away. Years and months turn over, weeks and days revolve like a barometer, time is constantly changing. The hours slide past the clock face and tumble into an unrecognisable mass while a Salvador Dali watch swings with each tick like a iconic pendulum.
John Hamilton’s media display shows an endless flow of sunsets, or are they sunrises? Our minds seem unable to decide which, as if the days and nights between them have slipped into oblivion. The spaces between days is condensed into a moment, leaving only the transitional twilight to contemplate.
The day is finished and the evening light turns rocks into black silhouettes. The full moon peeps between obscuring clouds to shine its eerie blue light across the ocean. The crash of the waves against the rocks has been softened by a timed exposure in this photograph. Margaret Kalms has used a common expression to create a light-hearted scene.
There are many sayings about time which give us insight. Pauline Mager has gathered a collection of these sayings and has created a sculptural signpost to direct our journey. It is an imposing structure which invites introspective understandings.
We all have limited time, our experience stops at our death. Margaret Kalms’ poignant photograph of a grave in the afternoon light is a powerful statement about our fragility. Death gives an urgency to our lives, our allotted time welded into the headstone. However, time itself continues, endlessly ticking on.
A delightful painting of a floral clock is deceptively simple using geometric shapes and bright colours. Diana Davidson asks, “What happened to the time between 7.00 and 9.00am? Was there a hole in the universe, or did the horticulturalist not learn Latin? Or perhaps the artist lost it in contemplation.”
Diana Davidson delights in the detail of fashion accessories as she gives a potted history of the twentieth century. Fashion changes and reflects passing ages. Hats and shoes are transformed into icons for the passing decades.
As decades transform into eons, layer upon layer of rock merges with life creating ancient imprints. Robyn Diener’s stunning textile wall hanging is a wonder to see. It expresses some of the scale of geological time, threaded through the whole of the evolutionary life story.
Margaret Kalms’ photograph of a modern shark emerges from the rock where its ancestor died. Her blended photography has turned the rock with the fossilised skeleton into ocean, creating a snapshot of the evolutionary process.
DNA is the chemical thread that links all life forms over time and passes on beyond death. Anne Fulker contemplates the imagery of DNA bar code fingerprints like shimmering bars reflected in water. Bar codes are used extensively in our modern world they can be seen in many places.
Timo Boersma sees reflections as graphic design, shimmering light, colour and form. Pairs of photographs delineate moments in time that were taken at the same place but have very different forms. Things can be the same yet so different in just a moment.
These are only a sample of the delights awaiting at the Belconnen Community Centre Gallery.
