Browsing by Author "Collis, Andy"
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Item 45s Sleeves/Labels(2014-12-01) Collis, AndyThe small works art prize at the Gosford Art Studios stipulates works must be
200mm x 200mm. The size of the canvas suggested to me that of old vinyl 45
rpm. Records. I recollected with nostalgia and detail, the aesthetic and
emotion associated with such discs of my youth. I produced two gouache on
canvas images. One which shows snippets of the cheap paper sleeves in
which 45s were packages – the logos and colours of the labels,; the second
shows snippets of the actual labels themselves. To anyone who lived through
the period (50s,60s in particular) and remembers these things with great
affection, the snippets are clues and triggers, a cue to the true ‘fan’, the tip-of the
iceberg of many fond stories from youth.
The two images trigger these emotions.Item A Mile in My Shoes(2016-06-01) Morris, Richard; Watson-Trudgett, Maria; Collis, AndyCollaborations amongst artists have a rich International history in the Visual Arts. Collaboration amongst Indigenous, and non-Indigenous artists in Australia is a notion with a much smaller history. Such collaborations have become a special annual focus of the Gosford Regional Art Gallery as a means of showcasing artworks about Reconciliation, as it has impacted Australian culture and politics from the historic 1967 Referendum, and later, in the High Court Mabo decision. This group of three collaborators were successful in having work hung in last year’s Reconciliation, and continue to explore the collaborative exercise again here.
Item Annie Rose, my daughter(2012-07-01) Collis, AndyMy Research for my PhD, that was awarded in early 2015, looked at the nature of the value of a personal relationship with the sitter for the purposes of making a, specifically, painted portrait. This portrait of my daughter therefore sought to investigate a technique and a representation of the idea of the father/daughter relationship.
Item Beehives at Avoca: Morning Light(2015-07-01) Collis, AndyPerhaps the usual association with plein air painting is with that established with the European Impressionists of the 19th Century. Their use of newer technologies (collapsible easels, manufactured art products and paints), an awareness of black and white tonal photographic images and the changing societal role of artist, lead to the enquiry and production of work that we typically see under that umbrella term. The painting The Beehives at Avoca Beach: Morning Light therefore acknowledges aspects of European Impressionist tradition –the title even borrows from Monet’s works – but establishes it firmly in an Australian context (while avoiding the Australian Heidelberg concerns). This research seeks to respond to being in space and is much more about multiple, ‘wide angle’ expression of the experience of space. It utilises contemporary acrylic house paints applied directly with dynamic response and sensitivity to colour – it is purposely about expression, through paint, of lived experience in real space, rather than about fleeting light on a surface.
Item Dice & Shell(2015-09-01) Morris, Richard; Collis, AndyThe process of art-making, particularly in the Western World, tends to be, with some notable exceptions, the practice of the individual; a singular artist expressing individual ideas in a visual form. Collis and Morris are two artists that have worked and exhibited extensively individually in their own individualistic ways of expression.
Collis is, generally, a figurative painter in acrylic and oils, working, usually, from the live motif; Morris is, generally, an abstract painter whose works often crossover into sculptural forms. In a broader area of research, they have ventured to examine the value and means of joining forces to both see how new work can be generated from collaboration and the effect of two diverse approaches on concept and practice.
To this end ‘Dice and Shell’ is one such work from what is intended to be a larger body of work, to be exhibited publicly alongside evidence of the collaborative process that took place. This work can be seen as a metaphor for collaboration – Morris generated the backdrop board from house-paints, washed and sanded – after which Collis chose disparate objects that needed to visually ‘collaborate’ on and with the painting after which a three-dimensional object (a Monopoly-piece toy dog) was adhered to the shelf-like structure of the sculptural background – thus giving a technical and visual crossover and merging of the two artist’s approaches.
Item Into the Woods(2023) Morris, Richard; Collis, AndyCollegial was and exhibition of 20 multi-panel paintings on paper produced in collaboration by Andy Collis and Richard Morris. The works were exhibited at Art Systems Wickham, Newcastle, October 20 – November 5, 2023.Item Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton: A Dingo Took My Baby(2013-12-01) Collis, AndyConsidering the dynamics of the 22 contributing artists to this exhibition,
entitled ‘Breath’, curated by Shelley Poole, I chose to contribute a portrait of
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton. Subtitled ‘A Dingo Took My Baby’, the portrait
presents to the viewer the sitter at a point in her life where she has been
awarded, by the Government of Australia, a full birth certificate stating that the
cause of her six-month old daughter’s disappearance and death was that
dingo had taken her. This was vindication of the sitter’s claim, which had been
disputed to the extent that she was charged with the murder of the daughter
and imprisoned. The group show sort to celebrate and inspire a positive
perspective and Christian reflection on life. The image of Lindy – presented as
both resilient and at terms with events met the criteria.Item Self Portrait(2016-08-01) Collis, AndyThrough the display of the researcher's edited interview, alongside the painted self-portrait of the researcher, and the large photograph (1.8m x 1m) of the researcher's studio space, significant contribution to the exhibition 'Room for art: Artists and their creative spaces' was facilitated. The exhibition enabled a diverse cross-section of working approaches by 23 artists to allow consideration of the impact of environment, or how practice research and individuality shapes the working creative environment.
Item The Beehives: Revisited(2016-08-01) Collis, AndyThis creative work demonstrates the artist's current research practice in painting - which attempts to re-invigorate plain air painting with particular application to experiences drawn from the Australian landscape. The work shows the appropriate use of spontaneous and varied mediums, such as house paints and bitumen, to create both an emotive and analytical response to observations before the motif.
Item The Garden Gate(2015-10-01) Collis, AndyAs a member of the Central Coast Group of practicing artists, The Five Lands Trail, the artist was invited to take part in their group exhibition at the Art Studios Gallery, 391 Manns Street, North Gosford. NSW (October 14-25, 2015). The artist chose to contribute ‘The Garden Gate’ done as a research exercise into a technique that I have not seen done quite in this way before– i.e. the artist developed their own surface of carbon over wax-somewhat like scratchboard, but also used turps and erasers to create movement and half-tone areas.
Item The Human Touch? What is the Value of the Artist/Sitter Relationship to Contemporary Portrait Painting(2015-01-01) Collis, Andy‘The re-emergence of all figurative art as progressive and groundbreaking’[1] since the last quarter of the twentieth century continues to manifest itself through portraits of individuals external to the artist as well as through the artist’s self-scrutiny, self-portraiture. In Western art, a portrait made by an artist of another person, the ‘sitter’, remains a unique artform in that its production is necessarily dependent on the co-operation and collaboration of both parties, often artist and non-artist; two divergent worlds coming together on which, nevertheless, an artwork relies.
The interest and cultural value afforded portraiture is evidenced through newly established twenty-first century portrait galleries, collections and prestigious portrait prizes, garnering huge public and media interest, impressive monetary awards, sponsorship and submissions from highly reputable and, often, high profile painters. This gives assurance to uncertainties concerning portraiture’s valued status as art[2], countering suggestions of marginalization within contemporary painting,[3] and affirming that ‘portraiture has held its own’ despite the turn away from it, generally, through twentieth century abstraction.[4] However, though ‘performance art, body art, video art, photographic manipulation and appropriation, along with other innovations…encouraged the return to figuration’,[5] the submission and acquisition protocols of both new and long-established portrait galleries and portrait prizes heavily demand the portrait be in the specific medium of paint. Furthermore they more often than not categorically stipulate the physical meeting between artist and sitter as mandatory for purposes of making the painted portrait. This research investigates the argument that the practice of painting, and that the painting is, at least partially, painted from life, appropriately serves the conveyance of shared experiences and observations made over a period of time shared between two parties; that a physical meeting, which can be described as human touch, is of significant value to the expression of the artist’s ideas, the practice of painting, and as a unique testimonial of both parties relationship for that period of time.
[1] Wendy Wick Reeves, (Ed.) Reflections/Refractions. Washington, DC. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. 2009. 8.
[2] Joanna Woodall, ed. Portraiture: Facing the Subject .(Manchester, UK and New York, NY: Manchester University Press. 1997. Preface xiii.)
[3] Gabriel Badea-Paun. The Society Portrait: Painting, Prestige and the Pursuit of Elegance. Holborn, London, UK: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Richard Ormond, Honorary Director of the National Maritime Museum, London, author of numerous works on Victorian art, and the complete catalogue raisonné of the works of John Singer Sargent, states in the forward to this book, page 11,’ Portraiture has been discarded in the story of modern painting. It is viewed as something conservative and old-fashioned, commercially oriented and not truly creative.’
[4] Marcia Pointon. Portrayal and the search for indentity. (London. Reaktion Books. 2013) 18.
[5] Reeves (Ed.), 8.
(Taken from thesis)
Item Understory(2015-05-01) Watson-Trudgett, Maria; Morris, Richard; Collis, AndyThe work ‘Understory’ investigates the notion of ‘Land’ as seen through the eyes of one Indigenous and two non-Indigenous artists. The work fuses two distinct approaches to Landscape painting traditionally at odds with one another. The first of these is the traditional Aboriginal ‘Dot’ painting technique, and the second encompasses the more Euro-centric approach of ‘En Plein air’ and ‘Allaprima’ painting. ‘Understory’ fuses these disparate approaches to landscape painting, in such a way that no hierarchy of styles prevails. Here the notion of Reconciliation becomes quite literally embedded in the physicality of the work, whereby, culturally and historically different approaches to landscape painting can be seen to demonstrate a unique aesthetic indebted to a reconciliation of both Western, and Indigenous styles.
Item War and Peace(2013-08-01) Collis, Andy; King, AletaMusic has been an integral part of Avondale life since 1897 and in recognition of this proud tradition the music program was officially rebranded as Avondale Conservatorium on Saturday evening 24th August 2013 at the annual Homecoming Concert in Avondale College Church. To honour this significant occasion in the history of music at Avondale a concert event entitled War and peace was designed to showcase the musical talents of both staff and students of the new Avondale Conservatorium.