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| Suvira McDonald |
 Suvira McDonald, Ceramic & Mixed Media Artist, Goonengerry Australia
Multi facetted Suvira McDonald is an award-winning Australian artist who may be found working in the forested hinterland of Byron Bay in northern NSW, Australia. His contemporary ceramic art constantly seeks new modes of expression; in his hands clay takes myriad forms. The large elemental constructed forms that find placement as garden sculpture, his unique ceramic landscapes, functional ceramics such as urns, platters, vases and the everyday coffee mug find uncommon form and excellence in his ceramic studio.
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ARCHIVES 2005 2006/06 10th Anniversary Show Prizewinners |
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Thursday Plantation Acquisition Award "Seven Islamic women dressed in chadors appear in the landscape. The distant horizon marks their uncertain fate." Biography: Bold, brash, brave and always surprising, Frederic’s passion and artistic belief are alive in his work. Born in Meaux, France, with studies in both Paris and Sydney, the sometimes provocative nature of his work has ensured its appeal. His strong desire to see art touch the lives of a greater part of the population led to the establishment of The Laughing Museum in Sydney in 1989, an enterprise dedicated to the production of low-cost, accessible art. His curiosity about the human race forms the basis of his intense philosophical inspiration. “I do not create anything as such: I merely copy what life has to offer me.” |
Thursday Plantation Commendation #1 ‘Spirit Box: Opuntia’ 240 x 180 x 170mm
#2 ‘Spirit Box: Chalice’ 295 x 200 x 130mm #3 ‘Spirit Box: Catdog’ 215 x 290 x 100mm #4 ‘Spirit Box: Waterwitch’ 270 x 250 x 140mm #5 ‘Spirit Box: Gompa’ 280 x 230 x 200mm "This sequence of work is like coming up to take a breath of fresh air. In the past four years, I have been working in a collaborative manner in the design, creation and manufacture at my studio of various large scale public art commissions. This requires an intensely focused mindset, somewhat stoic and plodding. The ‘spirit box’ sequence of small scale sculptures springs directly my ongoing desire as an artist to communicate the inherent spirituality of stone. A radical change in scale from the monumental to very small is liberating. Each work is in effect a self contained novella as opposed to a novel; they are conceived and executed in a relatively short period of time and are acts of pure indulgence. The only constraints that I set myself are that they must originate from a natural boulder and allude to the functional." |
Thursday Plantation Commendation "A little group with curvilinear, voluptuous forms in juxtaposition to a cubic, introverted figure. It has various layers of meaning, and can be deconstructed any way one likes, but basically it engages with the way one’s perception and ways of seeing can be directed and misdirected by belief systems which are really only a bum steer. It could be that the Phobic has been given a “bum steer,” because he has been led to believe that bottoms are “rude”, that there is something wrong with the human body. It does not stop him looking, he look all the more obsessively, furtively, surreptitiously, with a hand over his eyes. Or the opposite: Images of derrieres are thrust at him, not as things of natural beauty but as symbols of raunchy sexuality, in a world where even the cultural establishment bombards him with images like cans of shit, buckets of urine, religious icons drowned in piss, blood pouring from cabinets." Biography: Helen Leete is well known for public sculptures around Sydney. Some are very well loved like the Oceanides, in the sea at Manly, and the Earthmother, in the Botanic Gardens, near the Opera House, and the Kata Tjuta at Roseville. Others, like the Arched back Bather have been quite controversial! She has won many awards and prizes, including the Art Gallery Society Award at Sculpture by the Sea in 2003, been shortlisted for the Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of NSW, awarded the Mosman Centenary Sculpture Prize, several first prizes for Abstract Sculpture at the R.A.S. etc. etc She works mainly in bronze these days, but also love exhibiting multiple piece conceptual installation, and is presently working on new ideas inspired by the Stones of Callanish in the Hebrides, and the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory. |
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Thursday Plantation Commendation Biography: Tamsin Salehian is an artist who has been involved in both environmental and artistic projects in the UK and Australia over the last 10 years. She has made large scale installation works in Melbourne, and exhibited her work in both group and solo shows. Her work often involves an interdisciplinary approach to media. Using computer modeling, sculpture, drawing and photography Salehian explores ideas concerning contemporary culture, and social and environmental issues. She holds a BFA from the Victorian College of the Arts, and a BSc (human ecology) from the Australian National University. |
Regional Artist’s Prize sponsored by Beach Hotel "My installation titled "Pink Shard" is predominantly comprised of imagery of selected coloured flotsam and jetsam from our Australian beaches; found inorganic objects, transformed by nature, having been discarded by man into our waterways and oceans. I have collected these plastics from our shores over the years and for this particular work, I selected the pink variety of coloured plastics, made them into vast assemblages, which were photographed and transferred to a photographic film image -bearing interlayer. This image has been embedded between two, tall toughened glass columns, which have been fused together to make up this single panelled glass shard installation." Biography: John Dahlsen is based in Byron Bay. He studied at the VCA and the MCAE. He won the Wynne prize at the AGNSW in 2000 and was again a finalist in 2003 and 2004. For 25 years he has had regular solo and group exhibitions in Australia, in both commercial and regional galleries and internationally, in USA and Europe, where he is also represented in major public and private collections. In August 2004, Dahlsen represented Australia at the Athens Olympics of Visual Arts and in October 2004, he became the first Australian artist, (he joins such renowned artists as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente and Damien Hirst) to be commissioned by global vodka producer Absolut to create a major public artwork “Absolut Dahlsen” which was unveiled at Sculpture by the Sea, 2004. He had a major solo exhibition of his work at the Tweed Regional Art Gallery in February 2005 and later in 2005 will be having another solo show at Gallery 49 in New York. He is also currently curating as well as participating in an exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum in New York State in the USA, which will run from the 1st July – till Sept 18th 2005 and will also take up an artist in residence position in Jefferson City Missouri, USA in September 2005, where he will be making a public artwork for their sculpture walk. |
Regional Artist’s Prize sponsored by Beach Hotel "This work takes a wry look at the nature of the ‘dance’ seen daily on the streets of Byron Bay. Two people embrace and, presumably, bond in all sorts of spiritual ways. One thing they seem to be careful to do though, is to ensure that there is no genital contact between the embracing bodies. So we have the shoulder embrace with bums angled out at the passing throng. This work could be seen as a tongue in cheek view of a local ritual, but there are other valid interpretations. The figures are clearly cloaked. These could be interpreted as being burkhas. In which case one might like to consider the work in a broader context than bounded by the physical limits of the Shire of Byron and Australia. There might also be some gender interpretations that are not entirely without merit. The stone has some interesting colouration with streaks of pink offset by one fairly intense chalk- white area. That chalky shape echoes the outlines the shape of one of the figures." Biography: Allen retired early from the world of marketing in South Africa to wrangle with large pieces of stone in Newrybar, between Ballina and Byron Bay. His life-long interest in art has had time and space to develop there, and he has exhibited regularly since 1998. This is his 8th show at Thursday Plantation. |
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Crystal Castle Ephemeral Art Prize "This work comments on the rapidity of change in particular relation to contemporary environmental and biological burning issues. While the geometric lattice refers to the ubiquitous nature of cellular activity, the “threats of wax melting and colour fading enable me to speak simultaneously of flux and mutability, hybridisation, and the constancy of transience in the natural world." Biography: Áine has been an arts practitioner since 1994 and has received numerous awards. Her work, in ceramics and mixed media, has been exhibited in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Tasmania. Last year Áine graduated in Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours at Southern Cross University and this is her 21st year living in the Northern Rivers area. |
TAFE Arts Prize "Heartland - all internal things which are the strongest, things which can be seen, felt and experienced. In the natural environment the sculptures explore relationships between internal architecture and external space. Inspired by fretwork the sculptures and their shadows are forms of dark and light that we look ‘at’ and ‘through’ simultaneously. The charred internal surfaces narrate our countries’ lived experience, where the Heartland is the central area of a continent or landmass, farthest removed from the sea." Biography: Born in Rockhampton, grew up on the Gold Coast and now lives in Brisbane. Holds a BA in Fine Art, Grad. Dip. in Education and MA in Visual Art. Studio is a 40 acre property at Dayboro, one hour north-west of Brisbane, currently working on commissions, exhibitions, public art and special projects throughout the east coast of Australia. Lectures in Visual Art at the Southbank Institute in Brisbane. |
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