Articles and Reviews ~ Exhibition Reviews

Smoking Guns

... John Walker, showing at the Tim Olsen Gallery, is not to be confused with John R. Walker, who recently had an impressive show of landscape paintings at Utopia Art. This John Walker is an Englishman who was formerly the head of the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne, and now lives and works in Boston. ... read more

John Walker's Licentious Landscape

After the sell-out show of works by American painter Jan Franks, Tim Olsen Gallery has managed to latch on to the work of another incredible international artist in the form of English Born, American based abstractionist John Walker. ... read more

Right Now Art - Colour Block

Stephen Ormandy's work is reminiscent of art icon John Coburns' though his use of colour and form (left) has become as identifiable as a signature. Stephen, who co-founded Dinosaur Designs with Louise Olsen and Liane Rossler while the trio were still art student,s will follow up his 2010 sell-out exhibition with another show at Sydney's Tim Olsen Gallery from November 7-25. timolsengallery.com ... read more

A Burst of Colour

Marisa Purcell's exhibition at the Tim Olsen Gallery in Woollahra, is on until the 4th of November. Her works could be described on the one hand, as mesmerising in their style, and on the other hand the colours are wonderfully vibrant and fresh. ... read more

Halo

In Marisa Purcell’s latest show everything you need to know is in its title. Across a series of large canvases acrylic and oil paints coalesce in great pools of colour, delicate interactions and mergers of paint, all abstract but rich with possible association. ... read more

The Next Cy Twombly? First, Jan Frank Paints for Australia and Tim Olsen Gallery

Amsterdam born, New York based artist Jan Frank isn’t shy about the fact that he believes he is the next Cy Twombly and is continuing the tradition of his favourite artist Mondrian.  Luckily for Frank, his confidence in himself is not at all misplaced.  Both his personality and his work inspire the sort of admiration and respect that justify his self-belief.
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Marisa Purcell: Halo

Ethereality is inherent in Marisa Purcell’s latest body of work, aptly titled ‘Halo’, presented by Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney. Her series of oil
paintings are contemporary meditations on pre-Renaissance sacred imagery, responding particularly to the work of Fra Angelico in Florence’s San Marco monastery, which took Purcell’s interest during her residency in Chianti,
Italy earlier this year. ... read more

24 Hours The Arts Diary

"I think as a New-York based painter, to fully understand Australian painting, one has to rediscover the importance and validity of modernism - I did; and am very happy for it," said Jan Frank. For his first exhibition here, Minimalism to Modernism, Jan Frank's painting for Australia, the painter eschews his female nudes to focus more on abstract expressionism by way of de Kooning and Mondrian. The resultant works are full of vivid energy, powerful colours and questing lines. ... read more

Art

Matthew Johnson's paintings are all about colour. His canvases feature swathes of diffuse background colours overlaid with soft-edged circles. Like the dot screen of a reproduced picture on a printed page, these layers come together to seduce the eye with hidden patterns and swirling lines. Johnson's latest show, Coalescence (pictured, until August 12, Tuesday - Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 10am- 5pm, Sunday noon-5pm, Tim Olsen Gallery 63 Jersey Road Woollahra 9327 3922) continues this painterly experimentation but, with a break from more than a decade of exploring the depths of his trademark diffuse fields, the artist had introduced vibrant colours and hard edges. The results are remarkable, bringing a new and visually scintillating vibrancy to the work.

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Painters renew brush with the bush

Road trips to secluded spots have inspired Australian art’s young guns, writes Adam Fulton.
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Slow study of a changing landscape

You have heard of the slow food movement. Slow food. Slow living. If there's a type of art that fits the slow philosophy, perhaps Ann Thomson's is it. ... read more

Real riches to be found in an enduring and abstract vision

In an era of fleeting fads, Ann Thomson's works invite quiet contemplation, writes Joyce Morgan ... read more

Brush with death transformed to art

On February 17 this year, Sophie Cape was painting alone on an Austrian mountain side, when a terrifying roar of wind heralded an avalanche. The Sydney artist was buried, along with 4 large canvases laid out on the snow. ... read more

Outback Her Inspiration - Exhibition's Sad Footnote

Mosman artist Jo Bertini's latest exhibition of desert paintings has a sad footnote. The paintings were inspired by her outback trip last year when she was due to meet up with ABC journalist Paul Lockyer.
However, Lockyer, his cameraman John Bean and pilot Gary Ticehurst, died in a helicopter crash on the eastern shore of Lake Eyre.
"I was devastated - I had only just been talking to Paul," Bertini said. ... read more

Pools of light illuminate fragility of humanity in the natural setting

The evolution of sophisticated but relatively cheap digital cameras, the availability of computer software means pretty much anyone these days can call themselves a photographer. ... read more

Open Gallery

Anyone attracted to modernist architecture will enjoy the work of Paul Davies... ... read more

Maestri's Portrait of a Landscape in Town

Sydney gallerist Tim Olsen claims a Victorian link by recalling his childhood at the Dunmoochin artist's
colony, when the likes of Fred Williams, John Brack and Albert Tucker would come to dine with his father, the artist John Olsen.
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Best In Show

Surreal films, fine antiquities, 3D video installations and melancholy photography will broaden your mind over the coming months
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Colour Schemes

The act of putting paint on canvas creates fascinating tensions between the cerebral, the sensual and the suggestive. ... read more

Arts - About Town

Paul Davies: Tim Olsen pop-up gallery. A Sydney artist and quintessentially Sydney gallerist in Melbourne? ... read more

Unpacking the Painted Library

It’s enormous, two metres by seven metres, and by far the most expensive piece in the show at $70,000, even without the purpose-built $20,000- plus gilt frame. In fact, the only mystery about James McGrath’s monumental Ex-Libris, the central work in his new show opening at the Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney today, is who has a wall big enough to hang it.
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A Brush With Greatness

Is landscape painter Luke Sciberras the next John Olsen? ... read more

Phantom Surge

Swirling white lines float above the golden yellow plains and vast skies in Philip Hunter's latest series of semi-abstract landscapes. A recurring motiff in the artists work, they shimmer with energy and almost pulse with light, like the afterburn of a sparkler. ... read more

Masters at Work

Top dealers flocking to the influential Hong Kong art fair see it all, from young talent to genuine show- stoppers to the tasteless and over-priced, writes John McDonald. ... read more

Where to buy...

When Michael Johnson isn’t painting, he likes to go fishing at night, says Joyce Morgan in The Sydney Morning Herald. At night, “you have to feel what’s going on – it’s all communication by touch,” he says. Asking his students to paint blindfold gave them that same sense. Despite the shimmering bands of jewel like colour: “After a while you get a grasp on it, like the body movements of a dancer.” ... read more

From the Heart

Despite contrasting views of the world, two artists find common ground by putting emotion before technique, writes John McDonald.

The conundrum of how to express one’s thoughts and feelings in a way that doesn’t become illustrative or didactic lies at the heart of abstract art. Many artists consider abstraction to be a logical progression, believing that once they have crossed the lines that separates them from strictly representational art there is no turning back. This made it doubly startling last week to see Michael Johnson’s extraordinary drawing of a snow leopard completes as part of last year’s artist’s project at Taronga Park Zoo. ... read more

When the Invisible Becomes Visible

For artist Michael Johnson, size most definitely matters.. ... read more

Ben Ali Ong - Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming

With its darkly poetic title, Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming, Ben Ali Ong’s latest series will not disappoint those familiar with his ominous, seductive and moody photographs. The exhibition which is being shown at Tim Olsen Gallery, as part of Art Month Sydney, chronicles Ong’s ongoing fascination with ideas of mortality, spirituality and the subconscious. ... read more

Open Gallery

Ben Ali Ong’s gothic black-and-white images of wintry branches, bird wheeling against a cloudy sky and landscapes at moonrise conjure up passages from Jane Eyre or an Edgar Allan Poe story. The Sydney artist shoots on 35mm film and then scratches patterns on the negative to create beautifully textured Type C prints. A detail of Ballads of the Dead & Dreaming #2 is pictured above. Downstairs, Archibald winner Guy Maestri shows central west landscapes inspired by a stay at Hill End. Tim Olsen Gallery, 63 Jersey Rd, Woollahra, 9327 3922. Mon Fri 10-6pm; Sat 10am-5pm; Sun noon-5pm, closes Sunday. ... read more

An abstract blast from the present

As floods follows droughts, the art dealers are hoping a new year will bring clients rushing back through their doors. The previous 12 months were so quiet and visitation so poor that 2011 simply has to be better. This may be an optimistic view, but only an optimist would ever open a commercial gallery. The problem has not been the quality of the shows but the dogged reluctance of buyers to succumb to their acquisitive impulses. The money was there but self-denial was practices with a rigour that is rarely seen in Sydney. As usual there are many shows crying out for attention, but at the risk of making an arbitrary connection, I’ll look at three exhibitions by three young painters working in completely different styles.. Sophie Cape, at the Tim Olsen Gallery is making her debut…  Cape, who is the youngest of these three artists but perhaps, the most confidant... ... read more

24 Hours - The Arts Diary

Cross a paintbrush with an adrenalin rush and you get artist Sophie Cape, pictured. A champion downhill skier until injuries forced a change of career, Cape describes her violent way with a brush as "a cathartic expulsion of energy". Her pyschological self portraits, ... read more

Painting with an Adrenalin Brush

Somewhere within Sophie Cape’s violent and visceral paintings is her biography. As the dirt and paint intersect on huge pieces of paper, the results tell the story of an elite athlete distraught after injures took away her goals. Cape was a champion skier who changed careers after serious knee and muscle injuries. ... read more

Soul of a Nation Rendered in Light and Shade

In casting around for a theme for this year’s Australia Day special, we hoped to choose one that would give the artists scope to explore and celebrate what it means to be Australian. The brief was that the work should be a personal response to our country’s diversity, landscape and culture. Each artist has brought a distinct vision of how they understand and picture our national character, reflecting the wide rang of reactions to the idea of Australia Day. ... read more

Phoenix Rising

Photographer Rex Dupain was in a town in Western NSW and the locals were warning him not to go near the local Aboriginal reserve. Your car will be damaged, they said; you’ll be robbed or beaten up. But then Dupain met an Aboriginal man in the street who offered to take him there and show him around. “Don’t worry bro,” the man said. “If you’re with me you’ll be OK.”

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Artist scales down - the size of her works, not her output

It has taken Cherry Hood six years to overcome her fear of the landscape at her farm near Goulburn. “It’s been a difficult thing,” she said. “We have this big black range of hills near us and they’re quite spooky and we’re surrounded by these white trees that are quite eerie.” Years of drought had taken a toll, but Hood said rains had brought life to the district’s parched farms: “Its very green and lush. ... read more

Open Gallery

Emdur's seascapes featuring floating women have always been singularly beautiful with their weightless, Ophelia-like overtones but in this show her work takes on a more provocative edge with multiple, occasionally intertwined naked bodies. "Martine's paintings celebrate aquatic liberation," says gallerist Tim Olsen. Detail from Sage pictured below. ... read more

No Place Like Home

There’s something a little spooky about a Paul Davies painting. Using vivid block colours and hand-cut stencils, he paints the kind of sleep space-age houses beloved of Palm Springs millionaires: floating concrete slabs, hectares of glass, kidney shaped swimming pools. Curtains waft invitingly around sliding doors. Palm trees reach for the sky.  You can almost hear the tinkle of ice in a highball glass. But there is no one home. The houses are dark and empty. With no one to swim in them, the pools are mirrors. The skies range from a baleful yellow to an irradiated pink or an ominous black. ... read more

Best of the Rest

Sculpture 2010 is a showcase of works by Robert Hague, Camie Lyons (Wings in the Big Blue, pictured) and Peter Vandermark in a variety of media.

Seeking inspiration creates a net effect

JUST before he won the Archibald Prize earlier this year, Sydney artist Guy Maestri felt impatient and dissatisfied with his work. ... read more

Open Gallery

David Larwill, New Paintings

In the 1980's, David Larwill was a member of Roar, a group of young, anti-establishmentarian artists who ran their own exhibitions and occupied themselves with a provocative, new-fangled style of painting known as figurative expressionism. 

Open Gallery

Davies is popular with buyers and his latest exhibition of unpeopled architectural paintings - some of which feature fine, hand-cut stencil work and each of which has its own note of mystery - has sold out. ... read more

Guy Maestri

Revelling in paint's materiality, Guy Maestri creates abstract gestures of colour and line supplement by a figurative lexicon expressive of environmental concerns. ... read more

Where to buy...

Martine Emdur takes photos of women's bodies submerged in the ocean off Sydney. Back in the studio, she uses the images as a point of departure for her large-scale underwater nudes.

Box Office - Andrew Taylor: Outside

Drift into the artists dreamy "florascapes" in this exhibition of subtly elusive paintings and prints. ... read more

James McGrath

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Return to the landscape

Philip Hunter's paintings, compared with those of Nolan and Williams, plumb the continent's mysteries, write Peter Craven. ... read more

Hunter's gathering value

You may not have heard of him, but Philip Hunter has become one of the most sought-after artists in the country almost overnight. ... read more

A Man of the Landscape

A Man of the Landscape - Philip Hunter's 'Lines In The Dirt' exhibition will be opened by John Olsen at the Tim Olsen Gallery on Tuesday. (Olsen has commented that the present work reveals Hunter has climbed the ladder to become one of Australia's leading artists.) ... read more

Uber male gets the chop

There is a new take on an age-old symbol of potent male aggression, writes Rosemary Sorensen. ... read more

His steer-way to heaven

Inspired by the bulls of Mudgee and Lennox Head, and by the writing of Ernest (Death in the Afternoon) Hemingway, the artist Angus McDonald is fascinated by bulls. His new collection of wistful and sturdy bulls will surround the directors, management and sponsors of the Sydney Easter Show as they lunch next Thursday at Tim Olsen's Woollahra art gallery, two days after the opening there of McDonald's exhibition, 'Snort!!'. ... read more

Dirk Westphal - Photographs

Some like to go fishing, some like to have an aquarium and others, like New York based artist Dirk Westphal, turn their love of fish into an art form. ... read more

All In a Relaxing Week's Work

Eclectic paintings jostle for position with celebrity nudes in David Bromley's latest exhibition, reports Louise Schwartzkoff.

Marie Hagerty: The Real Thing

Marie Hagerty over the past few years has established and refined her pictorial language to arrive at a form which is peculiarly her own. She is a young artist in her early 40s whose most recent work is certainly her best. ... read more

David Bromley

Bare Nakes Babes, For Art's Sake - Megan Gale nude. Cheyenne Tozzi topless. Kristy Hinze starkers. Now I have your attention, let me tell you all these women posed for artist David Bromley and the paintings are on display at the Tim Olsen Gallery in Woollahra. And more surprising, he convinced non-model types to disrobe. You can see paintings of designer Collette Dinnigan and singer Kate Ceberano. Bromley has a job most Aussies blokes would happily kill for. 'I'm afraid when a beautiful, famous woman is naked in the room, I'm more intent on capturing the image rather than thinking about breasts,' he confessed shyly. ... read more

Salute to a 'blue bitch goddess'

The fireworks arrive early as John Olsen celebrates his birthday with a swashbuckling assault on Sydney. ... read more

STEFAN DUNLOP

Queensland meat lover Stefan Dunlop uses his wide brush and graphic sensibility to explore beauty in a carcass, roasted as well as raw. ... read more

Open Gallery

Robert Malherbe's works are best viewed from afar, where the scoops and swirls of paint become striking nudes. ... read more

Pathways to Other Worlds

Marie Hagerty and Vera Moller

Open Gallery

Paul Davies' name often comes up in lists of hot artists and ones to watch. ... read more

Stars come out for Olsen

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