The Absurdist Project

A. So you know how this will end?
A. I have no idea, all I know is that it will and that it will start all over again.
A. You’re talking about your artwork, right?
A. Der!!!

The Absurdist Project was borne out of a mutual awareness of each artists’ studio practice. A healthy sense of the absurd forms a common thread for Laerkesen and Cahill. Both artists explore ideas that variously prick/pop/puncture/penetrate presumptions that describe a rational world, enabling a creative freedom - like air escaping from a balloon bouncing around a room, making that familiar “flappity” sound.

Laerkesen and Cahill continue to find visual springboards from which to dive (or perhaps belly flop?) into their individual pools of artistic absurdity. Each artist relies heavenly on his intuition when working, from inception to the finished piece. Both artists seem to marry disparate images, found or remembered, then fashioning imagery into an imagined “landscape” that may not sit easily with the viewers visual expectations. Painted landscapes populated by an everyman engaged in actions best left unknown, share the stage with a sculpted mummified cub bear sitting on a wooden burl perched precariously atop a spherical stone.

This is the first time Laerkesen and Cahill have collaborated to exhibit together. This pairing has resulted in an exhibition that presents sculpture and paintings that are playful, as well as “Dark”, dramatic and visceral, familiar and unpredictable. In turn, the viewer is asked to think in new and divergent ways.

The exhibition will be opened by Nick Vickers.

Opening Wednesday 16th August | 6–8pm.

Exhibition continues until Sunday 27th August.

Gallery open Tuesday–Saturday 11am–6pm | Sunday 11am–4pm.

Anthony Cahill

Anthony Cahill’s paintings reflects his interest in the absurd and his passion for the environment. With over 30 years experience his confident work talks about the landscape in a singular way. Cahill has been the recipient of the Art Gallery of NSW Travelling Scholarship and he has been in over fifty group and solo exhibitions. Cahill currently lectures in drawing at the National Art School and holds Master’s degree in Fine Arts from NAS.

Adam Laerkesen

Adam is a Sydney-based sculptor and a graduate of the National Art School and Sydney College of the Arts.

Adam’s first solo show in 1990, ‘Task of the Translator’, has been followed by eight more solo shows, the most recent being ‘Hypnopomp’ at Gippsland Gallery and Dianne Tanzer Gallery + projects in 2013. Adam has also participated in seventeen group shows in artist run spaces , project spaces and gallery’s such as Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Tin Sheds Gallery, Art Month Sydney, whilst exhibiting and travelling with ‘Sydney Beirut / Beirut Sydney - a cultural exchange exhibition in 1999.

Adam has been a finalist in the John Fries Memorial Prize, Melbourne Sculpture Prize, Woollahra small sculpture Prize and several Sculpture by the Sea. His work is held in art collections such as Art Bank and Sue Cato council whilst Sass and Bide have bought many of his sculptures and commissioned him in 2010 to create a major sculpture for their new ‘high end’ shop in the Strand Arcade Sydney.