Fallacy

In Fallacy, eleven artists playfully probe the visual and verbal lexicon of phalluses in the man-made world providing insights on the concept of gender and in particular, hypermasculine attitudes and behaviour.

These works are infused with phallic motifs as a reference to the comedic device of ‘dick jokes’ as well as both of society’s proliferation of the visual and conceptual penis as an idealised, and perhaps idolised, symbol of ‘manliness’. The artists’ mutual agenda is to explore the delicate, and at times taboo, subjects of oppressive masculine roles, male identity, and gender inequality as well as how these are reflected and supported through the visual culture in which we live through humour and irony. Fallacy aims to vacillate between metaphor and earnestness to destabilise both the viewer and conventional notions of gender, where the artists endeavour to play with the dicks that have been thrust upon society and in turn determine how to handle them.

There will be a live performance by Alana Wesley during the exhibition opening on Wednesday 6th December from 6-8pm.

Opening Wednesday 6th December | 6–8pm.

Exhibition continues until Friday 15th December.

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

About the Artists

Carla Adams (b.1984, Perth) is an early career West Australian artist working with paint and textiles. After graduating with an advanced diploma in contemporary art from Central TAFE in 2012, Adams went on to receive first class honours from Curtin University in 2014. Adams has exhibited at Free Range Gallery, MOANA, Bus Projects (Melb), FELTSpace (Adelaide), ARTBAR at The Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) and her work was selected for the 2013 Hatched national graduate exhibition at PICA. In 2017 she will exhibit at Turner Gallery, Verge Gallery, Gertrude Street Projection Festival and Blindside (Melbourne). Adams is a sessional academic at Curtin University and is director of Smart Casual gallery.

Frankie “Dicks Out For the Everybody” Chow is a newbie curator and conceptual artist working primarily with video and performance based in Sydney, Australia. Audience psychology, time perception, endurance, and art process are recurring subjects of interest in her practice. Drawing from narrative clichés and tropes, as well as Surrealism and apophenia – the human tendency to perceive meaning or related events from abstract data – her works often examine the symbiotic relationship between fantasy and reality, and the effects of the spectacle in mass media on audience psychology and the physical world.

Andrew Christie is a South-West-Sydney based multidisciplinary artist and curator with specialities in sculptural, institutional and community based practice. His main sources of inspiration come from examining systems until they reveal some form of absurdity, humour or failure, and consequently present a demand on the viewer to exercise their critical faculties. Christie also draws on his Greek-Australian heritage insofar as it influences his sense of political correctness, sexuality and cultural identity. His work often employs an element of levity which acts to disarm fixed perceptions and revel in the essential qualities of incongruity and conflict of the everyday. Christie is completing a Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts USYD and has been awarded the Macarthur and Emerging Artist Prize through the Fisher's Art Award.

Graduating from Sydney College of the Arts, Liam Crowley works across video, performance, sculpture and sound. Through a process of introspection, he examines various modes of practice in which we traverse space, whether it be through navigation, exploration or pilgrimage. Particular consideration is focused upon our relationships with particular sites and spaces and how they affect the way in which we interface with the environment or other individuals within the environment.

eDuard was born in a laboratory of perverse laws. He is a bastard with a bastard language. His nature is one of bastardy; it is good and beautiful thus. Using casting as method and metaphor, he uses the space between nostalgia and shame as a moment to negotiate identities in Australia, identities cast into moulds of memory, language and landscape. eDuard lives in Adelaide, his practice is based at Fontanelle Studios and he likes long sentences.

Hannah McKellar’s practice experiments with form and material in the context of soft sculpture to explore anxieties of self, society and the environment in which we live. The artist’s practice usually consists of in-depth embroidery, wire weaving and fibre works. Using production as a form of therapy, the artist adopts nostalgic materials and time-consuming processes in an attempt to mentally slow down.

Bella Taylor is a ceramic and installation artist based in Sydney, Australia. Taylor studied a BVA with honours at Sydney College of the Arts and currently working towards shows in Australia and Hong Kong as well as domestic ceramics. Themes of the everyday and the role of objects in a transcendent and or immersive experience are pervasive in her work. A lot of her installations are interactive for this reason - attempting to create an experience between object and viewer, informing her practice in the cultural uses of objects and their function in ritual and ceremony.

Hannah Toohey is a textile based object/installation artist. Her work extends the conventions of printmaking beyond paper, experimenting with medium to explore the idea of “print” and multiple in sculptural form. Her current body of work explores societal discord through the visual metaphor of disease.

Rat is a Canberra-Sydney chimera. Having studied painting at the ANU for many years, he left it all to chase his dreams and became a master of many fields. Now dabbling in installation/fashion/painting/feasting, we see a new look into his $5 on weekdays and sexy practice.

Alana Wesley is a Sydney based performance and installation artist. Wesley’s work plays with themes of persona and the ego, whilst embracing a distinctively dark sense of humour. Wesley often scrutinises aspects of culture and society in her work and creates situations through which viewers must confront these larger issues in a smaller, constructed setting. Alana finished her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the UNSW Art & Design in 2015 and completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at the Sydney College of the Arts in 2016. She has exhibited in spaces such as MOP, Articulate, Verge Gallery and Airspace in Sydney as well as internationally in New York.

Jeremy Smith is a Sydney based printmaker and artist. Heavily influenced by both classical and contemporary artists such as Bosch and Grayson Perry, he combines his interest in psychology with his skill for pastiche and pop culture references to create highly details large and small-scale works that map the landscape of personal and social identities. He graduated from COFA with a Bachelor and a Masters Degree.