News   Will Coles - I fucking Love Melbourne Opening 8th March 2012 at Dark Horse Experiment     Opening  Friday  8th March 2013  6-9pm Exhibition from 8th March -  29th March 2013 Will Coles may best be known for his uncommissioned public installations. For years he’s been gluing down concrete mobile phones, teddy bears, footballs, squashed drink cans, skulls, and remote controls, as well as the more conspicuous concrete TVs, washing machines & suitcases. Usually they bear a message, sometimes just a word, but they are always trying to plant a seed of thought.   His work can be found on streets all over the world: Many throughout the streets and lane-ways of Melbourne. For those already familiar with his small concrete ‘street works' dotted around town, now is a chance to see his larger gallery sculptures.  In his first-ever appearance in a Melbourne gallery, Dark Horse Experiment presents their opening show for the New Year. We would like to invite you to Will Coles’ exhibition: I FUCKING LOVE MELBOURNE.     Coles’ work displays the remnants of our throwaway society with his rendering of consumerist iconography into thought provoking sculptures. Religious icons, pop culture references and death symbolism merge with the plasticity of today’s toys and mod-cons in a somewhat vulgar, yet unapologetic show of defiance. His artwork is a thoroughly clear critique of Australian culture. The more we consume the less individual we are.  A famous culture jamer, Coles skilfully represents a culture obsessed with individuality, yet completely taken in by the advertisement that sells them that same myth.  We look forward to see you at the opening.     Dark Horse Experiment Team     James Bonnici Opening 14 March 2012 at Red Gallery     James Bonnici’s work explores the modern, urban environment we have created for ourselves, and how this impacts on us psychologically. His work suggests that within the everyday locations that consistently surround us, there is little consideration for beauty and contemplation. Instead, we find ourselves in highly functional settings where the spaces are enclosed, claustrophobic and dehumanizing.From car parks to suburban housing developments, our views are being blocked by high walls, fences, power lines and various other utilitarian structures. What is left is a landscape where the mood is melancholic and leaves its inhabitants with feelings of absence, restlessness and anxiety. By rendering these oppressive spaces with muted colour, uncomfortable composition and exaggerated lighting, otherworldliness is created out of the familiar, leaving the viewer with a sense of unease and thoughts of the immaterial. Where humans are present they appear distorted and fuzzy under harsh, florescent lighting; they are a reaction to their constructed environment, repressing their human reality.         Blender Ln Artists Market Sat. 10 March 2012           ONCE A YEAR BLENDER CHRISTMAS PARTY               Blender Studios 2010 Christmas Party Dec 17th, 18th & 19th 2010 Adi Geoffrey Carran Ed Den Lim Adrian Doyle Stephanie May Eather Drew Funk Joseph Flynn Joel Gailer Georg Heesco Rachel Jessie-Ra Kristin McIver Michael Meneghetti Michael Peck Tim Sterling Regan Tamanui Keith Wong   It has been a big year at the Blender Studios. Come and celebrate the year at the annual Blender Christmas Exhibition. The whole of the Blender and Michael Koro Galleries will be turned into a huge exhibition, showcasing the vast talent of the Blender artists. Friday 17th Opening at 6pm Music from 9 pm until late with performances by: Saskia Sansom DJ Ronito DJ Rashid BB Shane Basinski Sat 18th & Sun 19th Open 12-5pm   Cheers, Doyle         Michael Peck It's not that it burns Solo Exhibition 20 Oct 2010 - 21 Nov 2010   Dickerson Gallery, Sydney We all dream, whether in monochrome or searing colour, we all travel other realms during the somnambulistic hours of night. It is strange to think that not so long ago our first collective dreams – those captured in photography, television and cinema – were also black and white. Michael Peck doesn’t literally paint in black and white, but his harshly reduced palette seems to share the same timelessness as those dream-images of old. He has the strangest ability to make the bleak truly beautiful. A part of this is, of course, purely technical – Peck clearly relishes the gradual and painstaking task of building up layer upon layer of paint, creating a depth that invites the viewer into his mysterious world. Peck is, first and foremost, a narrative painter. These paintings could be read as film stills, moments of frozen time from a far larger saga. Peck’s reductive palette, one of deep grey-brownish hues, seems to force the viewer to add colour, to add movement in a world of utter stillness. - Words by Ashley Crawford     Michael Koro Galleries Presents A Sweeter System of Donation (Apple Flavour) By Keith Wong Opening night 6th Aug 2010 6-8pm Michael Koro presents two potentially scandalous exhibitions for the August show, Keith Wong's A Sweeter System of Donation (apple flavour) and Robin Healing who represents himself as subject, performance and artist as the one entity.  Both artists are leaping from the barely formulated platform of relational aesthetics. They engage with the art gallery as both a stage and a prop and invite attendees to be part of their self-prescribed psychosis through interactive performance or begging the viewer to donate, by a philanthropic gesture, thus incorporating the viewer and complete the work…  Michael Koro Galleries: Proudly presenting Keith Wong. “In support of the artist, a system of donation has been devised. A system that will only accept coins at the point of insertion. To give, the artist would ask that you add to the works value by adding to its weight. The measurement of which also incorporates a consideration of apples. An essential ingredient that holds the whole system in place, as the artist sets the gift in motion, to achieve in this work, the exploits of giving.”   Melbourne Propaganda Windows and Blender Projeckt Space: Proudly presenting Robin Healing, a unique individual who possesses a divinely magnificent gift that defies scientific understanding and human comprehension. Are we ready as a species to accept this gift that spans beyond our conventionally accepted normality? Are we ready to open our hearts without the boundaries our minds so easily impose to become childlike again in our ability to receive nourishment divinely offered as our birthright? Find out for yourselves in a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet Healing in the flesh as he makes 2 weekly appearances over the duration of his tenure with us. Dates: Friday 6th August 7.30pm (special opening event) Thursday 12th August 6.30pm Saturday 14th August 2pm Thursday 19th August 6.30pm Saturday 21st August 2pm Thursday 26th August 6.30pm Saturday 28th August 2pm (final session)     Opening 2nd July 2010 6-9pm   Michael Koro Galleries Presents TOMORROW Opening 2nd July 2010 6-9pm Michael Koro Galleries presents   Tomorrow Kristen McIver Ry David Bradley Valentina Palonen   Three artists from glaringly different practices present alternate standpoints in the upcoming July Michael Koro exhibition. Tomorrow is an exploration into 21 century consumerism, animism and post painterly abstraction. The artists combine installation, print, painting and new media in strange and fantastic assemblages. Please join the artists for the opening on 2 July from 6pm. Tomorrow runs until 1 August at Michael Koro Galleries.  Introducing Kristin McIver utilises materials such as neon, acrylic and hyper-gloss paint to explore the themes of desire, aspiration and consumerism in the 21st century.  A VCA graduate, McIver’s work has been selected as finalist in a number of awards including the Montalto Sculpture Prize and City of Whyalla Art Prize.   In 2009, McIver’s work Room To Breathe II was the recipient of the Elliot Family Ten Year Collection Award.  McIver’s work is held in private collections in Victoria and New South Wales. Rhy David Bradley bends visual and photographic samples through a combination of programs and software to produce his prints onto silk, cotton and Plexiglas.  He is most recently a finalist in the Metro Gallery Art Award and was selected for the director curated annual exhibition Exploration 9 at Flinders Lane Gallery. Bradley completed digital media production at Four Corners in London in 2001 and continued with a Visual Arts-New Media degree at Swinburne University of Technology in 2003.  Bradley’s work is held in private collections in Australia and Europe. Valentina Palonen draws on motifs of inter-species transmogrification as a means of exploring the recent revival of animism in the Western world.  Palonen employs a combination of conspicuously artificial materials and various visual techniques to sculpturally manipulate the idea of metamorphosis.  She has completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Southern Cross University and is currently undertaking an additional Fine Arts Honours year program at VCA. Palonen's work has featured in various exhibitions both locally and nationally. Michael Koro Galleries has hosted a series of sell-out exhibitions since its 2008 inception, featuring artists ranging from infamous street stencil artists to classic Australian painters. The gallery is attached to the influential Blender Studios, a research and studio complex founded by local artist Adrian Doyle in 2001, that has served as a base for many of Melbourne’s most seminal and successful emerging artists. Michael Koro Galleries presents Adrian Doyle Opening 21 May 2010 6-9pm New Australian Landscapes Eminent contemporary artist Adrian Doyle presents New Australian Landscapes, exhibiting from 21 May until 27 June at Michael Koro Galleries. As the name suggests, the exhibition is an exploration into the artist’s unique and romanticised depiction of Australia’s urbanised environment. This year’s collection reflects the ongoing accumulation of Doyle’s ideology and vehemence to his practice. The twelve new paintings of New Australian Landscapes employ a combination of mediums; the elaborate optical language of bold geometric shapes, iconic symbols and variegated colour schemes visually correlate to earlier manifestations, but are more expansive in their realms.  These paintings invite nostalgia as the vehicle in recognising that however prosaic a suburban landscape is, behind every rectangular prism facade there contains an imperative narrative.  Viewing the home as a universal entity of discourse, the exhibition New Australian Landscapes identifies the struggle of uniformity in a post-modern world. Doyle’s practice resolves to remodel the relationship between cultural identity and the organic Australian landscape. The lines between the realities of ordinary life and a quixotic world dissolve into a decadent, organized chaos on canvas. New Australian Landscapes will coincide with an installation that Doyle created specifically for the exhibition.  At the back of the studio, black curtains will form the entrance into a room filled with an optical illusion of infinity.  Doyle further challenges notions of mediocrity in everyday life through the visual celebration of a common object.  In a world of banal stimulations, Doyle succeeds in arousing the viewer into his mitochondria of everyday existence.        Having completed a Master in Fine Arts by Research in 2002 at Victorian College of the Arts, Doyle has since exhibited internationally with group shows in Dublin, Budapest and New York, as well as undertaken a series of successful residencies in Pakistan, China and Thailand. The artist is a proud recipient of the Pratt Family Scholarship and the Martin Bequest Travelling Art Scholarship.  Doyle’s upcoming residency in France will enable him to further his investigation of the relationships between Baroque architecture and rural French landscapes.  Doyle’s artwork is widely collected and features in significant publications and renowned national and international collections. A highlight to his career will be to showcase his work at the National Gallery of Art in Canberra next year. Michael Koro Galleries has hosted a series of sell-out exhibitions since its 2008 inception, featuring artists ranging from infamous street stencil artists to classic Australian painters. The gallery is attached to the influential Blender Studios, a research and studio complex founded by Doyle in 2001 that has served as a base for many of Melbourne’s most seminal and successful emerging artists.         Blender Studios group exhibition @ Off the Kerb Galleries opening night: 8 Jan 2010 HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL THERE!!!
Blender Christmas Party 2009 Sponsor By Asahi

 

Blender Christmas Party

27th- 28th Nov 09

27th Nov

6:00-8:00PM	Michael Koro Opening "Surface" By Stephen Giblett, Fredrick Fowler and Dan Sibley
8:30-9:00PM	Conspiracy Theory Seminar (Small Talk) by Haha
9:00-Late	Band "hammocks and honey" Avant-pop disco wannabes, there’s going to be a lot going on here. Alex (ii, oblako lodka) and Prudence may have backgrounds in experimental and classical music respectively, but these dudes have dance in the blood, pumped by hearts that beat a banging four to the floor. :: Tropical :: Disco :: High Concept Performance :: Hammocks and Honey are aural AND visual fun. Follow by Richie B-B DJ

Special Thank for

 

28th Nov

12PM-4pm	Little Art Market and Garage Sales Designer dresses, Hand Made stuff, 2nd hands stuff, books and things
12pm - 6pm	Art studios and Gallery open to the public for viewing
8:30pm-late	Laneway movie at Dusk $5 entry free

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blender @ Art For Food Fed Sqaure

 

  

Opening night 'Friday 4 Sep' 6-9pm    

Michael Koro Galleries present

Jason Waterhouse lighter than air

“Stuck in traffic during peak hour on Riversdale Road, Hawthorn. It’s raining. A red balloon plays dodge-the-traffic up ahead. It’s funny how ideas grow.”

Jason Waterhouse’s exhibition lighter than air is a narrative collection of new sculpture and works on paper, all developed from this small, mundane moment.

Deceptively heavy children’s toys ­­­­– Quad bikes and balloons cast in bronze and aluminum – play with our perception of weight.  The red balloon itself is depicted drifting between control and surrender.  It exists in a state of duality, at times a message deliverer, at others an escape device.  Waterhouse sometimes depicts the red balloon as a force capable of carrying away the signifiers of child hood dreams, yet at others it is depicted showing its vulnerability, left to the mercy of dark, stormy landscapes.

Opening Friday September 4 and running until October 4, the show forms Waterhouse’s seventh solo show and his first for 2009. As well as contributing to over 40 group exhibitions, the artist has been awarded with six art prizes (including the prestigious Moreland Sculpture Prize, Sculpture by the Sea and the Young Sculptors Prize), and has been recognised as a finalist for many more.  He has also curated three major exhibitions, most recently Motor as part of the Contempora Festival of Sculpture, Docklands.

Michael Koro Galleries has hosted a series of sell-out exhibitions since its 2008 inception, featuring artists ranging from infamous street stencillers to classic Australian painters. Directed by acclaimed local artist Adrian Doyle, the gallery is attached to the influential Blender Studios, a research and studio complex that has served as a base since 2001 for many of Melbourne’s most seminal and successful street artists.
Opening Friday 4 September 6-8
3 September – 4 October

 

Michael Koro Galleries and Ochre Gallery present

 

 

 

The house is a universal icon and in its simplest form it is one of the most recognised images on earth. It has many variations though culture and climate. Yet, the overall association with the home is generally the same worldwide.

For many the home is the height of success. The Holy Grail.

For others it is unattainable. Or a prison of balanced books and responsibility. The house is where people live out their lives. It is the mitochondria of everyday existence. I love houses and homes. I am fascinated by the designs, history and all that goes on inside.

In Suburbia, houses come together to create vast suburbs. Row after row of dreams, happiness and sorrow, scar the earth to become the new, modern, and more relevant Australian landscape.

The way we engage with the landscape has changed over generations.  We are an urbanised community, with an unfamiliar relationship with the rural landscape.

The romantic notion of the Australian landscape still exists. It has however been hijacked by sentimentality and Nostalgia. The true modern Australian Landscape is made up of identical clad suburban streets and small suburbs with small, but important suburban stories. It is in this mediocrity that Australia finds its greatness, and a large part of its identity……........

Opening July 9th and running until August 16th, New Australian Landscapes presents a collection of large-scale paintings by acclaimed artist Adrian Doyle, exploring the idea of the suburban home as Australian cultural icon.

     Through meticulous use of colour and medium, Doyle’s paintings explore the idea of suburbia as a vast library of small, important histories, and the ways in which these stories of mediocrity form a large part of Australia’s identity.

      Doyle studied painting at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts, completing his Master of Fine Arts by Research in 2002. Since then he has exhibited internationally, from group shows in Dublin, Budapest and New York to a series of successful shows throughout Asia. He has completed residencies in Pakistan, China and Thailand, and will complete a residency with Artistay in France next year, during which he will carry out an intensive investigation of the relationships between Baroque architecture and rural French landscapes.

      His artwork is widely collected and is included in important national and international collections such as the National Gallery of Australia. He is a recipient of the Pratt Family Scholarship, Australia Council grants as well as the Martin Bequest Traveling Art Scholarship.

      The paintings featured in New Australian Landscapes are super-detailed, multilayered creations rich in pattern and recognisable iconography. Unexpected colours – khakis, umbers, bright magentas - are masterfully harmonised, drawing beauty from visual elements of our suburban surroundings that often go unnoticed.

      Exhibiting concurrently to New Australian Landscapes will be I’m Here, at Ochre Galleries from 10th to 2nd August. In addition to a selection of paintings by Doyle, the exhibition will feature contemporary Australian works by leading Australian artists that further challenge notions of the urban landscape and cultural identity.  

Michael Koro Galleries has hosted a series of sell-out exhibitions since its 2008 inception, featuring artists ranging from infamous street stencillers to classic Australian painters. The gallery is attached to the influential Blender Studios, a research and studio complex founded by Doyle in 2001 that has served as a base for many of Melbourne’s most seminal and successful artists and street artists.  

Previews of this exhibition can be arranged anytime after the 1st of July.

 

Melbourne Propaganda Window: Screening across June


                                        Jenny Hall 'Hair Today

 

                       

 Confronting and narcissistic, Hall skilfully plays out her visceral act whilst maintaining a poker face.
 
 'Hair Today' sounds light and playful, but its nature is quite far from it. 'Hair Today' explores loss of the emotional and physical through an
 obsession with the feminine appearance. The voyeur is invited to watch Hall's private and personal engagement with her own reflected image. In this incarnation of the artist self portrait, the moving images explore a passive, yet disturbing performance of Hall pulling her own hair out before
 the camera, oscillating between an act of self-grooming to that of self-harm.  The saying 'I feel like pulling my hair out' will resonate differently after seeing 'Hair Today'.
 
 A personal insight in to the effects of major illness.
 
 Opening this Friday 29th May across all three screens from 6pm at *110
 Franklin Street CBD

Michael Koro Galleries presents

 

               

                      

photofigure

 

 

Opening May 29th and running until early July, photofigure brings together four of Australia’s most exciting contemporary photographers in an exploration of the human figure. Totaling thirteen large-scale prints, the artists’ diverse visions share themes of artifice and construction, as well as a palpable tension between banality and magnitude. From Michelle Tran’s starkly sensuous constructions to Paul Batt’s voyeuristic ode to the mundane, each image gently toys with concepts of the human figure and what constitutes a portrait.

Paul Batt’s critically acclaimed series Service Station Portraits 2006-08 has been the subject of numerous articles and essays, including a feature article in the current edition of Photofile. Poignant and sinister, the images’ seemingly lo-fi, surveillance-style execution belies a rich undercurrent of critical engagement. Leading art reviewer Robert Nelson describes the series as connecting “the everyday realities with a cosmic burden, almost reaching beyond the photography to a higher level of moral consciousness.” In their accusatory capture of unsuspecting subjects, he writes, Batt’s images “transform the idea of portraiture” (The Age, 2008). Selected exhibitions include solo shows at The Centre for Contemporary Photography and Kings Artists’ Run Initiative, as well as group shows at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for Photography.

At the age of 23, Michelle Tran has already been recognized by a number of leading national art prizes, including the National Youth Self Portrait Prize (finalist, 2008). Her quietly minimalist images, featuring footballers, fake flowers, and severely posed young women, have appeared in over 13 exhibitions and feature in the collections of the Australia Council and the Athenaeum Club. She is currently completing her Master of Fine Art at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts.

Debuting in photofigure, Robert Starr’s painterly images inject traditional, grandiose portraiture with arresting immediacy. Inhabiting an undefined, imaginary historical world, his subjects project a realness and tangibility that contrasts sharply with their constructed costumes and set-piece background.

Though strikingly bright, airy and open, the works of Simon Cross are perhaps the most mysterious of all. A lone figure in a hazmat suit conducts inscrutable outdoor experiments, waving fluorescent orange implements against a perfectly blue sky. In one image, we are allowed a glimpse of the figure’s face, but it remains shadowed, his expression elusive. Like the other images featured in thephotofigure, the work hints at a narrative that the viewer can only imagine.

Exhibiting concurrently to photofigure will be a new work by video artist Jenny Hall, to be displayed in the gallery’s Melbourne Propaganda Windows after dark. The unsettling and deeply personal imagery complements and completes the exhibition’s overarching somber mood.  
 

Michael Koro Galleries has hosted a series of sell-out exhibitions since its 2008 inception, featuring artists ranging from infamous street stencillers to classic Australian painters. Directed by acclaimed local artist Adrian Doyle, the gallery is attached to the influential Blender Studios, a research and studio complex that has served as a base since 2001 for many of Melbourne’s most seminal and successful street artists.  
 

 

Previous Exhibition

 

Obecjkt (New Sculpture)

 

                                      

Infamous and prolific, London-based multimedia street artist D*Face utilizes spray paint, stickers, posters, and stencils to challenge our surrounding ethos of conspicuous consumption. Through his adaptation and subversion of pre-existing capitalist symbols, from bank notes to billboards, D*Face encourages viewers to critically examine our increasingly bizarre, media-saturated pop culture. Until now, his intensely popular culture-jamming work has never been exhibited in Melbourne.  Now, for this first outing down under, D*Face has turned his skills to sculpture – specifically, a massive mixed-media megaphone mouth. Created especially for Lifelounge’s Big Mouth Project, the sculpture dramatically calls attention to the need to ‘speak up’ in the workplace. After a once-only outing at Luna Park, the big mouth is now nestled at the end of the Blender Lane way off Franklin St. (Pushing the boundaries of what street art can be.) It is fittingly surrounded by the artwork of some of Melbourne’s most influential street artists (including Ha-Ha, Vexta, Monkey, ghostPatrol and Drew Funk). 

The mouth is displayed as part of Obecjkt, an exhibition of fresh sculpture in the adjacent Michael Koro Galleries. From delicate stationery structures to languid skateboards, eerie flocked animals to multifaceted geometric hangings, the work on display reflects a wide range of cutting-edge creations.

Other artists include Jason Waterhouse, whose impressive list of accolades includes the Moreland Sculpture Prize (winner, 2005), the Damien Courtney Memorial Prize for Young Sculptors (winner, 2005), the Dame Elizabeth Murdoch Prize (winner, 2004) and finalist places in many more of Australia’s most esteemed sculpture prizes. Ben Fasham’s massive abstract forms have also been recognised by a number of leading sculpture prizes, most recently the Montalto Sculpture Prize (finalist, 2009) the Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize (finalist, 2009) and the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award (finalist, 2008).

The credentials of all the exhibiting artists are equally exceptional: Natalie Ryan has exhibited nationally and internationally, and is currently completing a three-year studio residency at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, while Andrew Gutteridge has already hosted seven solo exhibitions since completing his Masters degree in 2005. Tim Sterling (stamstag recipient) has studied and exhibited from Amsterdam to Venice, and has recently been awarded a grant to carry out a Australia Council studio residency in Milan.

Prolific hybrid and experimedia artist Michael Menneghetti is co-founder of the gallery’s Melbourne Propaganda Window, a permanent, public projection space for experimental video and projection artwork. Exhibiting concurrently with Obecjkt will be Melbourne based video artist Pip Ryan. 

Michael Koro Galleries has hosted a series of sell-out exhibitions since its 2008 inception, featuring artists ranging from infamous street stencillers to classic Australian painters. Directed by acclaimed local artist Adrian Doyle, the gallery is attached to the influential Blender Studios, a research and studio complex that has served as a base since 2001 for many of Melbourne’s most seminal and successful street artists.

 

Previous Exhibition