3-18 April, 2021

RADIUS: NEW ART FROM THE REGION brings together four artists who live and work in South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales. Their interests span the materiality of screens and the internet and the cultivation of the self through culture and memory. Using painting, video, performance, installation and sculpture, these artists’ practices offer an indication of the breadth of new art being produced in the region.

Curated by SARAH THOMPSON
ROOM SHEET with essay by SARAH THOMPSON

AZADEH HAMZEII
With a focus on the dialogues between the individual and the universal, AZADEH mines her personal history and cultural background as an Iranian based in Meanjin (Brisbane). Drawing from a range of subjects and materials including votive offerings, beeswax, fishing hooks, her father’s old film negatives, and Keffiyeh, AZADEH investigates the localised significance of objects and the potential to elevate their meaning, creating a broader human narrative. AZADEH is alumni of Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, held a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Interdisciplinary Sculpture Making and a Diploma of Photography from Tehran University, Fine Arts Department. She has recently exhibited at Outerspace and Wreckers Artspace in Brisbane, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, and was commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’s 4A digital program.

MICHAEL PHILP
MICHAEL is a contemporary aboriginal artist from the Tweed Caldera whose works explore themes of identity, connection to land, connection to his people, and his own personal memories of his family history within the tweed community. MICHAEL was born to an aborginal mother and white fisherman father and spent much of his youth at the seaside or on the river. It is these places—where the artist connected with his father, spent time with friends, and reflected in solitude—that feature prominently in recent works. With his signature minimalist style, Michael tells the story of his people from a modern-day perspective. Philp started painting later in life but was recognised early on in his career with a commendation in the 2009 NSW Parliament Art Prize. His art has been exhibited in solo and group shows across NSW and is now nationally recognised and collected. He is passionate about sharing the healing power of art with others and has facilitated workshops with local schools, aboriginal communities, community organisations for youth, in conjunction with Lismore Regional Gallery, Northern Rivers Community Gallery, SCU Lismore and Byron School of Art.

MARIAN TUBBS
MARIAN is an artist living and working on Bundjalung and Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi land (Lismore). Her broad research interests include vision technologies, poor materialities and language or text in art. A survey of recent work, we need guys privacy here too, was presented at University of Sunshine Coast Gallery 2020-21, accompanied by the first monograph of the artist’s work. Other recent exhibitions include: Composing Archipelagos, Contemporary Art Tasmania, 2021; a complicated good time, Station, Sydney, 2021; Looking But Not Seeing, Benalla Regional Gallery, 2018; Thank you for coming, Nice, France, 2018; Currency, Lilac City Studio, Sydney, 2018; Infrastructural Inequalities, Artspace, Sydney, 2018; Hypersea, Monaco, 2018; Another Dimension, McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Victoria, 2018; among others. Tubbs’ work is held at the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Contemporary Art and international institutional collections. She holds a PhD from UNSW Art & Design and is course coordinator and senior lecturer in Art and Design at Southern Cross University. She is represented by Station Gallery, Sydney.

DAN McDONNELL
DAN is interested in the material and perceptual make-up of our encounters with screens—what our eyes take for granted when focusing on the content of websites and apps that vie for our attention. DAN’s work explores the specific colours, forms, and representations of light that make up these sensory experiences. By presenting screens as paintings and paintings as screens, McDonnell deconstructs and blurs the distinctions between the digital and analogue languages and forms. DAN is currently completing a PhD at Southern Cross University, Lismore. His exhibition Data Streams was shown at Lismore Regional Gallery in 2019 and his forthcoming PhD exhibition will be on display at Byron School of Art, Mullumbimby.

SARAH THOMSON
SARAH is an artsworker and emerging curator based in Meanjin Brisbane. She is currently the Marketing and Communications Manager & Curatorial Assistant at the Institute of Modern Art and is the coordinator of the churchie emerging art prize. She has been involved in a number of independent curatorial projects, most recently co-curating Brisbane City Council’s Outdoor Gallery exhibition Sunny Side Up. Her writing has been published in un Magazine and Art+Australia.