Paper: cut, stain, fold, press. G.W. Bot, Dianne Fogwell, Helen Geier, Judy Holding, Kyoko Imazu, Melinda Schawel. Beaver Galleries. Until August 25.
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G.W. Bot's series of landscapes continue her fascination with the marks of the landscape that she interprets in her language of symbols or glyphs. In Glyphs, the paper is so dense that the graphite marks sink into it and become part of its very fabric. In two other works, colour washes transform the paper into eloquent landscapes so that the marks of glyphs seem to dance on its surface. In these works the glyphs become signifiers of human presence and as such they need, as the artist notes, to touch the landscape lightly.
In Glyphs, the paper is so dense that the graphite marks sink into it and become part of its very fabric
In her enchanting birdscapes, Judy Holding uses the fragility of tissue paper to make light almost transparent shapes inspired by the colourful feathers and markings of the pardalote and wren. In the works Pardalote and Wren, these shapes are linked together to make two long colourful twirling spirals that hang from the ceiling and move gently in flight.
Other wall pieces are created from the same colourful paper shapes and suggest the distinctive shape of the birds as well as the white plumage of the cockatoo.
Dianne Fogwell's black and white linocuts depict threatened bird species. They express her concern with the devastation of habitat through bushfires. Pinning prints of these beautiful and poignant images of birds on a galvanised iron tree is a dramatic focus to this body of work. The large artist book of woodcuts, linocuts and charred imagery is an eloquent and moving memorial of the 10th anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires and their destructive effect on wild life.
Melinda Schawel has worked with paper in a more interventionist way by ripping, staining, rubbing and piercing her paper shapes and balancing their colour and textures against areas of white background.
Her three big colourful images - Growth, Passing through Il and One Step Back seem to explode exuberantly from their background.
It it is only on close examination that you notice these shapes are also accompanied by reworking of the paper to make delicately inscribed areas of textures, colour staining and decorative piercing.
Kyoko Imazu uses a scalpel make her paper-cuts of black silhouettes depicting imaginary worlds.
In her two works, Dark Crawlers III and Colony, the details are extraordinary - romantic fairy tale imagery and a picturesque view of nature are brought together with the sort of creatures that inhabit nightmares.
Subterranean burrows and distant landscapes both co-exist and provide a context for Imazu's images that seem to float in a dream-like state of consciousness.
Helen Geier's series of attractive ink and watercolour works Elevator Doors l, II and III have a strong architectural theme and are inspired by her New York travel.
The distinctive motifs of the elevator doors from the Chrysler Building are interwoven with distant landscapes and plant forms reflecting the artist's preoccupation with spatial values within a flat paper plane.
In the hands of these artists paper becomes a magical substance transformed from a flat surface into colourful forms, silhouettes, textural surfaces and metaphorical skies for birds to inhabit and architectural landscapes for the imagination to wander.