Images from Raphael Buttonshaw's project at WOP Space 27 April

APRIL EXHIBITIONS

Rebeccah Power : Rebel, mother, lover.  

Sat 13th April  12-6 pm

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My aim is to test the boundaries of ‘works on paper’ in an attempt to express the complexity and multilayered nature of my subject. This has resulted in an approach, which sees me using works on paper as a prop, which is photographed, projected on top of the original work then photographed and presented as a final projection. The works on paper have now departed from their original state and have become projected images. A connection between the materials is maintained through the process. The paper now exists as an image of itself reflecting the transient quality of the original material in the impermanence of the projection.

In my current exhibition at WOP Space, evocative ink and watercolour portraits form the basis for this process. Resulting in images that merge and defy the viewer. The layering process combined with the luminosity of the projected images in a darkened space intensifies the works expression and illuminates the stains and bleeds of the pigment. The subject expands from an interest in the representation of roles of women and in challenging restrictive gender norms by focusing on the story of Jean Lee, the last woman to be hanged in Australia. Within the weighty subject matter lurks a kind of morbid beauty. This creates a sense of intrigue that is designed to evoke a range of emotional reactions, on the one hand connected with the unknown wonderful and sublime yet on the other violence, brutality and murder.

Raphael Buttonshaw  

Sat 27th April 12-6pm

Artist Statement

Through exploring interior environments as a ‘staging ground’ this work aims to address the growing tension between design within contemporary society and what might constitute contemporary art. Drawing from this idea as a point of departure, I aim to introduce a deliberate strangeness to the function of utility-based design objects that twists and subverts our perceived conventions of interior space. This intervention seeks to rewire the behavioural cues embedded in utility-based design and unsettle its social and psychological narratives. It is an attempt to radically denature the appearance of the environments with which we feel most at home. That ultimately proposes the way we reflect upon the experience of these environments is increasingly connected to our changes to the world at large.