Image: Kenzie Larsen, “Planet of sensory deprivation”, 2009,
Lambda print, 28cm x 28cm. Plasticine, Balsa wood, acrylic paint,
wood, brick. Photo courtesy of James Brown 2009

GALLERY 1

Platinum Prospects Prosperity Power Lunch
Kenzie Larsen

Kenzie Larsen has developed a new body of work that takes half remembered aspects of sci- fi B- grade film sets and integrates them into semi- functional and ramshackle structures. Larsen’s sculptures appear in life size, big enough to sit in and as prints, these fictional landscapes project visions of the future from an imagined era of low budget fantasies and limited technology.

Kenzie Larsen is a Sydney based artist who uses sculpture, video, installation, painting and drawing as an exploration of fiction, memory and social experiments. Larsen graduated from Sydney College of the Arts, with Honours in 2006 and has exhibited widely in Sydney and Melbourne in Solo and group shows. She is a director of the Artist Run Initiative “Locksmith Project Space” and co- editor of the arts publication “Locksmith Project”. She has undertaken residencies at the Piet Zwart Institute in The Netherlands and will travel to Armenia in 2010 for a residency at the arts and cultural studies laboratory in Yerevan.

Day 2 from "Hiding" Self-Portraits 2009-2010
c-type , 20 x 30cm, courtesy the artist

GALLERY WALL

“HIDING” SELF-PORTRAITS 2009-2010
Cherine Fahd

In “Hiding” the photographs are labelled self-portraits, intentionally setting the tone for how the viewer might understand them. So you may expect to see a face, the face of the person in charge of photographing. In each image the self of the “self-portrait” is hidden and masked. Photographed at home, the contents of a little family abode begin to provide cues and clues revealing perhaps a little of the personality or interests or life of the person whose face is repeatedly obscured. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 12, Day 44, Day 100! On and on the days & the portraits go, mapping a chronological instant when the regular flow of domesticity is interrupted by capturing an ordinary, un-flashy, insignificant moment.

Cherine Fahd was born in Sydney in 1974. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with first class honours in 1997 and in 2003 a Master of Fine Arts by research, both at the University of New South Wales, College of Fine arts. Fahd’s work is represented in major public collections in Australia such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria. She is the recipient of numerous New Work grants from the Australia Council for the Arts along with art awards such as the NSW Women & Arts Fellowship from Arts NSW and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Foundation for the Arts Photography Award.

Image: Nicola Smith
The Crowd Overwhelms Baptiste, October 2009
Oil on paper, 63 x 42 cm

GALLERY 2

The Crowd Overwhelms Baptiste: A New Series of Paintings in Oil
Nicola Smith

"The hubbub and music rise to a crescendo over a shot of BAPTISTE swamped in the crowd. Carriages pass by, filled with gay people and decorated with flowers. Confetti and streamers fall from above. Low angle shot of gay people in the windows of the buildings throwing them. General shot of the Boulevard, which is now being invaded by an enormous crowd, an indescribable hurly-burly of people, dominated by the white figures of hundreds of PIERROTS, who shout and sing and enjoy themselves. BAPTISTE has almost disappeared in the crush of people. He still cries out, but can no longer be heard."

Carne, Marcel, and Jacques Prevert. Les Enfants du paradis Film Script. Translated by Dinah Brooke. London: Lorrimer Publishing Inc., 1968.

This new series of work looks to Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert’s film of 1945 Les Enfants du paradis. Each painting in oil follows protagonist Baptiste in the harrowing final scene as he is overwhelmed by, and ultimately swallowed up in the carnival on Paris’ Boulevard du Temple. It is the mid-nineteenth century.

Nicola Smith is from Sydney. Graduating from the National Art School in 2002, she has shown work in Sydney, Adelaide, New Hampshire, Montreal, and Hobart. Last year she received her Honours degree in painting from the Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart, and has been awarded a studio at CAST, Contemporary Art Services Tasmania, for 2010. This is her fourth show with MOP.