Seed to Seed, Claudine Marzik & Tijn Meulendijks & Georgetown, Chayni Henry
Oct 1, 2015
Seed to Seed, Claudine Marzik & Tijn Meulendijks
Seed to Seed is a collaboration by Cairns-based artists Tijn Meulendijks and Claudine Marzik which has involved them in a series of exhibitions over the past 4 years which draws on a shared interest in the natural (tropical) environment, expressed through their different mediums: primarily painting (Marzik), and ephemeral plant-based installations (Tijn). ‘Although growing up in Switzerland and the Netherlands’, the artists write, ‘we both have been living in Australia for many years and we have an extensive knowledge of plant and plant material from Australia. In Seed to Seed, we engage with the cycle of vegetation observing the rules, capturing movement and rhythm, and giving form and shape using a similar perception. Although we are using different mediums, our views have similar aesthetic values.’
Seed to Seed will involve 2- and 3-dimensional works which respond to tropical environments, including a response to Darwin plant life.
Claudine Marzik is a self-taught artist, primarily painter, who is influenced by mid-20thcentury Abstraction and Minimalism. Born in Basel, Switzerland, she migrated to Australia in 1988 and is based in Cairns. She has held around 16 solo or duo exhibitions in various cities around Australia and internationally (Japan, Switzerland), and including venues such as Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, and Kick Arts Contemporary Arts, Cairns. Claudine won the Painting Prize in the 2013 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Award (SA Museum, Adelaide), and the Primary Award in the 2012 Redlands Art Awards, Queensland.
Tijn Meulendijks works with nature, and with vegetation in particular. He holds a Master of Floral Design from Hertogenbosh, The Netherlands (2004) and his lifelong interest in botany and the human perception of nature has become the greatest influence in a practice largely involving site-specific installation and works on paper. Tijn has exhibited his work throughout Queensland, and in The Netherlands, and including for key ephemeral sculpture-based events such as Floating Land, Noosa Regional Gallery, and Strand ephemera, Per Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville. He is a past winner (2009, with Claudine Marzik) of the Port Douglas Sculpture Award.
Georgetown, Chayni Henry
Georgetownis a kind of love letter to the vernacular architecture of this UNESCO heritage-listed city, the capital of the Malaysian island of Penang – ‘oozing’, in the artist’s words, ‘with the kind of tropical colonial stuff I love’. The exhibition builds on Darwin-based artist Chayni Henry’s interest in local built heritage, as seen with her most recent solo exhibition, Foundation – new paintings by Chayni Henry, at Outstation Gallery, Darwin (2013). Georgetownreflects the artist’s desire to ‘start a relationship with the architecture of SE Asia’, with the work also continuing her painted cut-out and narrative forms, and drawing on a research visit to Penang earlier this year.
Chayni Henry is one of Darwin/the NT’s leading contemporary artists with a practice (since 2002) largely involving painting and printmaking. In 2012, she re-launched Red Hand Prints with fellow Darwin artist Franck Gohier. She was the overall winner of the inaugural Togart Award (2007), and was represented in the prestigious Primavera exhibition (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney) in 2006. Chayni has previously held 10 solo exhibitions (in Darwin, Sydney, and Hobart), and participated in numerous group exhibitions. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Corrigan Collection, Laverty Collection, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
33 (from My Mother’s Village), Aaron Burton
33 is a dual screen installation which draws on Burton’s My Mother’s Village project which premiered at the 2012 Colombo Art Biennale. My Mother’s Village is, as the artist states, ‘a journey of inheritance’. It focuses attention on a Sri Lankan village where Burton’s parents conducted field research in the late 1970s and produced The Sri Lanka Series (1980), comprising three ethnographic documentaries. 33 years later, Burton visits the same villages/communities and the same participants from The Sri Lanka Series. His filmic treatment (gathered over 4 years [2010-14] as part of his doctoral research) pursues the original themes and issues of the former: economic conditions, colonialism, the roles and position of women, religion and ritual, and intergenerational change, for example. The 33 installation includes excerpts from The Sri Lanka Series juxtaposed against Burton’s recent footage.
Aaron Burton is a documentary filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. His personal storytelling approach to moving and still images traverses the boundaries of documentary, visual ethnography, and video art. In 2009 Burton was awarded the inaugural Jeremy Hynes Award by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, for his video-based documentaries. Aaron holds a PhD in Media Arts from the University of New South Wales and is currently lecturing at Charles Darwin University, NT.
Chayni Henry
Merran Sierakowski
Aaron Burton
Claudine Marzik
Tijn Meulendijks