Image: Tom Loveday, Video Stills "Polar Bear 002," 2011

GALLERY 1, 2 & 3

Extended Painting
Tom Loveday, Mark Titmarsh, Sean Lowry, Mark Shorter and Andre Brodyk

Painting, like art, attempts to fill holes in hearts and minds wrought by life, work, politics and culture. But painting was already repeatedly killed by the middle of the 20th century due to the changing shape of these holes.
The alleged death of painting has provisionally released it from the conventions, practice and institutions through which it traditionally attends to these holes. Painting no longer seems to stand alone, without a contextualising argument, as a form of art in and of itself.. Consequently, in order to articulate painting; it must be grasped not as a practice but as an idea.
What is this ‘idea’ of painting? Narrative, image, expressive gesture, and false reality are some of the many ‘ideas’ carried by the conceptually expanded vehicular medium of painting. This exhibition attempts to articulate some of these ideas and more.
This exhibition includes video, installation, performance, and of course painting projects that attempt to service this re-extended idea of painting. We hope that this exhibition will present some new ways in which the idea of painting might fill the newly shaped holes of the 21st century.

Mark Titmarsh (PhD, UTS, 2009) is a visual artist working in painting, video and writing. His paintings and filmwork are currently held in public collections across Australia, and in private collections in Europe and the United States.

His current work executed under the rubric of ‘expanded painting’ is painting about painting or painting that dissimulates into objects, videos, events and texts. Recent work has included paintings on industrial materials, environments of fluorescent string, video works for mobile phones and performances with coloured objects such as plastic balls and spray string. In early 2006 he was a cofounder of the artist run space, Loose Projects.

Mark is currently a tenured, part time lecturer in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, where he has taught Image Making since 1999.

Sean Lowry (BVA, PhD Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney) is a Sydney based artist and writer. Currently lecturer in Creative Arts at the University of Newcastle, Lowry was recently a visiting artist/scholar at UC San Diego/Irvine. Lowry has presented his research at international conferences, worked internationally as an artist, performer and music producer, and published broadly on topics related to contemporary art.

Mark Titmarsh

Tom Loveday

Tom Loveday

Tom Loveday

Sean Lowry

MOP Projects is assisted by the NSW Government through Arts NSW

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Andre Brodyk (PhD UNSW, MFA UNSW, BAFA, BEd Dip.T Cert. OGTR) is an internationally recognised new media ‘Bio-tech’ artist. Brodyk is interested in adaptive creative interpretations of genomics and biotechnology applied as re-extended painting, drawing and installation.

Brodyk was the first Australian artist to create and exhibit transgenic organisms as art. (PICA July2002). His research and practice entails using a molecular biology laboratory as a new media studio. Brodyk engages in the use of living transgenic bacteria and plants as new art media and genetics protocols as new art processes. This research is centred on creating biochemically compatible molecular material for use within living organisms specifically using so called non–coding ‘junk DNA’ and other non-coding RNA.

Brodyk is Lecturer in Fine Art and Coordinator of Painting at the University of Newcastle Australia and artist in residence within biology departments at The University of Queensland and The University of Newcastle.

Mark Shorter lives and works in Sydney. He studied sculpture at The National Art School and painting at The Sydney College of the Arts where he graduated with a PhD. Mark's work is informed by an examination of the historical intersections between the variety theatre and visual art practices. Through this investigation he has developed and performed identities such as the grotesque country singer Renny Kodgers, the quixotic journeyman Tino La Bamba and the time travelling, landscape painting critic Schleimgurgeln. These characterisations raise the spectre of the alter-ego in Australian culture and how it is employed to create a theatre of provocation and satire.

Tom Loveday (BArch MVA PhD Theories of Art Practice, Painting) lives in Sydney Australia, practices in art and lectures in the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales in interior architecture, specialising in design and theory. Tom exhibits artwork regularly both in commercial, institutional and independent galleries as well as maintaining an international and national research practice in art and architectural theory. In his art practice, Tom’s main interest is the aesthetics of alienation in painting, video and installation. Recent work includes hard edged geometric painting, video installation and political works. The possibilities of painting are an integral part of all parts of this interest in alienation. Tom is represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery.

Andre Brodyk

Mark Shorter

Mark Shorter