Opening Cocktails:
Feb 12 (Thur) 6 - 9pm
Meet the artists
The Cat Street Gallery is proud to present Smoking Guns featuring the work of four fresh and engaging talents from Australia: Jasper Knight, Julian Meagher, Miranda Skoczek and Oliver Watts. Smoking Guns is a dynamic combination of these young, emerging and more established artists, all of whom represent the quality and edge ever present in the Australian contemporary art scene.
Based in Sydney Jasper Knight is known for his bold paintings that straddle the worlds of high art and everyday images. Knight constantly creates new departures in his work, employing a whole host of materials; perspex, enamel, plywood and found objects such as tiles. Knight’s paintings often employs bright colours in blocks, but avoid flatness and simplicity in the form due to the organic way in which the paint drips down the canvas. Knight has exhibited widely in Australia and Europe and was a finalist in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Archibald Prize.
Julian Meagher makes inquiries about the human body and spirit by addressing the relationship between the internal and external workings of the body. He draws on the field of medical imaging, namely anatomical studies, to explore the ways in which the body is depicted by artists. In his latest series the artist renders perfectly described body parts in isolation which bear intricate tattoos. The physical and the creative are a powerful duality in Meagher’s work and the results are unexpected and engaging. Meagher is a classically trained contemporary Australian artist based in Sydney has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows both in Australia and overseas.
Miranda Skoczek investigates visual culture and image making in her canvases which include samples of traditional decorative iconography. Skoczek employs a variety of images from flora and fauna to Japanese prints which she then ’remixes’. They are all assembled as multicolored silhouettes seemingly at random, with no singular traditional perspective or view point for the group. Skoczek delicately draws the viewer into the mini-utopias she creates on the canvas, at once both highly personalized and accessible to an observer. The artist has exhibited widely in Australia since graduating from her fine arts degree in 2004.
Oliver Watts is a thoughtful and at times satirical artist based in Sydney. Watts’ work on paper explores the themes and currents of Dada, a provocative anti establishment arts movement from the early twentieth century. Watts’ paper cut out series have proved enormously successful, no doubt because of the combination between the playful ‘naive’ process with powerful political statements. The works on paper go beyond the traditional realm of illustration and enter a sophisticated adult world of image making. Watts has shown widely throughout Australia and been included in several prizes including the Mosman Art Prize.
