"MERGE: Joanne Handley"
2004-10-30 until 2004-12-05
Wollongong City Gallery
Wollongong, NS, AU Australia

MERGE at the Wollongong City Gallery was on exhibit from October 30 - Dec 5, 2004. Several years of investigation into new technologies and processes that fuse painting and digital media is revealed in a fresh and evocative body of work by Sydney born artist, Joanne Handley. This intriguing exhibition of large scale paintings and prints compels us to question traditional notions of the painted surface and explores the unique effects of light interference via the contemporary technologies of synthetic polymers which embody reflective pigments generating multiple refractions and reflections of light.

It is clearly evident that the works in this exhibition are those of an artist whose concerns are primarily with visual aesthetics, process and meaning. Uninterested in conventional representation, Joanne Handley's focus is fully engaged in the purity of aesthetics through form, balance, the perceptual experience of architectural space and sensuality of surface. Her large-scale canvases emerge from an exploration into the liminal realm woven between idea and intention, experience and sensation, contemplation and stillness.

While experimentation and new materials underpin the direction of this exhibition, there is a timelessness about the imagery which is rich and infused with intensity, elusive and puzzling.  

Handley's work is held in collections in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America and been represented internationally in exhibitions including the New York Hall of Science; Maine Center for Contemporary Art; Taranto Gallery, New York; Artists Space, New York, and the Contemporary Art Museum at the Institute for Research in Art, University of Southern Florida, USA.

Joanne Handley has been a Premiere Portfolio Artist at absolutearts.com since 2002. View more of her work at: http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/j/joannehandley/

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Australia

Other Important Exhibitions in Australia