Street Rhythm Exhibition

Come along to a solo exhibition of some works that I have created during my time at the Glen Huntly Studio.

The pieces in this show will span both the urban portraits and the local street scenes that are around me in my day to day environment.

Whilst there is a focus on urban rhythms within my neighbourhood there is also a focus on the painterly rhythms that I have explored during this time.

Developing both compositions and painterly techniques has been a steady learning process during this time, and trying to contain my zest for colour and movement can be a challenge.

I hope that my exhibition ‘Street Rhythm’ reflects something of the curiosity I feel in noticing the various personalities an urban environment has to offer; in the character of its people, the activity at different times of the day, a suburb at night or a city celebrating sport.

‘Street Rhythm’ is a subject that has many layers and one that I have only just touched on here.

Street Rhythm Exhibition

Chapel Off Chapel Foyer Gallery

12 Little Chapel St,

Prahran

Opens 21st May 2019 until 9th June

Open Daily 12pm - 5pm

Photos from the opening night.

A wonderful evening.

Street Rhythm

Exhibition of paintings by Kate Birrell

21stMay 2019 – 9thJune 2019

Chapel off Chapel Foyer Gallery

Prahran

Artist Statement 

Street Rhythm is a collection of works that I have done over the last few years. These paintings reflect upon my time working from a studio based in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Huntly.

 The exhibition follows both the rhythms of the street that I have observed, and have been immersed within, as well as the rhythms of my own painterly inclinations.

 I am interested in people and character and the various ways in which they interact with their urban environment, be it at work or leisure or some other daily occupation.

 I am interested in people just as they are, and therefore often rely on the quick snap shot on a mobile phone in order to capture an individual in their moment.

 As a regular walker I find most of my inspiration for subject matter is held within the various things that I come across when I am out on the street, walking to keep fit, or just walking to get somewhere.

Various things such as interactions between friends or family heading out to the footy; things such as the multitude of ways in which a trio of schoolgirls can occupy a footpath in a suburban shopping strip, or perhaps the way in which someone may stand at a train station, or a set of traffic lights, waiting for a train or a friend, or for the lights to change.

These are moments within which often lie curious and interesting narratives that simmer below the surface appearance of our day to day lives in this city of Melbourne.

My goal is to continue developing my painting techniques so as to better unite my compositions, and through my love of color and line extend upon the visual narratives that I have looked at here in this exhibition Street Rhythm.

Thank you for visiting Chapel Off Chapel to see this exhibition.

Kate Birrell

www.katebirrell.com

katebirrellpaintings@gmail.com

Instagram sketchbook @lookatmelbourne 

Facebook @katebirrellpaintings

This Footy Life; Studio Exhibition

This Footy Life Studio Exhibition Is a collection of recent football themed paintings, sketches and illustrations from the last couple of years.

It is collection of works that show my own exploration of technique and style through experimentation. I have been specific in the way that I have worked over the last year or so in particular, to explore the possibilities of using memory and imagination as a way to create content for paintings.

This has meant that I have veered away from using reference materials such as photographs. I wanted to see what my mind could come up with during this period. 

And so I took my curiosity to paper and in following the 2017 season to its most glorious finality, I came up with a series of paintings that documented my own footy trip for the year. I had no idea where this intention would lead, or what I would come up with.

It became a footy journal or diary of sorts, that I subsequently titled 'Tea for the Boys'.

Why 'Tea for the Boys'?

It began with a sketch that I did of my youngest, Hugo, and a couple of his under 12 footy team mates whom he would bring home from school on training nights for afternoon tea before heading off for training. It has been a well established routine at our place for many years.

Pie Boy

This became the impetus for creating these twisted domestic spaces that are inhabited by various footy players. I played with variations of who came to tea as each week of the footy season progressed and as the various seasonal dramas unfolded.

One of the things that did come up through this process was the use of language. Language at home, in the media, newspapers, text and online spaces such as twitter and instagram.

The exhibition shows and number of earlier works that are more traditional in their style and I have on display some of my sketchbooks that I use regularly and which are used to document visual moments.

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This Footy Life; Studio Exhibition 

1159 Glen Huntly Road

Glen Huntly.

1/7/2018 - 31/7/2018

For this weeks hours please visit here

or by appointment.

#lookatglenhuntly

#Lookatglenhuntly is a series of ink and watercolour work on paper currently up at The Bar Royal as part of the Walkabout Glen Huntly street photography exhibition.

Most of these pieces have been done on location using an ink brush pen, or if I had the patience, a bottle of ink and a sable brush. The sable brush is the most effective way to work but it isn't always practical when out of the studio.

I painted on location at Platform 3 on Glen Huntly station looking toward Platform 2 over a couple of days last week.

Others I did from the table inside my studio on Glen Huntly Rd. which looks onto the street and the Royal Avenue corner. I look for interesting and fleeting moments of being.

Go to the Gallery page to see the full series titled Look at Glen Huntly. Or got my shop if you would like to purchase one.

Installation of work at The Bar Royal

And #lookatglenhuntly...why? 

I have asked myself why... why is there an urge to observe and record. What is the point and what does one get from the process of either drawing or painting people going about their daily lives.

For my part, I find it is a way to slow things down, to distill 'micro-moments' of existence, perhaps, to see what they do look like....it is an extension beyond the ordinary.

In looking at these fleeting moments, quite often, the surprising hits upon you, compelling the artist in me, to stay and look further or deeper. Surprising moments in colour, shape, and human drama; surprising for the moments of touching beauty, banal mundanity, intriguing transactions or for just delighting in the comedy of human theatre in the public space.

Much can happen.

Glen Huntly, the suburb, is a space whose urban facade has changed rapidly in a relatively short period of time. As a local moving into the area 20 years ago the nature of the businesses and the pedestrian life has undergone considerable change.

My neighbour Vera, who only recently died, grew up in the area from the early 1920's often remarked that for a long period of time this shopping strip had "everything you could ever need". There was no need to travel to another shopping strip , or mall, to get items needed for daily life...be it groceries, smallgoods, hardware, children clothes, ladies wear, theatre...Glen Huntly had it all.

The theatre was a popular spot for Vera and her friends on Saturday afternoons when she was a young girl; It was located on the site of our Safeway supermarket. For a number of years in the late 1950,s Vera and her husband also ran a business selling jewellery, clock making and in providing watchrepairs.

By the time I settled in the late 1990's change was underway. However, Glen Huntly still had two green grocers ( one on both sides of the railway line), one butcher, Clarke's (or Nick's as we called it), a haberdashery store (a long skinny shop jam packed with bags of wool, cotton needles etc), a hardware store, two cake shops, three chemists, a fish and chippery and a smattering of antique stores, to name just a few notables.

The only cafe at this time was Charlotte's, the French Patisserie. Nancy and Sharon worked the counter serving delectable chocolate eclairs, lattes and babychinos for the kids.

Today, our shopping centre is without a stand alone greengrocer, nor is there a haberdashery, nor hardware store. Op shops and brotherhoods have replaced the antique dealers, and a tobacco business occupies the jewellery store that my neighbour Vera once ran (a shopfront just down from where Woodards is now).

But we do have a Hallal butcher, several Indian and Chinese grocery stores, multicultural restaurants, many cafes and a brilliant new playground within our midst.

The council seems to be more open in their approach to enhancing our locality and there is an ongoing discussion regarding the level crossing. Traffic, or the delays to the flow of traffic due to the crossing are a significant impediment to vehicular movement in the strip.

Pedestrian life is always evolving and with societal issues such as drugs and homelessness, Glen Huntly is not immune to the travesties of life. But with the recent waves of migration and the influx of new residents settling in our suburb to work, study or live, our strip is also seeing new faces full of hope and anticipation for lives just beginning.

Today in Glen Huntly we have rich and diverse community adding depth and a great splash of colour to what I would term 'the Look of Melbourne'.

It is a suburb that epitomises Melbourne's rapidly increasing population and shifting cultural demographic.

#lookatglenhuntly...that's why.

For more Glen Huntly musings read on here Glen Huntly and Mysteries of the Track

The Walkabout Glen Huntly Exhibition is on now and until May the 6th 2018

The Bar Royal

1 Royal Avenue, Glen Huntly

from 4pm Monday - Friday and from 1pm Saturday and Sunday

Just Looking

New group exhibition opening Wednesday 7th March at 6pm.

Three local street scene paintings are included in this show with the Glen Eira Artists Society and the annual members exhibition.

Finalist...

Excited to say that I am a finalist in this years Portia Geach Memorial Art prize.

Opening night is next Thursday at the S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney!!

Here is some more information re the award and the exhibition here

Glen Eira Artists Society Annual Exhibition

I have two Still Life paintings in this exhibition that is on NOW.

Footy Art Show 2016

Ok, it's on again The Annual Footy Art Show at the Artists Garden, Fitzroy Nursery, 390 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, although on a smaller scale than in previous years.

This years theme is 'Women in Football'.

For the last year or so I have been experimenting somewhat. I am always attracted to the graphic quality of an image for its simplicity. The problem for me is that it can take away the painterliness of a painting if I let it become too graphic and too stylised. And at the same time, I am also drawn to the loose lines that seem to come in a freer way when I draw.

Hypocrite? Maybe.

My goal is to somehow bring the two together, comfortably.

With this painting, I feel as though I have had some success at marrying the two.

To see the whole painting and make your own judgement call down and visit the nursery during this 2016 finals season.

Old Ground

A couple of new pieces done over this season, not yet over.

I'm curious and intrigued by the old footy ground, no longer in use for AFL games. There is something about a disused stand that echoes with the faint whispers from eras and lives gone by.

Together with the people, the players, the crowd and the geography of its suburban back lay, something within this mix is, I find, compelling.

Exhibition of Footy Art in Mildura opens end of August

Enquire Here

Playground at Playtime

Recently, I did some work at the Essendon primary School sketching the schoolyard.

View fullsize

I have done alot of location work in the form of pen and ink sketches over recent years; beaches, cityscapes and suburban life have been my focus. This is the first time I have ventured into a space that is a little less public than usual.

Interesting stuff happens when you work under the gaze of those around you. The sheilding walls of the studio are suddenly opened and a degree of vulnerability creeps in, which at times, can wind its way into the work itself.

As an artist, you are used to looking at others. But as an artist working out in public, the tables turn, and it then becomes you, the artist, that is being looked at. Sometimes it feels more like a performance.

One of the reasons I like working outdoors, amongst people is that it forces you to commit; to commit to a time and place, to commit to the line that is made on the surface, be it paper or canvas or whatever. It forces you to commit to those around you, you are being watched, there is an interest in what you produce and what you see. People want to see you follow through, they want to know what you think of them and their world.

I like being able to take something that I can see moving and happening before my eyes and being able to take note of it, the fleetingness of a certain moment, punch it out and capture it into a static thing on a flat surface. 

Given the rapidity, speed and pace of daily life there is a perverse sense of satisfaction that I can in some way capture and hold onto these lost moments through the simplest of means in the use of mediums such as basic writing tools, ink and paper.

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Several community artists will have their works available and on display alongside the works of the E.P.S. school children.

Where: Essendon Primary School, Raleigh Street, Essendon

Friday November 6th 3;30pm til 7pm & Saturday 7th November 2pm til 5pm