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Artist Statement:
nuance
at the beach watching -
fragile patterns created in
the sand,
as the waves seep back into
the ocean,
a sense of repetitive yet
shifting interplay -
between sea and sand,
pounding turmoil of the
breakers,
energy of the ocean currents,
quiet serenity of the marine
floor.
recalling similar patterns,
textures and colours
in coastal sandstone cliff
faces
and underground sandstone,
made visible via man-made
tunnels
and roadside cuttings,
allowing glimpses of
underlying
geology, shaping the city.
undulations, spheres and
splits
reveal where rivers and
washouts
passed through the sand and
soil,
leaching, sifting and sorting
the particles,
forming the landscape.
exploring a painting process,
mimicing this natural cycle,
capturing the movement of
water through sediment
whilst isolating individual
layers.
washes of pigment granules
across large pieces of
watercolour paper,
reling on intuition, chance
and playful experimentation,
conveying a sense of movement
through
the tactile quality of the
materials.
natural cycles of erosion,
continuance and sedimentation,
echoed in the paintings’
composition,
process and palette,
recalling the currents and
cycles
of the earth beneath us.
Katherine Fries 2004
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nuance is a recent series of
paintings by Sydney based
artist Katherine Fries.
Inspired by the subtleties and
shifting nature of landscape,
she...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
NUANCE
solo exhibition
Sydney Antique Centre
Exhibition Gallery
23 July - 23 August 2004
531 South Dowling St, Surry
Hills, Sydney, Australia.
Mon to Sun 10am-6pm
Ph: 61 29361 3244
www.sydantcent.com.au
Duo
The Gallery Cafe
13 July - 23 August 2004
74 Devonshire St, Surry Hills,
Sydney, Australia.
...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
NUANCE
solo exhibition
Sydney Antique Centre
Exhibition Gallery
23 July - 9 August 2004
Drinks with the artist 3-6pm
Sunday 25 July
531 South Dowling St, Surry
Hills, Sydney, Australia.
Mon to Sun 10am-6pm
Ph: 61 29361 3244
www.sydantcent.com.au
Scratching the Surface II
The Gallery Cafe
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Further Information
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Collections:
Katherine Fries' work features
in many local, national and
international private
collections....
Further Information
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Commissions:
Katherine Fries is happy to
discuss commissioning artwork.
Please use the email link at
the top of the page to contact
her....
Further Information
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Reviews for Katherine Fries:
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Mads Genner, FBi Radio 94.5FM July 2004
NUANCE
Does the thought of going to a landscape watercolour exhibition make you want to go running and screaming in the opposite direction?
Does the thought of going to a landscape watercolour exhibition held in an antique centre make you want to go running twice as fast and screaming twice as loud in the opposite direction?
Hi, It's Mads Genner and I went and checked out an exhibition called Nuance.
Yes, it is at an antiques centre. There's actually a small art gallery in the Sydney Antiques Centre in Surry Hills.
And yes, it kinda could be described as watercolour landscapes, but trust me, its not quite what you'll be expecting. Artist Katherine Fries has developed a technique of washing watercolour paper in a mixture of water and pigment. Some of the works also use wax and oil paints, which add a bit more texture to the works.
Katherine describes her works as a form of "abstract expressionism", and I guess that's probably the best description for them. But they aren't like the artworks of famous abstract expressionist like Jackson Pollock. They are more like abstract images of waves at the beach. There are coloured washes in black and red and yellow and orange that all mix together on the paper.
I'd seen some photos of the works before I went to the exhibition, but they look much better in real life. If you get up close you can actually see the grains of pigment in the works. And if you stare at them for long enoug, you start to see patterns and shapes that you never originally thought were there.
Nuance is on at the Sydney Antiques Centre until the 9th of August.
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Feb 7-8, The Planner, Forty Eight Hours, Sydney Morning Herald, Page 10, EXHIBITIONS by Lenny Ann Low.
UNDERCURRENTS
Beneath a towering city building, Katherine Fries's 16 pigment-on-paper works suggest a reptile's skin, a dark ginger coastline, a tornado of golden clouds and sinister figures patrolling a stained forest. McKell Building, corner Barlow Street and Rawson Place, city, until February 27.
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Jan 30- Feb 5, Metro, Sydney Morning Herald, Page 31, EXHIBITIONS - CRITIC'S PICKS by Dominique Angeloro
KATHERINE FRIES
Street art has had an extreme makeover with a new roadside display space lining the walls of a building at a busy city intersection. A welcome strip of calm is created amid the surrounding urban chaos by the solo exhibition Undercurrent. In this series of 16 works, Katherine Fries has used washes of dry pigment across large pieces of watercolour paper. These evocative works look as though waves have lapped across their surface, leaving only a sandy trace of their passing. McK17 public art space, McKell Building, corner of Barlow Street and Rawson Place, city, www.absolutearts.com/katherinefries, 24-hour viewing, until February 27.
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Mon, 19 Jan, 2004, Sydney Morning Herald, Metropolitan, Page 13, Spotlight by Stephanie Smail
PATTERNS ON PAPER
A collection of pigment on paper entitled 'undercurrent' and displayed on the outside of a city building brings nature to the concrete jungle. The Sydneysider Katherine Fries was inspired by patterns created by the ocean on the beach and attempts to depict the ever-changing energy of the sea by using washes of dry pigment and water across watercolour paper. The works are displayed from today at the base of the McKell Building on the corner of Barlow Street & Rawson Place until February 27.
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UNDERCURRENT is the latest series of paintings by Sydney artist Katherine Fries, displayed at McK17 - literally on the street, bringing a sense of nature into the centre of the city. Fries derives inspiration from experiences of landscape, however she goes beyond straightforward depiction to explore space, time, emotion, intuition and perception.
(extract from media release, UNDERCURRENT, January 2003)
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The works in “Fragmented Perception” invite us to contemplate our experience of 'Being' in relation to time. Through her expression of 'instants' of experience, whether they be experiences of internal or external environments or events, Kathi Fries captures what are essentially distilled poetic images.
She has created an interpretation of the fragmented instant that is at once concentrated and singular yet is experienced within a whole. This fragment appears to reduce totality to an instant, but at the same time, it is through this reduction to the fragmented instant that our attention is also drawn towards a ‘totality’.
“Fragmented Perception” explores these ideas of potentiality of time and consciousness, and relays these ideas in an extant way; the works are almost oceanic and meditational and contain a certain fragility that is difficult to locate. This fragility can perhaps partly be found in the nature of the abstractions; they possess a dynamic sense of movement and energy, as if they are still coming into being before our eyes. We are not sure how this painting will end, or has it ended?
Her work reveals the possibilities for representation of the instant. She capitalises on the potential of the medium of water colour to reflect our ‘fluid’ experience of time and, more importantly, develops the role of poetic abstraction in rendering the experience of experiencing.
Kathleen Evans
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FRAGMENTED METAPHOR
(SECRETS)
Beginning with a blank canvas,
Slowly creeping oleaginous generations
What secrets lurk beneath the surface of our origin?
The onward billowing eons scattering and
Our ear tuning to the rhythms of space
Our eye delving into mysteries intimated
Our perception springing from a glimpse
And expanding to the very cusp of the universe.
(PHOTOGRAPH)
Creating time outside of time.
Isolated from reality, the moment is once and unique.
The constant transformation of nature
Is halted in the recorded instant.
A temporal sliver, its true existence uncertain.
(INKBLOT)
The seep and meld of our collective memory
Fashioning from the myriad possibilities
The recollection of a thing -
Something beyond the tangible
Just out of focus in the mind’s eye.
(CLOUD)
Nature’s countless elements encapsulated
Within a single bead of water vapour.
Their scudding quickness conjuring from consciousness
The fleeting clutter of our experience.
A startling intensity through simplicity
Only flurried droplets from the artist’s brush.
Eleanor Dunstan
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Though her work is continually changing, swirling and stirring, the stylistic techniques that Katherine Fries employs in her painting has remained constant and has, as a result, grown, fortified and strengthened. Fragmented Perception presents to us a revelation of recent developments and nuances in her ideas and techniques, expressed in this most recent group of works. It is foremost an exploration of movement, colour, shape and depth through abstract form.
Perhaps it is the nature of Fries’ abstraction that brings so many ideas and themes to mind. At once otherworldly and mystical, they also allude to the very nature of human and feminine existence, while they seem impermeable and immovable; they can become images of transient and fleeting movement. The images seem to capture the actuality of time framing a breath of movement, creating balance and depth for a second and then removing it, positing it as bruising and flowering into and beyond the canvas. A breathtaking moment in a sunset, waterfall or eruption, captured as a dried stain on Fries’
Ambiguity in form leads one to search for visual meaning, and in doing so, Fries’ abstraction becomes beautiful and poetic Rorschach-esque clues to the subconscious. What does the mind find? Brief representations of the grace, silence and movement of the earth in some, and fiery bursts of untold violence in others. These paintings are a valuable insight into the landscape of shapes and colours in the mind of the artist, as the titles of the works reveal. They also become a more personal journey for the individual as each searches for, and encounters an understanding of the forms represented.
Fragmented Perception creates for us a unique, osmotic visual experience, as the mediums merge and infuse within and beyond the actual spaces created and explored, and the subconscious searches for tangible meaning and form from within these dried liquid expressions. To a receptive mind, the images become almost tidal, moving from the canvas to the internal perceptions and back again, refreshing and renewed, and, perhaps leaving a trace of transient colour and energy in the mind.
Claire Hargreave
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Publication: Central Coast Herald, Page: 14 Author: TIM BRAHAM, Date: 22/02/2003, EMERGING ARTIST COMPETITION, Gosford Regional Gallery
THE judging of the Emerging Artist competition for artists aged between 18 and 30 took place last week, with art critic and former head curator of Australian art at the National Gallery of Australia, John McDonald, and coordinator of the Fine Arts Program at the Ourimbah campus Edwin Easydorchik joining me to judge the entries.
There were 43 entries from all over the State, including a number of local artists. From these entries nine artists were selected who will now each have a chance to present a body of work at the gallery for the emerging exhibition. The best presented body of work will win a $2500 prize, the other finalists all walk away with $500.
Seven of the finalists come from Sydney - Peter Clague, Aaron Seto, David Lawrey, Jaki Middleton, Katherine Fries, Cameron Gillespie and Leanne Shedlezki. Karen Golland is from Bathurst while Blackwall resident Alicia Douglas flew the flag for the locals. The exhibition of works by these nine young artists will take place from the March 28 to May 4. The finalists will all discuss their work in a youth arts forum to be held in the gallery on April 9 during the celebrations of Youth week.
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