The Amorist

THE AMORIST brings together eleven artists whose works explore themes relating to love, sexuality, and the tensions between personal and constructed femininity. The show pairs together delicate and vulnerable explorations on paper and cloth with those of a more challenging nature as a means of interpreting the spaces between innocence and power.
To love, to feel emotion and to be part of something greater than ourselves is a concept at the heart of Tahnee Lonsdale’s abstract paintings which will sit amongst the likes of Beatrice Brown, Ilona Szalay and Silvia Argiolas whose explorations of feminine sexuality are emotional, personal and often traumatic. In contrast to the emotional childlike spontaneity of these works, we have the meticulously crafted and controlled photography by Juno Calypso and painting by Morwenna Morrison both works which consider the constructions of femininity through nostalgia and the ‘ideal’ woman. Julie Airey, Denise Zygadlo and Elaine Speirs’ approach to their practices is one which allows fragility to present itself at the forefront of their works. Speirs, working from imagery of young girls, explores the transience between youth and wisdom in her portraits of girls on the cusp of womanhood. Julie Airey, and Densie Zygadlo’s approach begins with the abstraction of the female form which then presents itself through the fragmentation and layering of these forms onto textiles to explore a sense of vulnerability.
’Kristian Evju with his new drawing, Parisian Lounge approaches the female nude as a constructed fictional memoir, drawing upon vintage narratives and the construction of the erotic female in historical practices. Finally, we are delighted to have ‘Desert Strikes’ by Florian Heinke as part of the show, Florian’s distinctive style is etched with poetry, irony and longing in paintings that alternate between political polemics and transcendental beauty.