Cycle, 2022, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
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9 April - 5 June 2022
EXHIBITION Nicola Mason: Cycle Bathurst Regional Art Gallery 70 -78 Keppel St BATHURST NSW 2795 Bookings required for: Exhibition Opening (BRAG Fundraiser): Friday 8 April 6pm Artist Led Workshop with Nic Mason: Wednesday 18 May 5:30 pm Artist Led Workshop with Nic Mason: Thursday 26 May 5:30 pm In Conversation, Nic Mason with Jack Underwood: Saturday 28 May 11 am This program is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
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New Paintings
New drawings
Nic Mason, Banksia cones I, II & III, 2022, charcoal and water colour on paper, 143 x 16cm each
New Animation
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NIc Mason, Banksia heist, 2022, charcoal and water colour on paper animation, 14 seconds
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Works from Bundanon Artist in Residence program
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Nicola Mason Cycle exhibition catalogue
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Tracy Sorensen, Cycle essay
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Nicola Mason Cycle catalogue " ... The combination of organic and manufactured elements (the banksia cone and the cheese grater, for example) blurs the line between what is considered “natural” and what is considered “cultural”. “The banksia cone is a cultural object,” says Mason. “It has been shaped by firestick activity over thousands of years. And the cheese grater is rusting, a natural process.” The combination of such objects as equal players on a level surface creates a slightly unsettling, uncanny feeling. The familiar binary of western sensibility gives way to a non- hierarchical continuum of plants, animals, natural things, human beings and human-made things. Donna Haraway calls this natureculture ..." |
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Artist Statement
New works developed for my exhibition Cycle were created on Wiradjuri country and supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW. These new works have been curated with select other works developed from my Bundanon Trust artist in residence program.
Cycle extends a conversation with the concurrent exhibitions at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Robert Hirschmann: Past Night and Sidney Nolan: Drought. Like their work, my work is a response to being in the world and being influenced by the times. My still life theatre with painted clouds on sticks and a glass table-top of watery like reflections echoes these La Niña times as floods wreck havoc on the east coast of Australia. I lean on my background in ecological management and mix this with my current domestic realities. Notions of nature and culture coalescing occupy my thoughts. I find the still life genre of art in the Western tradition an apt tool to play with relationships within and between things or actors. Cycle also references my processes around making works. Through the act of creating works for exhibitions or projects, new ideas become formed for both the work on the easel and further works. One works leads to two more. I wish to thank the staff at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery for their support; Create NSW for Small Project Grant funding support; writer Tracy Sorensen for her insightful words for this catalogue; Councillor Margaret Hogan, Bathurst Regional Council for opening this exhibition; and family Mark, Caitlin, Tynan and Bo and pooches Nim and Mr Barry Fox. |
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery decal text
"At once natural and artificial, inanimate and animate, and extraordinary and ordinary, Mason's paintings blur the boundaries of binaries, reflecting our shifting times."
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Install at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
