Ken Urban

Contemporary Art Tasmania, nipaluna/Hobart

24 July - 23 August 2015

Ken Urban

Rhyming slang for suburban or the brother of Keith Urban?

Contemporary Art Tasmania presents the work of three early-career artists under the deliberately ambiguous title of Ken Urban. David Attwood, Shannon Field and Amber Koroluk-Stephenson each have a fascination with the paradoxical reverberations beneath the surface of suburban Australia.

David Attwood appropriates the merits of disparate Australian phrases in developing his own series of text based simile works. Handwritten and ‘coloured-in’ with lurid combinations of marker pen, these works are serious and sincere and at the same time absurd and playful. Attwood’s works bring a smile to your face as you ‘squirm in your boots.’

Convicts of the Apocalypse is a new installation by Shannon Field in which seven simply constructed wooden figures sit astride workshop supports commonly known as ‘horses’. The artist sets out to depict ‘Australian masculinity as a constructed performance held together with nails and bolts; desperately trying to outrun/outride the rags of gendered failure that emanate from our European convict beginnings.’

Amber Koroluk-Stephenson works through ideas of utopia, the suburban façade and the relationship between natural and man-made environments in her work. A new large-scale installation incorporates a mix of freestanding and reconfigured elements informed by images related to the commodification of an ideal Australian suburbia. The work offers a mise en scène that is both familiar and obscure, and overtly artificial.

Developed by the Contemporary Art Tasmania Program Committee: Pat Brassington, Michael Edwards, Kylie Johnson, Jarrod Rawlins, Travis Tiddy and Matt Warren.

Images: Paradise Dreaming, 2015, mixed media, dimensions variable, installation view, Contemporary Art Tasmania