Confluence showcase the work of Wayne Guest, Simon Lloyd, Vicki Mason, Nick Mount, Beatrice Schlabowsky and Prue Venables and highlights how each artist has introduced new materials into their practice.
Contemporary craft practice often demonstrates skilled focus on a singular medium. A lifetime building of knowledge and understanding of one material encompasses history, technique, nuances, spirit, assumptions, and comprehension alongside acute understandings of sculptural elements such as line, form, space and time.
Drawing in a second or third material to the work opens new doors of possibility, extending the limits of the original substance. Objects in porcelain and glass, hampered by the risks and impossibilities of kiln firing and annealing, are extended out into space through the addition of metal and wood. Thread and textile additions to hard edged metal add a tactile softness, colour and texture otherwise impossible to achieve. Wooden additions to metal supply contrasts of surface, texture and colour. Fusing vitreous enamel onto the surface of metal extends possibilities of colour and invention.
Such developments provide stimulating challenges where former adept experience and knowledge is confronted by new techniques and materials. Through new modes of working, play and experimentation, a sphere of the unfamiliar and the unaccustomed is entered.
Opus 3' is an elegant, minimalist exhibition space in Castlemaine, newly refurbished to present contemporary, innovative work.