My prey from an art safari: Louise Saxton at Gould Galleries
Melbourne. I consider the afternoons devoted to see art exhibitions like a sort of cultural safari.
You need a friend to enjoy it and a location where it is likely to meet dangerous, exotic or fascinating artworks.
In Melbourne some good locations for exhibition safaris are Fitzroy, the CBD and South Yarra.
So a couple of days ago I was in South Yarra with a friend and we had the chance to see the wonderful exhibition of Louise Saxton called “Sanctuary too” at Gould galleries.
No other show could be more suitable for an art safari: the subjects were in fact animals, insects and birds after vintage illustrations from natural history books and colonial painters.
The particularity was that all these artworks were realized in needlework, which means lace and nylon tulle arranged to form the images of animals.
All the pieces of this sort of collage were ties together by needles. Only coming closer to the artworks you can notice the needles, as well as the real nature of the different tulle.
That way the animals look stabbed, and at the same time the illusion of shape formed by the colourful patches is revealed.
My friend was fascinated by this coexistence of beauty and cruelness as well.
She noticed that while the material was precious and fine, sometimes the subjects were quite nasty. She was particularly impressed by the portrait of an insect, and the one of an hawk killing a snake.
After all the conceptual work that I’ve seen during the visit to the previous galleries on the art safari, it was soothing to appreciate some art that is “just” beautiful and dramatic in itself.
Here you are a gallery of images…
Louise Saxton on the website of Gould Galleries
