2013 John Fries Memorial Prize entries close 6 May





The John Fries Memorial Prize celebrates emerging art through a $10,000 non-acquisitive award donated by the Fries family in memory of former Viscopy director and honorary treasurer, John Fries.



This year's guest curator Sebastian Goldspink said that the prize has grown to become a significant event in Sydney’s cultural and contemporary art calendar. “The John Fries Memorial Prize showcases some of the most engaging and experimental artwork from the emerging end of the contemporary art scene,” Goldspink said. “That’s why it is so exciting to be a part of this prize – the finalists not only represent the cutting edge of contemporary art, they are producing work which challenges our perception of art forms and practice.”

The prize is open to Australian and New Zealand artists who are not enrolled as a student and whose work is not represented in the collection of an Australian state, territory or national public art gallery.

Goldspink said the prize aimed to provide emerging artists with a valuable career development opportunity. “The finalists in the John Fries Memorial Prize exhibition will have the opportunity to share their work with leading figures in the contemporary art sector including our judges – Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Felicity Fenner, Dr Sanné Mestrom and Kath Fries.

“We’re lucky in 2013 to have a judging panel with diverse expertise across a number of organisations and events such as Artbank and the Venice Biennale. I’m looking forward to viewing the entries we receive and seeing which finalists will be part of the exhibition later this year.” (Sebastian Goldspink, JFMP 2013 Guest Curator)

The finalists work will be exhibited at Gaffa Galleries Sydney, 24 August - 14 September, and the winner will be announced at 7pm on 27 August.

To enter or for more information, visit www.viscopy.org.au/jfmp
  
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Incubate at Sculpture Otherwise, Katoomba

Kath Fries, Incubate, 2012, bronze and found materials, 
dimensions approx 120 x 80 x 15 cm

Incubate is a sculptural installation made from cast bronze branches and found materials, suggesting a colony of insect cocoons or sleeping bats. Each pod shape is slightly different but all convey a sense of tension, pausing before breaking forth into life and taking flight. The pods of found materials in Incubate were created last year whilst I was an artist-in-residence with the Gosford Regional Gallery. More information...
 
Kath Fries, Incubate, 2012, bronze and found materials 

Incubate is being exhibited in Sculpture Otherwise - an indoor exhibition featuring participating artists from Sculpture at Scenic World 2013. Demonstrating the diversification of contemporary sculptors’ practice, selected works include maquettes, drawings, video, photography and small-sculpture. Realising sculpture is an ever expanding discipline, Sculpture Otherwise was named not to be whimsical, but to reflect the varied skills of sculptors today.

Kath Fries, Incubate, 2012, bronze and found materials

Sculpture Otherwise
24 April - 19 May 2013
Scenic World, Katoomba, Blue Moutains NSW
www.scenicworld.com.au/experiences/sculpture


Flay, 2013, Sculpture at Scenic World installation

Kath Fries, Flay, 2013, nylon, twigs, rainforest water vine, sunlight and shadows
Kath Fries, Flay, 2013, nylon, twigs, rainforest water vine, sunlight and shadows

Flay is an site-responsive installation of nylon fibres spun around twigs and one the rainforest's water vines. The undulating diaphanous webbing traces an arching vine over and above viewers' heads as they walk beneath on the boardwalk. Simultaneously artificial and organic, Flay's camouflaged skin-like shapes merges into and out of the dappled shadows of the rainforest. There is something vaguely unsettling about encountering the installation, as though it portends unexpected and visceral encounters within the dark, dense lushness of the rainforest that hides and nurtures many life-forms. From the relative safety of the boardwalk our imaginations can take flight, conjuring a myriad of magical beings, mythical beasts and alien monsters lurking in the shadows of the surrounding rainforest, their presence indicated only by slight traces that mark their passing.

Kath Fries, Flay, 2013, nylon, twigs, rainforest water vine and boardwalk
Kath Fries, Flay, 2013, nylon, twigs, rainforest water vine and boardwalk
Kath Fries, Flay, 2013, nylon, twigs, rainforest water vine and boardwalk
Flay is exhibited as part of Sculpture at Scenic World in the Blue Mountains rainforest, alongside works by thirty-five other artists. The artworks are installed along the longest boardwalk in the Southern Hemisphere at 2.4km, through the Jamison Valley floor and directly below the Three Sisters. Curated by Lizzy Marshall.

Kath Fries, Flay, 2013, nylon, twigs, rainforest water vine, sunlight and shadows
Kath Fries, Flay, 2013, nylon, twigs, water vine, boardwalk, sunlight and shadows

24 April - 19 May 2013
Sculpture at Scenic World
Katoomba, Blue Mountains, NSW
www.scenicworld.com.au/experiences/sculpture


One night at the museum, 27 April 2013


Kath Fries, Fairfield Museum blue carpet treatment, 2013, digital image series
Fairfield City Museum and Gallery will open its doors at sunset on Saturday 27 April to showcase contemporary artworks in and around the site. This one off event will transform the Museum's unique buildings and grounds into an outdoor gallery featuring sculptures, videos and installations, as well as a free-running ParkRoar performance by the local Western Sydney group 9Lives. One Night at the Museum’s Artistic Director, Richard Petkovic says: “the Museum and Gallery has been the centre of culture in the Fairfield area for some time but with this event we want to do something different”.

One night at the museum event invitation, artwork by Linda Brescia.


The artists have been asked to create works responding to the Museum site. Kath Fries is working with particular memory of the gallery space, “…during our initial meeting to discuss this project, two local artists Tom Polo and David Capra, said the main thing they remembered from visiting the gallery when growing up, was the bright blue carpet on the floor that dominated the space completely. This comment intrigued me, so I have appropriated their memory of the site by playfully reworking the infamous blue carpet tiles, so visitors can experience not red, but blue carpet VIP treatment…”

Kath Fries, Fairfield blue carpet treatment, 2013, digital image series

The old, the new, the hidden and the sacred will be brought together around the Museum courtyard’s delicious woodfire pizza oven, for one night only at the Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. Come and see the Museum in a new way!

Kath Fries, Fairfield Museum blue carpet treatment, 2013, digital image series

Confluencias essay

"... Kath Fries' contemporary reinterpretation of the archetypal narratives in Bound, 2013, identifies with ongoing spiritual universal themes, still as relevant today as they have been in the past. In the case of Bound, Fries adapts and communicates a profound sense of duration and an ageless sense of mankind's interconnectedness, through an ongoing universal theme of an individual's relationship to their work. Tubal Cain has been powerfully enhanced through Fries sensitive response to the original cast bronze piece from MoF's permanent collection. Fries cast bronze and rope addition enables the two works to flow-together: to become, thereby, intertwined creating a new, work of art that denotes both past and present, labor and endurance, as collective pursuits across the ages. Bound represents an archetypal depiction of labor as integral to mankind's identity, and the process of being: powerfully expressed through Fries personal response to the transience of existence. Fries elaborates on the conceptual intention behind this piece which resonates within the context of Masonic history and MoF's permanent collection ..."
Helen Symons
Co-curator

Confluencias group exhibition: Australian & Latin American Art @ Museum of Freemasonry

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, (detail view), intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm

Confluencias: Australian & Latin American Art in conversation  
Museum of Freemasonry, Level 3, 66 Goulburn Street, Sydney CBD
18 March to 7 April 2013
Curated by Clay Paula and Helen Symons 
www.confluencias.com.au 

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm

Confluencias showcases works by contemporary Australian and Latin American artists, placed amongst the Sydney Museum of Freemasonry’s permanent collection. This exhibition explores philosophical ideas and symbolism, common to both the contemporary artworks and the Museum’s artefacts of ritual and rite, to create a visual dialogue and of insights, uncertainty and audaciousness. 

Confluencias invitation: featuring images of artwork by Kath Fries, Craig Ruddy, Dulce Schunck, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Fernando Espinosa Chauvin and Eli Braga

Confluencias presents works by Graig Ruddy (Australia); Maria Fernanda Cardoso (Colombian-born, Sydney based); Queenie Lion Kemarre (Born Utopia Region, N. E. Of Alice Springs, Australia (1920-2009));Raquel Nava (Brazil); Emmanuelle Bernard (French-born, Brazilian based); Fernando Espinosa Chauvin (Ecuadorian-born, US based); Dulce Schunck (Brazil); William Yang (Australia); Leonardo Cremonese (Brazilian-born, Sydney based);  Cleide Teixeira (Brazilian-born, Perth based); Kath Fries (Australia); Tina Salama (Australia); Rodrigo Munoz (Australia); Christine Drummond (Brazil); Sylvia Restrepo Botero (Colombia); Carmel Louise (Australia); Maria Guerra (Peruvian-born, Sydney based); Eli Braga (Brazil); Robyn Beeche (Australian-born,  Vrindavan (India) based); Christopher Newman (Australia); Carmen Novoa (Uruguayan-born, Melbourne based); Jorge Portillo (El-Salvadorian-born, Melbourne based); Mauricio De la Rocha (Peruvian- born, Sydney based); Lariane Fonseca (Australia); Fernando do Campo (Argentinean- born, Hobart based); Reinaldo Valera (Cuba).

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, (detail view), intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic Centre statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm

Bound reinterprets and expands on a traditional illustration of Tubal-Cain (the first artificer of metals recorded in religious text) into an ongoing narrative of mankind's continuing struggle to claim domination over nature. This intervention installation involves the placement of a metal bronze tree branch - resting on the anvil below the hammer posed to strike - and the interconnecting coiled rope that links together the statue and the metal branch. These elements suggest that humans are inextricably bound to nature, natural cycles and elemental forces beyond our control. Bound relates to several ongoing interests in my site-responsive practice, focusing on materiality, spatiality and archetypical narratives, developing a personal aesthetic language that responds to the transience of existence, fragility of life and complexity of the world.

Kath Fries, Bound, 2013, (detail view), intervention installation with rope and bronze cast tree branch on the Tubal-Cain Masonic statue, 220 x 250 x 230 cm


Kath Fries is an artist who focuses on materiality, spatiality and archetypical narratives. "My practice is about developing a personal aesthetic language that responds to the transience of existence, the fragility of life and the complexity of the world. Echoing Arte Povera, my process considers and reassesses details in objects found on site, and in everyday materials that would usually be overlooked or dismissed", reveals Fries. For Confluencias the artist presents 'Itinerant', a sight-specific work, and the first ever exhibited in the dome of the MoF. The installation, commissioned especially for the exhibition, has been created using netting and feathers. Feathers are symbolic of migratory birds. They in turn remind us of freedom, of confluence, and of integration with the other. The netting denotes constraints put on liberty: constraints such as segregation, discrimination, and racial hatred, whereby "liberty and dreams can be curtailed," explains Fries.
extract from Confluencias exhibition text 
written by Helen Symons

 
Kath Fries, Itinerant, 2013, feathers, filler, cotton and nylon, 350 x 480 x 120 cm

Kath Fries, Itinerant, 2013, feathers, filler, cotton and nylon, 350 x 480 x 120 cm

Kath Fries, Itinerant, 2013, (detail view), feathers, filler, cotton and nylon, 350 x 480 x 120 cm

ArtsHub review of 'Situational', Lana Howe


"Fragile and contemplative, Situational is a record of artist Kath Fries’ four-week residence at the Bundanon property. Gifted by the Boyd family, The Bundanon Trust is a thriving arts centre, promoting the interaction between visual artists and the bushland that surrounds it. An exhibition of installation, sculpture, photography and video, Fries leads us through her process of observation and distillation of the local landscape: of thistledown, kangaroo fur, and fencing wire. Found objects contrast against the natural bushland, local wildlife, and human endeavour; Fries’ work echoes the principles of arte povera, a 1960s movement, which encouraged the use of everyday objects in art. 
Thistledown, the silky feather-like fibre of a thistle seed, captured against soft window light, looking out onto the countryside, the wooden fence post and the man-made wire. The memory of passing a kangaroo, moss crowned branches, fence paling, twine. A tree stump with its army of termites. Fries’ collection of found objects captures and releases the essence of the ephemeral, of impermanence.
Her use of thistledown draws on Fries’ prior work with dandelion seeds, leaves, hair, netting and natural fibre. In Situational, thistledown is the star of the show. It features in all of the photographs, as well as the installation piece Insinuate, and the title work, a video production. Printed on cotton rag, Drifters I and Drifters II are set on a windowsill, against the light. In Threaded Thistledown, the string of thistledown is loosely moving in the wind, or so we imagine, against a window overlooking the property in the distance. A moment of country ennui, or our own sentimentality around the idea of country stillness.
Fries’ use of contre-jour is utilised in the presentation of her Horizons I-IV sculptures: thumb-size pieces of found wood, set against a narrow frame and looking out against the milky whiteness of dimmed gallery windows and shadows of street wire fencing..."

Lana Howe
ArtsHub Editor
www.artshub.com/au/news-article/reviews/visual-arts/kath-fries



Something Else - thistledown, kangaroo fur and termite gnawed wood

"When you experience an artwork you love, there is a moment where you and the work co-exist in time and space. The longer an artwork has stood the test of time, the more people have shared this similar experience, fragmented over time. What then occurs when a work is itself on a shorter timeline, or when its existence is pinned to one temporal or spatial situation, which could so easily slip out of our grasp? Kath Fries is a local Sydney artist and the winner of a number of art awards in recent years, and her exhibition Situational explores notions of site-sensitivity and site-responsiveness in artworks that imply the fleeting nature of time, memory and temporariness, as well as spatial and natural ties to a landscape. Her latest solo exhibition was created during her residency at Bundanon Trust, a unique 1,100 hectare charitable trust left by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd for future artists to work in and seek inspiration from."
EastSide Radio 89.7FM
Maren Smith, March 2013



"Kath Fries solo exhibition Situational is an exploration of tactility, temporality and memory through site-sensitive sculptural installations, sculptures, videos and photographs created during a residency at Bundanon Trust last year. In interview with Maren, Kath Fries explains the idea of site-responsiveness and how it guides her practice. We hear about her time in the landscape at Bundanon Trust, her productivity at magic hour and her use of found and natural materials such as thistledown, kangaroo fur and termite gnawed wood. Kath Fries also explained her influence from Arte Povera, and the movement of the purpose of the artwork into the realm of the audience and individual memory and associations. The art in the everyday is heightened by the fleeting nature of the relationship between the individual and the artwork as they coincide on many planes in the space of the Chrissie Cotter Gallery."
Something Else
Maren Smith, March 2013



"... a series of small scale works along with photographs and a video, documented time and how time moved. However, the difference in scale did not take away the beautiful sensuality that Kath has for the universe..."
Arthur Chan, March 2013
www.art2public.wordpress.com

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