New Works by Emerging Artists 2

Overview

New Works by Emerging Artists 2 focuses on homey things. Windows, knit fabrics, carpentry and books.

At the centre of Kevin Platt’s Arms and Ends is a freestanding, round stained-glass window, Western Window. It's windmill-like, with purple, orange and improbable black panes pointing inward. Nearby, Ritual (being forgotten) sets a book open on a lecturn with one name written over and over in blue ink, then crossed out. The motif of Western Window repeats, eye-like, in his other work.

Daniel Edwards’ boho-homo-hobo has something of the grandad-chic to its collection. Woollen tapestries knitting out bearded men (and one man-less beard), a fireplace popping up in the middle and an arrangement of heraldic devices. Flickr Bohemian stands out, a woollen tapestry of the torso of a thinly-dressed woman. From the shawl she is wearing, fringes flow off the frame at the bottom into three dimensions of scraggly, multicoloured life.

In Go Kill Everybody and Come Back Alone Joseph Breikers puts cowboy motifs against footage of rural idylls, while his sculputre Surtur Rising gives rise to the rare occasion of listing ‘googly eyes’ in an art catalogue.

There's a map on the wall in Zine-maker Vanessa Berry’s Biblioburbia. It's a masterpiece: a gargantuan exercise in community mapping which fills the back wall of the gallery, where Sydney's libraries are laid out with ink, images and coloured lending cards — mirroring her blog's similar progress from stack to stack. Each of these thirty one libraries is sketched in the same black and white as the coast, train lines and sea monsters that populate her vision of the city. Fragmentary vignettes are typed out alongside. Berry works with the voice of Lemony Snicket, but has stolen her passion for Sydney's forgotten history from an oral historian.

Simon Yates has also proffered Bookface in collaboration with Berry. It features interesting books laid out on a set of shelves, that on closer inspection turn out to be 2001-like fakes. They have the weight of balsa wood, and only the feel of book-shaped things.

Firstdraft is open Wed-Sun, 12-6. Image of Biblioburbia courtesy of Vanessa Berry.