The Drawing Room

The launch into 2012 for BREENSPACE starts with a cracker of a little group show, The Drawing Room. It is by no means a new idea to explore this medium — there are whole galleries devoted to it — but this particular exhibition successfully opens up the dialogue surrounding what it is to sketch.

Highlights include Agatha Gothe-Snape’s Sketch for Chance Dance (2012), a wonderful extension of her practice over the last couple years. Sketch for Chance Dance is a digital moving image presented in a minimalist box frame. A bold yellow line snakes across a white background continuously tracing the line of a performance and yet equally the work exists as a dynamic sketch for a rehearsal, an instruction for the future or an archive of some past movement.

Equally, Mitch Cairns’ installation of 12 unique works on paper, ZZZZZZ (2011) lovingly utilises old-school letraset layered atop printed lines of staff which perfectly marries his long use of musical reference with the vernacular in language. The result? A serene and eccentric score which like Gothe-Snape beautifully expands upon one’s understanding of Cairns’ work to date.

And lastly, Hossein Valamanesh’s series of miniature paintings on newspaper, Swiss Landscape (2002). Here Valamanesh has utlitised the peaks and troughs of the Swissmarket financial index to create majestic alps in oh-so-tiny delightful detail.

If you haven’t been to BREENSPACE since their big move six months ago they are now located in Alberta St in the city, just a back laneway skip away from the Chinatown side of Hyde Park. On the third floor of a commercial building reaching BREENSPACE requires a lift ride which could be seen as ultra-intimidating (and obviously results in a definite lack of tyre kickers) but get your guts up — this little gem is well worth a lunch-time pop in.