News
Ebb and Flow
the Overview Effect
7–24 August 2024
Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
77ᵒ 50´N - 13ᵒ 19´E The Recession. 2014.
Pigment inkjet print on rag paper. 500 x 2200 (edition of 5).
Printed by Michel Szczepanski, C-Lab, Uni. Melb.
Felicity Spear’s solo show Ebb and Flow: the Overview Effect is coming to Stephen McLaughlan Gallery 7–24 August 2024.
Since the 1980s Felicity Spear has had a dedicated visual arts practice: painting, photography, printmaking and drawing.
Her works explore technologies associated with the emanation of light and the manipulation of space. They create models of the physical world which over time humans have observed, imagined, decoded, manipulated and modified for their own ends.
Ebb and Flow: the Overview Effect is a reflection on these explorations.
Ebb and Flow: the Overview Effect
Listening Earth
16 August — 2 September 2023
Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
Details of works by Spear, Weiss, Symons and Duxbury.
Fields have eyes and forests have ears and I will hear if I remain silent and listen.
(From an old Dutch proverb. Quoted by researcher Lev Dyakov discussing the work of early Dutch artist Hieronymous Bosch 1450-1516).
Group Exhibition
Artists: Lesley Duxbury, Felicity Spear, (curator), Debbie Symons, Rosie Weiss, and musician and sound artist Vicki Hallett.
Attuned
Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
19 January–26 February 2022
Group Exhibition
The Melbourne Art Fair satellite event features a night viewing of various Nicholas Building galleries, including Stephen McLaughlan Gallery.
Melbourne Art Fair 17–20 February 2022
Felicity Spear: On Reflection - Ebb and Flow
Inkjet print
Felicity Spear: On Reflection - Ebb and Flow
Inkjet print
Felicity Spear: On Reflection - Ebb and Flow
Inkjet print
Biosphere – a sense of belonging
Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
3–20 November 2021
Curator: Felicity Spear
Artists: Harry Nankin, Debbie Symons, Rosie Weiss, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, and Felicity Spear.
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Felicity Spear: Darkness falls (after Melanodes anthracitaria)
Charcoal and conté on paper
Biosphere – a sense of belonging
LIGO Magazine
Issue 18 3/2021
In 2016 I had a solo show titled Orbit: the Kepler Suite about space, time, geometry, matter and the hidden traces and forces which are embedded in the idea of ‘orbit’. One of the series of 10 works was one titled The New Wave that paid homage to the exciting and first-ever detection in 2015 of a gravitational wave by LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory).
Gravitational waves from sources across the universe pass through us all the time, but because gravity is so much weaker than the other fundamental forces of nature we never sense them. LIGO is part of a larger effort to explore one of the more elusive implications of Einstein’s general theory of relativity opening up new research pathways in astronomy and mapping.
Download a PDF of LIGO Magazine, Issue 18 3/2021
MAYDAY
April 28–May 15, 2021
The Subjective Conditions of Mapping
2020 MPavilion Young Curators Program
Felicity Spear: The New Wave
This workshop was an exploration of the creative act of mapping. The emphasis was on the way in which our ‘objective’ external reality is fundamentally constructed through the limits of our own subjectivity, just as our view of the physical world is constructed through the limits of our own sensorium.
Participants experimented with varied map making concepts and strategies to create experimental maps which referenced places of personal significance.
The Subjective Conditions of Mapping
MPavilion website
Thirdspace
Geelong Gallery – 29/09/20 to 31/01/21
Peter Ferguson, Felicity Spear and Shane Jones
Vegetal head/Locus(T)/Leap, (2000 - Exquisite Corpse- Bendigo Art Gallery)
Pencil, photograms, pin-hole photograph, oil paint
Collection of Geelong Art Gallery
Thirdspace – Exhibition Note (PDF)
Thirdspace – Geelong Gallery website
Hubble Space Telescope 30th Anniversary
My work Deep Field (2007) was created both as a homage and a playful reference to the iconic photograph the Hubble Deep Field 1996 (see www.hubblesite.org). This image revealed for the first time a core sample of the extent of the Universe’s observable limits captured by Hubble Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera.
Deep Field consists of seven mural sized inkjet prints.
It references 17th-century murals of the heavens and the all-encompassing 15th-century mappae mundi or world map.
Like a photographic still, frozen in time, everything is seen simultaneously through the layers of data at different magnifications, depths and dimensions.
Data included NASA images from the Two Micron All Sky Survey edge on view of Milky Way, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey wedge shaped slice of the cosmos and star trail images from pioneering astrophotographer and astronomer David Malin.
Deep Field was printed by Michel Szczepanski C-Lab Uni.Melb.
The Moon
14 June – 1 September 2019 — Geelong Gallery
A group exhibition curated by Lisa Sullivan
Felicity Spear: Somnium (detail)
20 July 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing and the first steps taken on the lunar surface.
The exhibition includes historical works created when the Moon could only be viewed from afar, works from the era of the 1960s space race, and more contemporary responses informed by the imagery and scientific knowledge acquired through space exploration.
Fly me to the moon
A conversation with Felicity Spear, Louise Weaver and Ed Ayres on the ABC’s The Art Show (17 July 2019) about the exhibition at the Geelong Gallery.
Listen to the podcast.
Download the webpage (PDF).
Love in the Time of COVID-19
Love in the Time of COVID-19
(GAG Projects website)
Love in the Time of COVID-19
(Art Gallery of South Australia website)
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19, organised by GAG Projects, was an innovative, not for profit contemporary art project.
It provided a marker for the extraordinary state of the world in 2020 by sharing art in difficult and isolating times.
133 prints by Australian and international artists were viewable online and available to purchase individually as on-demand digital prints.
Keynote Presentation — Deakin University
Extending Vision
Symposium:
Art, Visualisation and the Cosmos in Education
Thursday 5 and Friday 6 December 2019
Download a PDF of Extending Vision
Space
50 years since man first stepped on the Moon
20 July – 1 September 2019 — Gippsland Art Gallery
A group exhibition curated by Erin Mathews
Felicity Spear: Somnium—Kepler’s Dream
Credit: NASA/LORP
Explore the romance of space through visual culture produced during and after the Moon landing.
The works span the furthest reaches of the human imagination to the reality of space travel. Original photographs from NASA of the moon landing take pride of place, together with works from contemporary artists who respond to the romance and unknown of space.
Parallel Universe
3–27 April 2019 — Stephen McLaughlin Gallery
A group exhibition curated by Felicity Spear
Felicity Spear: Many Worlds (detail)
The human sensorium is enough for us to get by in our own ecosystem, but it does not approximate the larger picture where different ways of thinking or seeing might take us beyond our sense of an immediate reality.
Imago Mundi Australian Contemporary Collection
Looking Down Under: Contemporary Artists from Australia
(click to enlarge)
Felicity Spear — Light Years (2015)
Oil on canvas - 10 x 12 cm
(click to enlarge)
Felicity Spear is one of a number of Australian artists contributing to the Imago Mundi Australian Contemporary Collection housed at the Benetton Foundation in Italy. Touring in 2016.
Rosa Maria Falvo is the curator of the Imago Mundi Benetton World Art Collection.
Felicity Spear’s entry in Looking Down Under: Contemporary Artists from Australia
(click to enlarge)
More information at www.imagomundiart.com/collections/australia-looking-down-under
The Geelong Contemporary Art Prize
Felicity Spear has been shortlisted for the Geelong Contemporary Art Prize (15 September–18 November 2012).
Showcasing the best of contemporary Australian painting practice, this $30,000 acquisitive award and biennial exhibition features 45 works by leading and emerging artists.
Felicity Spear Atomic – my carbon copy (2011 Oil on linen - 240 x 30 x 10 cm)
“Atomic - my carbon copy, is a flash of colour falling through space, the material evidence of atoms pushed and pulled by gravitational forces, the invisible made visible, the elemental operations of nature writ large, or simply a colour coded confection. With some cloth stretched over my index finger I draw marks in layers of wet paint, splitting spectral colours into patterns of chromatic energy. In astronomy the spectroscopic appearance of the sun and stars, like a forensic mapping process, reveals the chemical elements in their atmosphere. Each element produces a spectrum unique to itself, like a fingerprint, no matter where it is found. Science tells us that for this chromatic energy to be perceived, light waves must interact with the light sensitive cells in the retina, and nerves must deliver this information to the brain to be processed. It is at this point that art reveals colour’s intrinsic subjectivity. I shift and sift light and colour to draw attention to the carbon element, the basis of all known life. On planet Earth, as the elemental operations of nature become disrupted, the word ‘carbon’ has become politically contentious and ideologically loaded.”
Felicity Spear 2012.
Seeing Books – The Arts Libraries Society / Australia & New Zealand Conference 2012
In September 2012 Felicity Spear's artist's book An Atlas of Remote Possibilities, in the rare books collection of the State Library of Victoria, will be be discussed by Dr Anne Bennett in her paper ‘Seeing Artist's Books as Research’ at the Royal Society of Victoria.
A selection of prints from editions in this book will hang in the Royal Society during the Conference.
- Seeing Books (website)
- Catalogue Record for An Atlas of Remote Possibilities (State Library of Victoria website)
Canberra Festival – National Library of Australia – Star Light Star Bright
On 10 March 2012, Felicity Spear, together with Professor Brian Schmidt (Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory), and Michael Leunig (cartoonist, philosopher, poet and artist), presented a talk at the National Library of Australia’s event ‘Star Light, Star Bright.’ Chanel Cole and Adam Cook gave musical performances. This event coincided with Canberra’s ENLIGHTEN Festival 2012.
Presentation: Beyond Visibility (Full Text)
... A person looks at a work of art ...
Geelong Gallery — 18 September to 13 February 2011
Taking as its starting point three large, recently acquired photographs by contemporary Australian artist Anne Zahalka, this group exhibition is drawn mostly from Geelong Gallery's own collection and illustrates the currency in modern practice of the introspective but frequently witty genre of ‘art museum interior' in which visitors are seen to interact in different ways with works of art.
Zahalka's photographs, are presented in conjunction with earlier works by Edward Heffernan, Eric Thake, Peter Tyndall, Douglas Watson and Felicity Spear.