1985
COURTENAY Hogarth Gallery 1985
Sculpture in progress Chapel Lane, East Sydney 1985_ sold
'Fertility Figure' 1983 unfinished Stanley Street, East Sydney_ sold
Portrait with sculpture back garden Stanley Street
Installation view 'Courtenay' 85 Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
'Chapel Lane Twins#1,#2' image from_ Shell Australia Sculpture Prize 1983, catalogue_sold
Installation View 2
'Graven Image Yurong Street' mixed media sculpture_sold
'With a Wooden Heart' mixed media sculpture_sold
'Lost in Woods Lane' mixed media sculpture_sold
'Work on Paper #1' 1984 acrylic on paper_sold
'Before the Fall' 1985 mixed media sculpture exhibited in 'Sculpture 85' Melbourne & 'Graven Images' 1985 Art Gallery of Western Australia
'After the Crucifixion' mixed media Sculpture at The Blake Art Prize 1986
Image of Postgraduate Exhibition 1984 on City Art Institute Master of Arts Catalogue 1985
'Untitled' 1980's mixed media sculpture, displayed City Art Institute Library_ College Collection
'Street Work#1' 1986 mixed media sculpture_sold
COURTENAY
1985 Hogarth Gallery
My first solo show in 1985 was a pivotal start to my art practice, its central theme still underlying my art practice. “ I mix symbols of our collective cultural memory with imagery from the land, exploring the numinous sense of the earth where man an nature are interconnected, past histories affecting present and future possibilities”
Attending Part- time Post Graduate Art Studies at COFA, working Influenced by teaching Indigenous high school art students trying to learn about Australia’s then obscured indigenous art history. Living in PNG, spending time at the National Museum and Art Gallery with its collection of sacred sculptures and cultural artifacts of tribal life surviving the purges of 19th century Christianity. Privy to many dance performances and events for the First Pacific Arts Festival and witnessing a special women’s ceremony.
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“ These sculptures all bear the scars of earlier lives. When I paint and decorate these figures. I try to embody each one with my feelings of tensions and frustrations from living in the inner city.
The timber for the sculptures comes from discarded old inner city buildings found in the streets and from the country ancient native trees ring-barked for pastureland by the Chinese after the gold rush. In sculpting these pieces I am releasing the spirits of the dead and past Australian bush”
My Quote from ‘Sculpting the City’s Tribes’ POL International- Arts Summer Edition 1985